Things I have observed about having children in our white western culture in Australia in 2018

• Bearing or adopting a child is not a guarantee for the child to like you, love you, or even to BE like you; so one needs to be brutally realistic about this.  You are having the child to somehow fulfil a desire that YOU have, and that is the only reason.  This is why parental love is called “the one-way love.” 
• Being a biological parent is WAY over rated, and totally about the parent, not the child. IF you care about raising a child in a safe and loving environment, this desire does not require a biological input. (In my opinion, there are many, many more children who could benefit from potential adoptive carers but are far outweighed by those potential parents who need to have some sort of genetic input to qualify for their love and caring.)  
• This need for need for personal genetic input has fed a massive and expensive fertility industry in our country, represented by the in vitro and off shore surrogacy economy, to name just a couple of examples. 
• Being a sole parent is challenging in every sense, especially the economic one. Women seem to suffer from this more, statistically speaking, as they usually become the custodial parent reliant upon social funding, but this happens to sole fathers as well.  Whomever the custodial parent is, their earning and ongoing educational capacity is severely impacted, and this impact tends to be ongoing way after the child has become independent, in an economical sense.  

The little girl in this image is a hungry girl from Yemen in 2018.  So many images of children suffering are so distressing that one does not use them as it virtually guarantees the post will not be read.  And yet, this little lass will receive far less attention than say, dogs or cats in distress, or pics of kids who are so far gone, just flesh and bone with no energy for the even smallest smile that we can still see here