Most of us will have children at some point in our lives. Nowadays people have a fear of having children, but when they come, very few regret it. In the Vedas is explained that happiness (even in a material sense) comes from performing our duties, not from running from them. We can see that in the Bhagavad-Gita Arjuna wanted to avoid his duty to fight, but Krsna warned him that it would just bring him frustration. Similarly, begetting and educating children is one of the main duties for someone who is not in renounced life. One doesn’t gain anything from trying to avoid it.
Raising a child is actually quite a natural experience, but there are a series of traps that can make this experience difficult.
The first thing to avoid in our personal experience is a c-section. Nowadays many doctors try to push it (it is easier and more lucrative for them) but it can make your experience much harder.
When a baby is born by normal delivery, a lot of transformations go around in the body, which makes the mother bound with the baby (even milk production is affected by it). All of this prepares the mother to take care of the baby. Physical recovery in a normal delivery is also much faster, and it doesn’t prevent the mother from starting to take care of the child. In the case of c-sections however, the mother takes around 6 weeks to heal, and it’s quite challenging to take care of a child with a cut in the abdomen. The mother will also have more difficulty bonding with the child, which can lead to postpartum depression and other problems. It can also affect the production of milk, leading to the use of formula. This can create a vicious cycle since when the baby starts taking formula it’s harder to go back to breastfeeding. A child grown on formula will have a weaker immune system and therefore become sick more often, which is also stressful. As you can see, it can lead to a series of events that will make parenting much harder. C-sections are necessary in some cases, where there is danger for the child or the mother, but they should be avoided as far as possible. There are many breathing exercises as well as psychological preparations that make the delivery much easier. I strongly recommend that you spend some time looking for videos or courses in this regard. Nowadays this information is easily available.
We also strongly recommend trying to find a doula who can help with the delivery and can help with good advice in the first days. Even if a devotee is not available, any experienced one will do. The doula can accompany the mother during the delivery and help her remember what to do. Both the mother and the father are emotionally involved in the situation and thus may not be able to think clearly.
After the baby comes, there are also many questions. We just don’t know what to do, and the doula can also help at this point, by teaching how to properly do things what to be concerned about, and what not. The doctors and nurses rarely have time to do this and most of us nowadays don’t have experienced people around to help us. Before people used to live in extended families and there were always grandparents, aunties, and other relatives to help, but nowadays we frequently don’t have this luxury.
Another serious mistake we can make is to not reserve sufficient time for looking after the child. Nowadays people think that they can just stay the first month with the child and then find some daycare to take care of the baby while we continue pursuing our ambitions. This is quite unnatural and can create many different problems. Daycare, formula, and other facilities that allow us to “save” time by neglecting our babies usually cost a lot of money. It’s much better to just plan things in a different way, so the mother can just stay with the child instead of working. By taking care of our baby we avoid many expenses and reduce the need for money, which is usually the reason for having to work in the first place.
We think that it may be not necessary to spend time with the baby in the first two or three years because the baby is too young to remember anyway, but it is actually the opposite. The Vedas explain that the first years of the life of a child are the most crucial for his or her development. That’s the age a child is supposed to live in a happy environment, being cared for by both parents. The father may have to go out to work, of course, but at least the mother should be always with the child. What happens at that time is stored not in a conscious level, but in an unconscious level, completely molding the way this child sees the world. A child who is neglected at this age can have very serious difficulties later, including a lack of trust in the parents, difficulty trusting authorities, low self-esteem, a sense of unhappiness, and so on. Being stored at a subconscious level, these impressions will be extremely difficult to remove later, even with therapy. Lack of proper care in the first years may also slow the mental and physical development of the child. The first year is especially important.
The Vedas explain that the child should be very well cared for in the first 4 or 5 years, being loved by the parents and properly looked after. At this age, parenting is relatively easy because there is not much need to discipline the child. At this age, children are educated not by telling them what to do (which is extremely ineffective at this age) but by the example of the parents. The child will just learn to imitate what the parents are doing. Being exemplary and consistent is essential at this age. Apart from that it is not very hard, we just need to feed and clean the child, and play with him or her, just keeping safe limits.
If the child is properly cared for at this age, he or she will have a much better foundation to deal with the challenges with life, and a much more productive relationship with the parents, teachers, and other authorities, which will make everything much easier. Children who feel neglected at a younger age, on the other hand, will be programmed to distrust authority, and this will lead to many problems later, especially in the teenage years, which can cause a lot of frustration.
The care from the mother and father is complimentary. It’s not possible for the mother to replace or make up for the lack of attention from the father and vice-versa. The mother is responsible for giving security and self-esteem to the child, while the father helps the child to develop and explore the world. The mother gives security and the father gives freedom, so to speak. Nowadays children being cared for by only the mother are becoming the rule, instead of the exception, but this can have serious consequences in the development of the child.
Nowadays almost everyone in Western countries is more or less crazy, and this has a lot to do with what happens to us in the first years. For us, the damage is probably already done and he has to just live with it, but we may prefer to give something better to our children.
Some may want to take the easy way and decide that since life is so difficult nowadays and there are so many things that can go wrong it’s better to avoid bringing a child into this world, but they don’t think about what the child would prefer. Would you prefer that your parents had decided like that?