No matter male or female, there comes a moment in everyone’s lives where they will be holding someone else’s child in their arms, cooing at them endearingly, and they will then have to stop and ponder about the age-old question: do they want to have children? Are they ready? What if they do not want them? The Value of Children: A Taxonomical Essay by Bernard Berelson explores the various reasons as to why people in America desired children. However, the reasons for today’s generation to have children have been remarkably refashioned, and nowadays, America’s society yearns for children to exploit to the government, to assuage paternal instincts, and to fill up any voids in their lives. Indeed, people want children for the profitable aspect of it — their eyes will light up when they picture their
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A child, to some parents, is a person who they can give guidance to… but for other parents, a child is someone who they can push their own beliefs and dreams onto. Soon-to-be parents can regularly find themselves daydreaming about their future child, telling themselves that their child will never make the same mistakes that they did back then. Why? Because parents see children as “…the renewal of self in the second chance; the reliving of one’s own childhood” (Berelson 255). Children are impressionable, and parents take heed of that to try to somehow create a mini-them to live vicariously through. As humans, we are naturally proud of our creations, but we are also born narcissists. What better work of art than your own child who acts like a superior version of yourself when you were younger? This is where the running joke of “It’s not my dream, dad/mom! It’s yours!” stems from in American teen movies where the child hits the breaking point of their parent wanting the child to succeed for their personal benefit, not the child’s. Even Hollywood has jested about the way that parents treat their children in
A child, to some parents, is a person who they can give guidance to… but for other parents, a child is someone who they can push their own beliefs and dreams onto. Soon-to-be parents can regularly find themselves daydreaming about their future child, telling themselves that their child will never make the same mistakes that they did back then. Why? Because parents see children as “…the renewal of self in the second chance; the reliving of one’s own childhood” (Berelson 255). Children are impressionable, and parents take heed of that to try to somehow create a mini-them to live vicariously through. As humans, we are naturally proud of our creations, but we are also born narcissists. What better work of art than your own child who acts like a superior version of yourself when you were younger? This is where the running joke of “It’s not my dream, dad/mom! It’s yours!” stems from in American teen movies where the child hits the breaking point of their parent wanting the child to succeed for their personal benefit, not the child’s. Even Hollywood has jested about the way that parents treat their children in