the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

“I didn’t ask to be born!”. The perennial cry echoed across the supermarket car park as yet another child suffered some form of anguish. Of course they didn’t. Like all of us their arrival was the result of two other people’s actions and may, or may not, have been planned.

It was an issue that didn’t really occur to me until I was into old age. I suppose that, whilst I didd have my moments of angst along the way, the reason for my existence has been of no concern. I am, therefore I am, I have a life and I will do my best to live it. A simplistic philosophy perhaps, but it works for me.

I did not get to know my parents. I knew something of them, but discovered after they had gone that there was a lot more that I would have liked to have talked to them about once I had got to an age where I could have done so without embarrassment. Sadly my father was dead before I really got that far and my mother was so wrapped up in a tissue of lies and guilt that I didn’t really catch on to what her real story might have been.

I now have some facts about what happened, but nothing about why. I doesn’t matter that much because it is all history. Some of it shaped me into the man that I became, but I was living my life my way and that was more important to me. The future trumped the past.

I became a parent myself, but without any thought as to the responsibilities that the role of father demanded. There are three children than I am legally regarded as the father of, plus another three that I could be the father of. The last two children were the product of my first marriage and only the first of that pair was planned. The lady’s biological clock was ticking and she was, at that time, talking about us having three or four. The first pregnancy was not enjoyed and whilst their was a certain magic about becoming a proper dad I can’t say that I ever had any strong feelings.

I was 25 at that time. Yes I had entered into marriage on the understanding that we would try to have a family, but I do not think now that I had any idea as to what that meant. My relationships with my own mother and father were a model that I did not want to adopt with my own children, but I had no real concept of how to go about being a parent. All that you have to go on is instinct and experience. Back then there were not the number of books, and the internet was a twinkle in the eye.

In any case parenting is a concept that I think has much to blame for the state of society now. I loathe the word and all that it stands for. If people just tied to be good mums and dads things would be a lot better. How I did is for others to judge. My daughter, having fallen amongst benefit scroungers and become one herself has studied, qualified and now holds a position within the NHS doing something around pathology. She has two children herself and is married to a man that I cannot abide. We haven’t spoken in more than 20 years. My son has been in a relationship for a similar period and is in business with his step-son (who is around hisown age). I haven’t seen him for about three years now. They are both happy In their lives and relationships and I could not ask for more.

As I grew up through my teens I instinctively knew that I had to fly the family nest and make one of my own as soon as I could. It was nothing personal, just what I had to do, to stand on my own two feet. After a couple of false starts I made it, but it was one of those rare occasions that I took my father’s advice and I realised that I had married the wrong woman as a result. I tried to make it work, and the responsibility of two children weighed heavily, but in the end I had to go. The right woman came along and we are together still. We have no children jointly for I had been disconnected for abuse of privilege many years ago, but it is ironic that her daughter, who regards me as her real dad, is so like me in many ways that she could easily be the fruit of my loins.

I tried to give the children from my first marriage the independence that I had craved and, to some degree, had been denied. They have gone on to make their own lives and I am proud of them for that. That I don’t approve of some of their life choices is irrelevant; their lives are theirs to live, not mine. I have been happy to advise when they have asked, but I will not interfere. I love them, but will not smother them.

My assortment of children did not ask to be born any more than I did. Mine are here because I had sex with their mothers. It is as simple as that. We were all created by the same process. We did not ask to be here, but here we are. We have life, and what we do with it is our business. Make your choices and get on with it.