The Blessings of Parenthood

Little do we know when we bring children into our lives, to people the world, and bring pleasure and pride to their parents, having successfully nurtured and raised responsible, respectful and loving human beings, what will ultimately result. On the way toward achieving their goal parents discover all manner of landmines they must negotiate to bring their child-raising to a successful conclusion.

Who, before experiencing the joys, the triumphs, the difficulties and frustrations of raising children, might begin to imagine what is involved? What is involved, actually, is the complete giving over of one's life struggles to the emotional support of one's children.

To ensure they are not bereft of their need to be nurtured and protected and encouraged and appreciated. Forging, in the process, independent and capable adults at the end of that long journey from infancy to adulthood. During which process the parents see their own youth gradually submerged to their children's dependence, until agedness overtakes them.

Most parents do reap the rewards of parenthood, despite the difficulties experienced throughout the process of raising, educating and finally releasing their offspring to take their place in the world. And, once those children become adults, their achievements and their personal satisfaction with life, offers their parents the answer to why they became parents in the first place.

Unfortunately, not every story has a happy ending. And one can empathize completely with Angela Suleman, mother of the now-notorious Nadya Suleman, in the agony of her hopeless plight, as grandmother of fourteen children all under the age of seven. She might perhaps be still troubled, but less immediately involved and emotionally distraught, if the work and the turmoil related to raising those children didn't fall directly upon her.

But it has; it is she who struggles and who has struggled throughout the years, to care for her daughter's first six children. Feeding them, caring for them, worrying about them. Her daughter's intractable will in insisting that she must bear that many children - through artificial insemination no less - while she is yet 33 years old, bespeaks a worrying flirtation with mental illness.

"How she's going to cope, I don't know", moaned Angela Suleman. "Now I'm struggling to look after her six. We had to put in bunk beds, feed them in shifts, and there's children's clothing piled all over the house." This is her daughter, the one whose incessant childbearing neurosis has resulted in octuplets following on her previous six children, the one she has labelled "unconscionable".

Certainly without conscience, not to dwell on practicalities such as how can so many children be reasonably accommodated. She leaves it to her mother. However, she also is certain that God will do His utmost to provide for her family. While acknowledging that she was "struggling" to raise her first six children, financially. "I will feed them. I will do the best I possibly can", she assures.

This young woman so wilfully narcissistic, stubbornly obsessed, the torment of her parents, is confident that society, prodded by God, will provide for her and her children. "And in my own way, in my own faith, I do believe wholeheartedly that God will provide in his own way", allowing as she was hoping for help from "volunteers, friends and family."

Burdening her parents, her community, the health care system. Awaiting rescue by the entertainment industry, the purveyors of public interest stories, those who may have compassion on the children born of his insanely selfish woman who seems never to have been able to outgrow adolescence.