The question you asked at the end of your editorial “Parenting – the hardest job” (TMID, 25 April), set me thinking.

You asked whether, looking back, one will have children again. I must say that most parents I know will answer “no” to that question – for a variety of reasons. Some may have suffered too much with children who were ensnared in the drugs vice while others lost a child through illness.

But it is not these sad experiences that would put parents off having children again if they had the opportunity to turn time back. It is the way your life changes when you have children that puts me, and others, off.

Young couples have the maternal or paternal instinct of having children. It is nature’s way of renewing itself. But this instinct is lost as soon as the children are born. The responsibility of bringing up children in the horrible world we are living in today is too much for many, myself included.

Holding a newly-born baby in your arms is, yes, the best experience that one could have. But, from then onwards, life changes. For the worse.

Parent

Marsascala