UA

Over the weekend Alia came up with my new mantra: "You can't do that if you have kids." She made this statement after I was telling her about my Friday night, and how Matt and I had stayed up until five in the morning watching CSI. Earlier we'd been commiserating about the annoying phenonemeon called Unsolicited Advice. Unsolicited Advice, also known as "UA", is - funnily enough - usually given by people who don't know you every well. It also frequently involves topics that I prefer to be somewhat coy about. Really, I can't be the only one who has to fight the urge to kick something when some random person who's never been in a serious relationship decides to give me marriage advice.

Apparently two years of marriage is the point when a lot of people decide to try and convince you to give up whatever you're doing and have kids. Just quit law school and have a baby! Funnily enough, for every person who's like "You don't really know happiness until you have a baby, your marriage is meaningless without children, blah blah blah", there's someone else who's all "I had kids young and it was a BIG mistake - you should wait until you're older".

These diametrically opposite pieces of advice piss me off equally, because the basic premise of all advice is that the advice-giver is qualified to give suggestions. Guess what: just because something worked for you doesn't mean it will work for someone else. Why don't people know this? Why can't people accept that everyone is different? I don't deny that children are wonderful and unimaginably life-changing, and I certainly want to have them some day, but I think that it's really key to wait to have kids until you don't feel like it would comepletely ruin your life. Call me crazy.

I don't mind people who give advice catered to my situation, like "I had kids young and it was what I wanted, but I can understand why you would want to wait" or "Children are wonderful and it's hard to have them in your forties, but you have to do what's right for you." I do mind people who act like their mission on this earth is to convince me to run home and yell, "Forget what we've talked about honey! Let's impregnate me!".

Alia says she's been having this problem too. I feel like some of the biggest UA-givers are other Baha'i's. The Baha'i Faith teaches that the family is the most basic building block of society, which makes more sense than I can even understand. Your family is where it all begins, where you learn the basis of everything else you'll learn in life. I think that because of this, and because of the kind of anti-family trends in some parts of America, some Baha'i adults confuse being family oriented with having kids as soon as possible. I can sympathize with this, but it's not accurate. We're also told in the Baha'i writings that the worst thing a parent to do is fail to educate their children (I'm paraphrasing). Most people take "education" to mean more than putting your kids in school, but that you have to educate your children morally and spiritually. I don't think anyone is ever "ready" to have kids, but you have to at least be willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary. Why are we trying to convince people to breed if they can't take care of their kids? Why do we want selfish, lazy parents in the world?

My life is so much fun right now. So much fun. I have to do what's right for me, regardless of annoying people who project their regrets onto others. Not everyone should get married at 21, and not everyone should have kids at 24. And blogging at three in the morning? You can't do that if you have kids.