Beverly Engel - The Parenthood Decision: Discovering Whether You Are Ready and Willing to Become a Parent

OTHER BOOKS BY BEVERLY ENGEL

Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Fostering Your Childs

Healthy Sexual Development in Todays World

Blessings from the Fall: Turning a Fall from Grace into a New Beginning

Raising Your Sexual Self-Esteem

Families in Recovery

Partners in Recovery

The Emotionally Abused Woman

Encouragements for the Emotionally Abused Woman

Divorcing a Parent

The Right to Innocence: Healing the Trauma of Childhood Sexual Abuse

A previous edition of this book was originally published in 1998 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday.

The Parenthood Decision. Copyright 1998 by Beverly Engel. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address: Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Visit our website at www.broadwaybooks.com

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has cataloged the previous edition as:

Engel, Beverly.
The parenthood decision : deciding whether you are ready and willing to become a parent / Beverly Engel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Parenting. I. Title.
HQ755.8.E524 1998
649.1dc21 98-13932

eISBN: 978-0-307-80181-4

v3.1

To my dear friends Patti McDermott, Connie Davidson, and Honey Burnsthree of the best parents Ive ever known.

First and foremost, I wish to thank Nancy Love, my agent, for her constant support and tireless efforts on my part. I also wish to thank Frances Jones at Doubleday for helping to make this a better book with her excellent editing. And finally, much appreciation to all the parents and would-be parents who were interviewed for the book or agreed to have their stories told in an effort to help potential parents everywhere to make this important decision.

HAVING A BABY has become an increasingly popular idea, causing thousands of couples and singles alike to contemplate parenthood. Despite their desire to become parents, many of these people have deep concerns about whether they are prepared at this time for the long-term commitment or whether they will make good parents. If you are one of these people, The Parenthood Decision will help you to make a decision that you will be comfortable with for the rest of your life.

Deciding whether or not to become a parent may very well be the most important decision you will make in your life. While the decisions concerning marriage and career are also important ones and certainly impact ones life, those decisions can be reversed. Although marriage is supposed to be a lifelong commitment, in actuality, it doesnt always work out that way. And while most people choose a career with the idea that they will stay in it a lifetime (especially when there are years of education and/or training involved), we are also seeing that people now change careers at least once and often several times in their lifetime.

But the decision to have a baby (or adopt a child) is not reversible. The decision to become a parent involves another persons entire life. Becoming a parent means you are ultimately responsible for another human beings emotional and physical well-being and, in a very real sense, their very life. Your infant will be totally dependent on you for food, shelter, protection, and nurturing. Your toddler will need you to teach him or her about love, danger, boundaries, and limits. And your school-age child will depend on you for lessons about socializing with others, respecting the property and rights of others, as well as taking risks and saying no. Whether your child grows up to be a confident, self-assured person capable of respecting and loving other people will, for the most part, be totally up to you.

If what I am saying sounds overly dramatic or frightening, I am sorry. But it is my goal to encourage each person reading this book to take the parenthood decision very seriously. To this end, I will present invaluable information that will help you make the right decisionfor yourself, your mate (if you have one), and most important, for the child you are thinking about having.

Although, ultimately, you and you alone will have to make this decision, no one should have to do so in a vacuum. I will act as your guide through the maze of questions, concerns, and conflicts that you will inevitably encounter as you begin to seriously focus on this momentous decision. The questions and issues I bring up will often help clear up some of your confusion. At other times, I will present issues for you to consider that will cause you to feel even more confusedcreate even more internal conflict. Although it wont feel like it at the time, you will find this too will ultimately help you in your decision.

Many of you are reading this book because you are already aware of what a tremendous responsibility becoming a parent is, and some of you are already aware of the potential problems that might prevent you from being a good parent. If this is your situation, I wish to commend you for acting responsibly. Admitting your fears and shortcomings now can be the first step to overcoming them and is in itself an indication that you have the potential to be a responsible, loving parent. I encourage you to continue to be honest about your fears as you read the book. Sometimes fears are only indicators of insecurityother times they are warnings. By the time youve completed this book and worked on the issues presented to you, I am confident you will be able to make the distinction.

My reasons for writing this book are numerous. My primary reason is that in the course of my twenty-four-year career as a marriage, family, and child counselor, I have worked with many couples who have had difficulties with the parenting process. They came to my office totally overwhelmed and often on the brink of divorce due to the stresses of raising a child. Many of these clients told me they had been pressured by either their mate, their families, or their friends to have a child and that they wished they had never allowed the pressure to get to them. Many had realized, unfortunately too late, that they were not good parents, either because of their personality, their background, or the fact that they did not have a good relationship with their mate.

As an expert in working with adult victims of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, I also felt it was important to educate those who had the potential to become abusive or neglectful parents about the pressures of having children. At the same time, I wanted to reassure those who had less than happy childhoods themselves that not all abused or neglected children become abusive parents.

I found that a vast majority of my clients who had been abused or neglected as children were afraid they would repeat the cycle of abuse if they were to become parents. Therefore, I felt it was important to explain the effects abuse and neglect can have on potential parents, to educate potential parents on what it takes to be a good parent and present a way for them to explore how they might react in various circumstances.