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"    In my defense, it had been a long day of temper-tantrums (not me\u2026mostly), and it was now the middle of the night. And by &amp;quot;the middle of the night,&amp;quot; I mean 10 o&amp;#039;clock. I was forcing my body to extract the supernaturally-self-reproducing laundry from the dryer when my friendly neighbor popped into the laundry room. She is a lovely young lady (by which I mean my age) who, she confessed, is in the thick of the &amp;quot;Do we or don&amp;#039;t we, because if it&amp;#039;s a do, it&amp;#039;s probably a now&amp;quot; conversation(s) with her husband. She asked for my advice on having children. I smiled enthusiastically and told her, &amp;quot;You should definitely do it! It totally ruins your life, but in the best way!&amp;quot; She seemed taken aback, understandably so, since that is a crazy thing to say to someone. And by that I mean it&amp;#039;s the kind of thing you only say to another mother. Now that I&amp;#039;ve had some time to consider her question during a more tranquil moment, I can actually think of many reasons to become a parent. They&amp;#039;re just not all self-apparent when you&amp;#039;ve been spending a lot of time with actual children. 1. The terrific new study that shows people with kids live longer!  2. If you have kids, your DNA lives on forever!  3. Anecdote break: My 20-month-old son is obsessed with trains. I know that&amp;#039;s a sentence that could be written by anyone who has produced a male child, but believe me when I say that my son&amp;#039;s train obsession is the cutest one. So while his three-year-old sister is at playschool in the mornings, I ride the subways with him. We don&amp;#039;t go anywhere; we just ride back and forth. Every time the train stops, he claps and screams, &amp;quot;Door! Door!&amp;quot; And guess what? The doors open! Then, he stabs his finger at the window and says, &amp;quot;Ights! Ights!&amp;quot; And guess what? There are lights out there! And do you know what else? I used to think the subway was a boring necessity and nothing more than a way to get to work. How could I have been so wrong? Because I didn&amp;#039;t have kids, so I didn&amp;#039;t know any better. My son has managed to completely flip my negative attitude towards transportation here in New York. 4. In that same vein, before I had kids, I spent a lot of time thinking about these issues: &amp;quot;What kind of writer a writer ought to be;&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What other writers were doing/writing/winning;&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What should we have for brunch, and how in the world would we get up and mobilized before noon on a weekend?&amp;quot; Now, I have much more meaningful and selfless thoughts such as: &amp;quot;How can I create the best life possible for these amazing children?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;When will they leave me alone so I can use the toilet?&amp;quot;  5. Corny, but true: No feeling compares with a sleepy little kid&amp;#039;s arms around your neck as you tuck her in at night. Same for tiny hand in yours while walking down street searching for puddles to splash, nomming on fat baby foot, and watching a kid&amp;#039;s eyes light up when she reads her first word, or draws her first face.  6. I just got stuck and asked my husband, &amp;quot;Why should people have kids?&amp;quot; He muttered, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t think of a single reason,&amp;quot; and continued to pick up the blocks, shoes, felt food, and random bits of paper strewn across the floor \u2014 our preferred evening amusement. 7. This threw me off so I had to return to some sources. The article most buzzing around my Twitter feed these days concerns &amp;quot;How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society,&amp;quot; and in it, Judith Shulevitz discusses some of the often-under-considered effects of delaying parenthood. The takeaway is that either way, everyone&amp;#039;s probably going to be fine, but if you can have kids earlier rather than later, maybe go ahead and do that?  8. If you don&amp;#039;t have kids, you probably still think that people can see you and what you are wearing and are judging you based on your appearance. After you have kids, you assume you have become invisible. This lasts for about three years. Then you come out of the fog and realize, like in that naked-in-gym-class-dream, that you&amp;#039;ve been wearing yoga pants since giving birth. So it&amp;#039;s a lesson in humility, you see what I&amp;#039;m saying? 9. Here&amp;#039;s how the average woman obtains her baby: She grows it in her body, she gives birth to it (from her vagina!), and then she makes milk in her breasts to feed it. In short, having a baby reveals that you are a magical superhero. A very tired, very sore, but still magical superhero. 10. You will never, never, never appreciate why your parents used to think it was hilarious to say, &amp;quot;Insanity is hereditary. You catch it from your children!&amp;quot; until you become a parent yourself. So there&amp;#039;s a list. I&amp;#039;m going to print this out and keep in my laundry basket for the next time someone asks.   Amy Shearn is the mother of two small children, and is the proprietress of Household Words, a blog about babies, books, and Brooklyn. She also writes for Oprah.com and MommyPoppins.com. Amy is the author of the novel How Far Is the Ocean From Here (Shaye Areheart/Crown 2008) and a forthcoming novel about, what else, a Brooklyn mother, called The Mermaid of Brooklyn that will be published by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon &amp;amp;amp; Schuster, in 2013. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/news/a14734/parents-live-longer/?src=rss>