sHEALyWellness
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TO PARENT OR NOT
In the late 70’s my wife and I wrote TO PARENT OR NOT. At the time the impetus came from an Ann Landers column in which she reported that 70% of over 10,000 people had written her stating that they wished they had never had children!
From the beginning of our marriage, we had agreed that we would wait a year after we were married before we initiated the potential for having a child. During that year and the subsequent 51 years, we never regretted our decision to have our 3 children, each of whom was a positive and planned experience.
Today as I gratefully look at the development of our children and our five grandchildren, I have no regrets and the world is better off.
Unfortunately, at this time forty percent of children are born out of wedlock-unplanned, unwanted and often not nurtured or often even abused. Add to that those born into families of alcoholism and serious mental disturbance. And finally, add the high divorce rate. Many children, especially those who experienced their parents’ divorce by age 7 or earlier, never recover from the depression and feeling of rejection.
The factors in the preceding paragraph alone are more than enough to explain the forty percent of clinically depressed adults and the additional forty percent who may not quite tip the scales into clinical depression but have what I call subclinical depressive miasma. As we noted 40 years ago, farmers are much better at planning the breeding of livestock than humans in preparing for children.
Having children is a sacred spiritual contract for life. One of Gandhi’s 7 Social Sins is Pleasure without Conscience. Sexual activity without conscientious planning produces much of the misery in the world. Your body is indeed a temple for the soul’s temporary physical experience. And the creation of children is just as sacred as is your body.
Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D. is the father of holistic medicine. He recommends autogenic focus (the basis of the Biogenics System) as part of your overall commitment to self-health. Register to download your FREE autogenic focus MP3 now.