Wanted as baby or not, you matter

Hi, Carolyn: Is it ever OK to tell a teen that if his parent(s) had a say, he would have been aborted? How about if a teen thinks his deceased parent (three years ago) was wonderful and his mother is the enemy, whereas the truth is the father wanted to abort the child when he found out about the pregnancy?

I know of at least three people who were told their parents would have had an abortion if it had been legal/the child was conceived while on birth control and wasn’t wanted. Is this normal? – Unwanted child

You’re using a loaded term here. Not “aborted,” “enemy” or “unwanted.” It’s “normal.” That’s the hot potato.

I, too, know of people who were unplanned babies, failed-birth-control babies, oops-we-meant-to-stop- at-two babies. Family planning is an excellent and necessary idea that can still take you only so far, because every element of it has well-established limitations.

In other words, there are planned babies, unplanned babies, and babies who were planned against. Normal, all.

But that hardly means these babies fall into neat categories of loved, tolerated and resented, respectively. Mature people adapt to and embrace the detours from their plans. Immature ones can watch their plans unfold perfectly and still act like entitled, malcontent pills.

So if you’re a loved and nurtured teenager whose parent admits to your being a failure of birth control you’ll likely have a good laugh at your origins and write it into the story you tell of your largely functional but pratfall-rich childhood. “Normal” fits here, too.

Don’t read too much into your childhood, either. Your parents decide whether you exist and whether they’ll do right by you, but they don’t get to decide whether you matter. That’s something every one of us, pampered or buffeted, gets to decide for ourselves.