How to Stay Married

Breeding

‘HAS TOM FERTILISED Wendy yet?’ asked one of the small bridesmaids gazing at the bridal couple at a recent wedding.

Premature certainly, but it’s amazing how many brides have to carry extra large bouquets these days.

An extra large bouquet

A girl I know who was married when she was eight months pregnant was given a year’s subscription to the Nappy Service by her office as a wedding present. Although there will be a few raised eyebrows if a baby turns up before nine months have elapsed, particularly if it is a spanking ten pounder and cannot be fobbed off as premature, the fact remains that the moment you get back from your honeymoon, people will start expecting you to get pregnant.

Every time the wife looks tired, has a bilious attack or leaves a party early, people will start exchanging knowing looks.

If after two years nothing happens, the pressure will really be on. Hints are dropped about ‘getting set in your ways’, or ‘too used to living on two incomes’. People will keep suggesting you move to the country and send you estate agents’ lists of bijou residences with large gardens. Dire warnings will be given about the difficulty of having babies after the age of twenty-five.

After three years, you will be offered names of ‘perfectly marvellous gynaecologists’, and friends will say the wife is overtiring herself and ought to give up work. People will take her aside and say: ‘Don’t you think Henry ought to see a doctor as well, darling?’

Parents-in-law will display angst about not having any grandchildren to talk about at bridge parties.

They should all realise that it’s none of their business. Anyone who starts interfering on this subject deserves a flea in their ear.

If couples don’t have children, it’s either because they don’t want to yet, or because they’re trying and they can’t. Not being able to have children, whether it’s temporary or permanent, is extremely distressing. (There is something tragic and yet ridiculous about those abortive threshings night after night.) Outsiders should not contribute to this distress by asking stupid questions.

I couldn’t have children and, after seven traumatic years of trailing from doctor to doctor, we finally in extreme trepidation adopted one. It has been an un-qualified success. Within twenty-four hours of the child’s arrival we were infatuated with him, and couldn’t imagine life without him.

Everyone told us we were too set in our ways. You lead such a full life, they said. Too full? Too empty? Too full perhaps of empty things. Children are not nearly so much work as alarmist mothers crack them up to be, and they are more fun than one could believe possible.

One of the great revelations of my life was how immeasurably much better life was when one was married than unmarried. Another was how much better marriage is when one has children.