Kids, Parents, and Happiness (Plus Orphan Jokes)

“Yeah, but I don’t think anybody would adopt me at this advanced development stage that I’m in.” – The Red Green Show

That’s not true.  But I do know that the favorite beer of orphans is Fosters®.

My brother was an only child*.  I kid.  But he was the only kid in the house when I showed up.  And by showed up, I mean when I was adopted – I was, I think, four years old at the time.  Of course, this was after the whole virgin birth thing and then being found as a three day old baby by the headwaters of the Odense River in Denmark by Pharaoh’s Mom.  But I was just too much for Denmark to handle.  And too much for Head Start to handle – they kicked me out (really).

I actually remember the day I first called my adoptive mother “Mom.”  As I recall, it was in some utterly mundane sentence, such as “Okay, Mom,” just after the court finalized the adoption.  I can even remember my tension while waiting to see how she would react.  Would she be upset and cry?  Would a whirling orchestral theme surround us as she took me in her arms and wept with joy to have a new son?  Would she . . . tell me not to call her Mom?

None of those things happened.  She just said, “Alright,” and continued as if I had called her Mom a hundred thousand times before and that me calling her Mom was the most normal thing in the world for four year old John Wilder to do.

Mom probably picked the right reaction since we were so poor that we couldn’t afford a live-in orchestra at our house.  I often wondered, was Ma Wilder as tense about that moment as I was?  I know she was tense a year later when she was explaining to the doctor over the phone that I ate all of her birth control pills.  Man, that was the nastiest tasting candy ever.  But the pills had a side effect – I’ve never been pregnant, which I hear is a thing guys can do now.

One day I was asked by a stranger if I was adopted.  Me:  “Yes, what gave me away?”  Stranger:  “Your parents.”

The advantage of being an outsider dropped into a fully functioning family is that I was able to see a set of customs that were new to me, like having regular meals.  The ordinary day-to-day web of family life was there to see, but it was also there to be disturbed and observed by the alien dropped in the midst of the ranch-style Area 51.

Families have customs, even when they don’t know that they do.  One of the first customs I noticed was when I went to bed, the last thing anyone in the house said to me was, “see you tomorrow.”

For some reason, four or five year-old me found that an odd thing to say.  It wasn’t good night.  It wasn’t good bye.  “See you tomorrow.”  I found it oddly comforting, a promise that I really would see them tomorrow.  That may sound odd to you, but it’s a thing that I really thought about as I stared up at the ceiling from my bed.  It was, I thought, the nicest thing anyone could have said.

The original line wasn’t “I’ll be back,” it was “See you tomorrow.”  Everyone in the test audience just said, “awwww.”

“See you tomorrow.”  Perhaps it was the impermanence that I’d experienced in my life up until then – being adopted represented at least the fourth major living arrangement change I’d experienced since I was born – but the simple stability implied in those words made me happy as I snuggled under the covers on a warm winter night.

Please don’t think that I ever felt alienated by my adopted family, but it was certainly recognized that I was an alien – a shock of blond hair and freckles in a family of brunettes.  It was like I was the actor hired to punch up a sitcom and dropped into the season 12 opening episode with no backstory.  Again, I was always treated as a regular cast member, and not a recurring guest star.

My family loved me ferociously, and showed it on a regular basis – not only did Pop Wilder give me his name, he also sat and watched every football practice, came to every varsity football game and nearly every varsity wrestling match, and sacrificed years of his life worrying about me.

Kids need families.  Even odd kids like me.

And kids help families.

I’m still the odd one, but that’s okay – sometimes I discover new things – such as not liking the taste of raw fish heads. 

A recent study out of Europe (LINK), where I thought even saying the words “family” or “child” was considered a hate crime found that married couples with kids were happier than married couples without kids.  But there was a catch – the kids needed to have moved out of the house for the parents to be happier.

Why is that?

As a parent who has one kid in the house and some already gone, I can understand that.  Raising a kid is tough:

• It’s long hours when they’re sick.
• It’s home surgery that brings to mind a Civil War surgeon performing an amputation.
• It’s being covered in vomit that smells like formula while watching a parade on a 95°F day.
• It’s getting a call that they backed the pickup into the lunch lady’s car. Parked car.  Not moving parked car.  In broad daylight.
• It’s learning how to yell loudly enough so they can hear you explain why you’re choking them.

Seven year old kids don’t think it’s funny AT ALL when you tell them that you’re going to have to amputate their arm when they complain about a splinter. 

But those are the dark sides.  There are the positive sides:

• Seeing your child go from C’s to A’s because they finally figured it out.
• Seeing your kid finally “get it” and perform better than they ever thought they could at a sport.
• Watching them solve a problem – by themselves.
• Getting a text from them on a random day – just because they wanted to send you a text.
• Seeing them become competent at being an adult.
• Hearing them tell you that, “I’m doing it, and it’s none of your business,” when they make a decision.
• Having them pick a very nice nursing home for you because you love them so very, very, very much. (I’m hoping they’re reading this when I’m 103 and drooling.)

The research indicated** childless people are happier than people with kids.  Until the kids move out.  Then the people with kids are happier.  From the list above, I can see that.  From my perspective, children are like incredibly cute parasites until about age 9.  They cost a lot of money, they take up a huge amount of time, and they’re less intelligent than a basset hound who agreed to be on Dancing with the Stars.

Sure, some big headaches come as kids get older.  And around middle school is when the final battle for their soul takes place.  From experience, with my daughters it was one type of battle (“you’re ruining my life”).  With boys it is quite another (“I was supposed to do what?”).  None of the battles are easy, but they represent the last stage, the last opportunity for a major influence.  After that, it’s nothing but minor course corrections until they move out.

I love Pugsley, who is the last chick in our nest.  But I derive a lot of satisfaction from the Wilders who are out in the world – I love seeing them change and grow.  I love seeing them accomplish things.  And I love late night calls where they ask for earnest advice.  I certainly may have given Alia S. Wilder a bit of a hard time in The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies) and Financial Advisers, Christianity, and Elon Musk’s Hair, but she has displayed a great independence, and has owned her mistakes without blaming others.

But in one way the study is wrong.  Tonight, when Pugsley went to bed, he said, “See you tomorrow.”  I won’t hear that after he moves out, and I’ll miss that beautiful sentiment.  But it will also be their responsibility when they (or their kids) back into the parked lunch lady car.

*For all of you wondering why my brother’s name is also John Wilder?  Is it a joke?  No, he and I have, in real life, the same first name:  John.  Really.  The adoption explains it.  John was born before me, so he had the name first.  I was old enough that they weren’t exactly gonna start calling me by a whole different name after my fourth living arrangement in four years.  Heck, that might have messed me up enough so I would have gotten a doctorate in social sciences.  Thankfully, they already called my brother John by his middle name (Velociraptor, or his nickname “Screech”) before I showed up.

This was in the library at my house – I found it one day, and my parents claimed to have no idea where it came from.  Perhaps it was left on the shelf by the Lady of the Lake™ to prepare me for my writing career as John Wilder so I could save the United States?  Or maybe they forgot when they got it, since the book was over 25 years old when I found it.  One of the two.  I’m betting on the Aquatic Tart®.

**Research in social sciences is a problem that we face in society as a whole.  It appears that social science research is better than flipping a quarter, but not a lot better than flipping a coin.  Where scientists tried to duplicate the findings of a social science study, they could only do it about 65% of the time.  Sure, that’s slightly better than just guessing, and probably what you would expect with people who kept going to college so they could get a doctorate instead of following their true calling in the food service industry and then figured out how to use government grant money for gluten free locovore vegan tacos while they study how the patriarchy influenced and controlled t-shirt design in 1978.  Don’t forget, these stories are also reported by journalism school graduates.  Journalism school is for rich kids who aren’t smart enough to qualify to get into Yale Law® or even Maria’s Authentic Taqueria and Law School®.