If you could, would you decide on a 3rd child?

[buds]

Em:

er........... I'd wanted a boy so I wouldn't have headache of dressing a girl up. Just pop him into top, shorts, and no need to ever tie hair! Convenient and efficient!

I'm all-girl but it was also easy cos i was always with only tops and shorts!
:shock: At times, only a singlet/vest top with undies running around the
village as a young girl and shoe-less playing rounders with the other boys!

No need to tie my hair either cos mine had always been kept 4 by 2! :lol:

Em:

Guess which gender I got? On the other hand I never had any fountain appearing when changing her diapers :lol: No lah, don't think the mother you mentioned is shallow. My MIL had 3 boys, she was sooo happy when my DD came along. Now she's busy dressing up DD up. Think she just wanted the close female company, cos no matter what, females are more in tune with other females haha!

I couldn't tune in to my mom no matter how hard i tried then...
Only after marriage and having kiddies of my own, then started
to connect.

[buds]

momoshop:

But my stakes are very high cuz I already have 3 boys.. it is a entire household of men.. if we still end up with a boy, i will seriously faint I think

I will :faint: too if i were you! :!:

[buds]

skunk:

Maybe it's the backlash against all these, that attitudes are changing. Anyway i'm still disgusted and i make sure that every day i live my life as a Man, i make sure people see me as a shining example of what a real Man should be.


I wish my next child is a male, I want him to be part of the new male species, to be a pillar of family and society. A Man other men will look up upon in admiration

:rahrah: GO skunk! :rahrah:

[momoshop]

skunk:

i grew up in a family of 4 boys hehe

Wah!! Can I interview your mum? How does she feel man!

tony:

I grew up in a family of all girls, so I never understood the male psyche. Now, we're stuck with all boys, which brings me to a better understanding. But I'm reluctant to change that mix leh. The thought of another baby now with all the bending down for diaper change, for handholding while the little one learns to walk etc is enough to make my brain shut down!

I grew up in a family of all gals too. I recall when I knew that my no. 1 is a boy, I went to buy Steve Biddulph's book on Raising a Boy just to prep myself. And well, you are right, my tods were 2 and 3 when I was expecting no 3, and even then I kept telling hubby that we could have a much easier life already, and yet we are going into all that baby routine again... which I am currently now in - all the puree, all the prepping of meals to bring along for baby if we go out.. *faint* sometimes. Butthe joy of cuddling a baby, with that unfant smell, and seeing how baby crawls, sit up and play is a welcome relief from rationalising with the tods. I do enjoy the baby more the 3rd time round, after all the tods are grow. But no. 4 will be a totally different matter I think..

buds, if I ever decide for no. 4, must be SURE gal. As it is, all the men in the household drive me crazy sometimes..

[mathsparks]

Deleted.

[skunk]

mathsparks:

So, I'm glad I don't put another child and myself through this immense pressure to succeed. Yes, they're cute and fun when they're young, but once they start upper primary....

That is just so weak. Since the days our ancestors left the trees and walked on two legs, our offspring had to face immense pressure to succeed, whether it be fending off sabre-tooth tigers, foraging for berries, farming the land, or fighting off marauding enemy tribes, not to mention fighting for power and statues within the tribe.

Nothing has changed since the last hundred thousand years. If u have this kind of thinking, u and your tribe is doomed to extinction, just like how our ancestors vanquished the Neanderthaals.

As for me and my children, I will bring them up tough, from the moment they understand anything, i will tell them that Life is a daily struggle, it's a daily torture, where only the fittest survive. If they cannot take it, i will tell them to jump down and die, don't waste the resources of the tribe. But i'm confident they will triumph over all difficulties, just like our proud ancestors of the past.

Are u a winner? Or a loser?

[tony]

skunk:

As for me and my children, I will bring them up tough, from the moment they understand anything, i will tell them that Life is a daily struggle, it's a daily torture, where only the fittest survive. If they cannot take it, i will tell them to jump down and die, don't waste the resources of the tribe. But i'm confident they will triumph over all difficulties, just like our proud ancestors of the past.

Are u a winner? Or a loser?

I do agree with the gist of what you said, Skunk. These are powerful statements and a basic tenet of why humans are so successful today. I do think though that the statement about telling them to jump is too harsh. With the success of our ability to survive, we can afford to be less rigid than the days of the caveman.

The race for physical survival has turned into the race for economic survival. That's the postmodern jungle for you. The world is a very large place and there is a place for all. I assume you mean that being a winner means surviving. Everyone will ultimately find their place in the world, but it is effort that determines that place. Ultimately too, perhaps we're forgetting that there is a human happiness index. Throw this out of the survival equation and we're doomed.

Don't mean to rant :oops:, but this is a very interesting topic.

[tony]

mathsparks:

I'm glad I stopped at 2. Our kiasu education system (less than 20% makes it to local Unis..pls correct me if I'm wrong) is VERY stressful on kids and their parents.


If you can afford it or are prepared to sacrifice yr retirement funds, send yr child overseas and he doesn't have to struggle to get into local U..This is the plan of my sis who has only 1 child.

If you can't, then hard and hope that yr child is intelligent, independent and hardworking enough to get a place in the local U; else with the way home prices are heading, the poor fella can't even afford a decent roof over his head. Plus, with the welcoming and huge influx of foreign talent (I've no issue with the need of foreigners), our poor child would just have to be contented having a job (regardless PMETs or not). This is the worry of most of my peers.

So, I'm glad I don't put another child and myself through this immense pressure to succeed. Yes, they're cute and fun when they're young, but once they start upper primary....

Mathsparks, what can I say. From a financial perspective, having kids is a negative net present value proposition. There are days when I look at the minutiae of our daily lives, how the kids are doing in school, worry about how we're going to put them through (hopefully) good schools, and I wring my hands in despair.

But perhaps if we extend the focus to when we carry our first grandchildren and see that our children have become parents themselves and people with integrity ... Perhaps that is the rich emotional payback that we are striving so hard for now.

[skunk]

tony:

I do think though that the statement about telling them to jump is too harsh.

Ironically, the tougher u bring them up, the less possibility they will need to jump.

The tougher u bring them up, ironically, the better their life is likely to be, rather than get worse. Don't worry about whatever nonsense \"human happiness index\", the moment a human embraces obstacles and difficulties and the entire experience of human suffering, he will gain true happiness, even amongst the daily grind we all have to go through.

The moment we view Life through the cloudy hologram of a dollar bill, we might as well kill ourselves, since Life itself involves toiling for decades, only to die and not able to bring the fruits of our labour with us. \"Negative net value proposition\" or whatever nonsense LOL

[momoshop]

mathsparks:

I'm glad I stopped at 2. Our kiasu education system (less than 20% makes it to local Unis..pls correct me if I'm wrong) is VERY stressful on kids and their parents.


If you can afford it or are prepared to sacrifice yr retirement funds, send yr child overseas and he doesn't have to struggle to get into local U..This is the plan of my sis who has only 1 child.

If you can't, then hard and hope that yr child is intelligent, independent and hardworking enough to get a place in the local U; else with the way home prices are heading, the poor fella can't even afford a decent roof over his head. Plus, with the welcoming and huge influx of foreign talent (I've no issue with the need of foreigners), our poor child would just have to be contented having a job (regardless PMETs or not). This is the worry of most of my peers.

So, I'm glad I don't put another child and myself through this immense pressure to succeed. Yes, they're cute and fun when they're young, but once they start upper primary....

While I do emphathise and agree that it is indeed stressful to bring up a child, and it is so in any society (not just in SG - ask the Americans and the Japanese, each society has their own norms of success and a pressure cooker in their own way, and which parent do not want their child to succeed?!) but I feel that it is precisely this kind of mentality that brings about pampered kids who may not be tough enough to survive, as Skunk mentioned.

Many of my friends told me that they will only want to have 1 child, even though they are financially stable and of middle income with private housing and cars etc, so they can save and afford the best for the kid. They feel that it is better to groom a successful one than to struggle and not be perfect with many children. That seems rather flawed in my opinion.

My stand is simple, nothing,NOTHING in this world beats kinship. No matter how much wealth you provide and leave for your child, siblings are the ones that stand by each other no matter wat, and siblings teach the kids values. So many parents in SG scramble to send kids to childcare to socialise etc etc, what about socialising at home with their siblings? That is the best place to start!

One day, we are going to leave our children. It is for sure. Do you want to leave them with all the materials things that will seemingly assure them of comfort, or will you leave them with a family of siblings, with the same blood that flows through their bodies?

We do not know the future, we do not even know the world in which our children can grow up in 20 years from now. So how can we know how much materials things we can provide for them? And material things do get de-valued and wasted away, by the way.

But we do know that feelings, kinship and the ties that bind have always survived through times. These are the only things that last through the years. You can fight and hate your sibling, but you will never deny that you spent 10 over years at least together with shared memories of love and hate together. If the parents teach the kids well and ensure an environment of allowing them to form strong bonds, then to me, that is more valuable than anything else we can leave them in tangible terms.

Yes, it is a fact from young then, that in a family with more than 1 kid that THERE IS LIMITED RESOURCES, so make the best of it! Even if I have limited resources, I always wanted to tell my sons, \"Mummy may not have a lot of money, but mummy has given you the best thing in life that money cannot buy. Love and kinship with your sibling, who will be there for you in the latter half of your life, when mummy and Papa are not around.\"

I do hope parents wake up to the idea thay providing the best environment for the kids, the best schools, the best everything is the best for the kids. I just feel that sometimes we are too selfish and too afraid of hardship ourselves, that we breed this kind of mentality in our young too. Even if parents do not have a lot of resources, the kid can be successful in their own way.

Ultimately I leave everyone with this question: What, what, really makes us think that in 20 years time - university degree will guraantee success? So why are parents so frantically investing in education fund etc etc for university education? Our world is changing at such a dramatic rate today, I will rather invest in skills and values that will allow them to cope, not just the tangibles of education/ materials possessions.

And one of the tenets of those skills is the ability to face up to challenges and not be sugar coated. Parents who plan too much for their kids, are not doing their kids a favor. Our latest blog entry points to that so well already.