Blame the Parents!

I hear a lot of people my age and older complaining about "kids today".  My solution has been not to add to the
problem by having any myself, and so I felt quite offended, when on my last day in hospital, I was told by a woman
10 years older than me that "my body clock was ticking and if I didn’t have children I’d regret it later."

And I stared at her, open-mouthed, in total disbelief.   I’d managed to get to 40 without anyone trying to feed me
that old line!   As if I hadn’t thought about it all very thoroughly and that after X number of years I didn’t know
my own mind.  She went on to say that I’d be lonely later and have no one to look after me.  This seems to be quite
a common reason people give for having children but it also seems to me to be an incredibly bad one and selfish to
boot, as if the only reason to perpetuate the species was for some kind of pay-back.

Now the woman who said this had been telling us all only the night before how she pays for her two chav daughters
to have a cable box in each of their rooms, that she buys them expensive designer labels that they’ll only wear
once or twice before they’re out of fashion and in the bin.  Apparently the older one isn’t "quite so bad"; she’ll
"make do" with clothes that cost around the £50 mark, but the younger one starts to turn her nose up if the price
drops much below £70.  Her rationale?  Well, they might as well have the money - she can’t take it with her.
I suppose that’s one way of looking at it but the woman has angina and diabetes which she isn’t controlling and
which she really needs insulin for, except she’s trying to put it off as long as possible while snacking on sweets
and crackers late at night when the nurses aren't looking.

I wanted to ask her, how are your children going to cope when you suddenly drop dead on them?  Why don’t you say
"No" sometimes, or at least have them do their share of the household chores?  Instead she does everything for them, 
she certainly hasn’t taught them the true value of what they take for granted or prepared them to take care of
themselves and manage their finances without her being there with the endless handouts.  I confess I didn’t say
anything because I’m quite sure that while it was alright for her to order me to have babies, my opinion on how she
raised her children undoubtedly would have resulted in me being yelled at, and I couldn’t have coped with that in
my fragile condition.  To crown it all, her oldest daughter already has a three year old son, so she’s probably
passing all these bad habits on to him.

And now, and only because during the course of the last week, six or more nurses have asked me THAT question, I’m
off to buy a home testing kit, just to make absolutely sure.  Fingers crossed it doesn’t turn blue.   :p