Why have children?

Last Thursday we tried to answer the question "why do couples have children?" I really liked where we ended up with our discussion. The answer to the question takes into account some sort of spiritual aspect that is hard to articulate. My answer to this question is that the love between two people cannot be contained, and so it flows over into a new life that is created from that love. This is definitely a spiritual and impossible to measure with research.

As a professional, it's important to remember that research isn't the end-all-be-all. Research can't measure everything, thus we cannot rely on it for all the answers. This goes back to the beginning of the semester where we talked about epistemology. Research is one way that we know what we know, but there are other ways: experience, authority, tradition, reason, and intuition.

The fact that research can't measure everything is something I will keep in mind as a mother, especially when it comes to sharing my reasons for having children. Last summer there was an article in Newsweek that said kids make couples less happy. If I would've known then what I know now, I could've approached the article from a different point of view. I could have helped the people who showed me the article see how the research was conducted in a way that got negative responses from parents and didn't take into account a deeper, immeasurable happiness that comes with having a children.