Parenthood sucks? What are they thinking?

Parenthood sucks, or so everyone keeps saying? Everyone? Let's examine this further.

Not On Board With Baby
Parenthood—the condition, not the TV show—sucks. Or so everyone keeps saying.

It’s no surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful, provocative New York magazine cover story, “I Love My Children, I Hate My Life,” is inciting much chatter—nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. (Source: newsweek.com)

To readers not used to western slang, the word "suck" used this way means "to be disgustingly disagreeable or offensive" (freedictionary.com). Filipinos are kind-hearted people. But one can't say "parenthood sucks" here and remain likeable.

Most Filipino parents will perhaps dismiss this article as something foreign. "That's not us" or so they may say. Parenthood here is serious business! For a moment that seems to soothe my troubled heart.

But realizing how many Filipinos look at many actors and actresses as gods and goddesses who dictate what's acceptable and what's not, news like this from abroad all of a sudden becomes scary.

To me, parenthood is definitely NOT ALWAYS pleasurable. Now, if you define happiness in terms of pleasure, then you're in big trouble, parenthood or otherwise. I agree that parenthood can be frustrating, but it is definitely profound. In parenthood, you are engaged in bringing up young souls who'll soon end up as adult men and women. Isn't that profound?

If you do a good job, your reward in terms of happiness reaches the heavens. But if at least one of your children ends up being disreputable, then indeed that can be a heavy cross to bear. Yet even so, that does not diminish the fact that parenthood per se is a happy thing.

Well, let's make it a happy thing! Regardless of what confused celebrities do with it.