I know it is a touchy subject, but there are issues with it. You won’t be as functional as a parent, and it could be passed on to your children. What are everyone’s thoughts on this?
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This is what makes me wish there were birth control for men. My parents keep trying to make me paranoid that the woman is going to get pregnant on purpose to get financial support.
me personally , I probably will not have kids. A few reasons , having a partner can be stressful , having kids is stressful , and unfortunately there seems to be a relationship with schiz incidences in related people.
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I think its inherent is most men to want a family when I didn’t know how afflicted I am I was one of them.
But when I started living with the paranoia and fear I figured that id never consciously subject another human to that by having a kid.
Well I personally believe in birth control and contraceptive. So it doesn’t mean you have to be alone just because you don’t want to have children.
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What kind of woman is she. Is she likely to gain something she couldn’t get off another relationship?
I was very young when i got pregnant, maybe 20 or 21, and my daughter turned out perfect. I was on clozaril, they tried to take me off of it, but when i slipped into psychosis, they immediatly put me back on it. My baby came out without mental illness and she is 22 now. The first 7 years were wonderful, i could have raised her even without help from her dad. I would do the same thing all over again, but not without a mate, you need a NORMAL parent for support and assistance just incase you need to go to the hospital for a med adjust ment or whatever, but it depends on so many different things.Not all children are as easy to raise as mine was, I was an excellent parent, i was a atay at home mom, i helped with her homework, i took her to the park and wherever she wanted to go.Yes, I went through pstchotic episodes that were very hard to hide from her, but her dad was there to take over where i left off. And i had a lot of friends who were a lot of help.
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You bring up actually an important point, missy, if a woman is schizo she is on medication and that medication can cause birth defects for the baby, so it might not be ethical for a schizo woman to have a baby for that reason. What are the statistics on that?
The medications are improving. There may be much better ones by the time the child developed schizophrenia, that is if they even did. Is the answer simply for us to not have kids, or is the answer for science to come up with better treatments? Other things are hereditary too, like certain forms of cancer. So that is something to keep in mind.
I am 44 and I think I came across information that said the male bieng old in his 40s or so even increases the risk more of the child bieng schizophrenic. If you want a child and want to support it financialy and help raise it cool. If you dont and you are forced to pay child support it could screw you up. I am for all birth controll but saftey of the person using it is always a priority.
For women I know there is an increased risk of mutations after the age of 35. If I were a woman, I would not have a baby passed 35-39.
Its just my personal experience but when I went to clubs looking for a girlfriend for a relationship I couldn’t find one anywhere it seemed the chicks were single for the sake of being unattached in any way.
Of course it has been years so possibly times have changed.
Another option is adoption, which could be very rewarding.
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As author Victoria Secunda points out by quoting the following “High-Risk”
study in her book When Madness Comes Home, “…an individual’s
chances of succumbing to psychopathology or maladjustment are influenced
by the patterns of the individual’s life…The fact that someone
has a schizophrenic parent implies nothing necessarily about that individual
beyond the fact that he or she has a schizophrenic parent.” (p.
209). While this may be true, it is also true that Population
statistics on the heredity of schizophrenia estimate that a child
with one diagnosed parent has about a 10% genetic risk of developing
the disease themselves (this is compared to a 1% risk in the general
population). The risk goes up significantly if a grandparent (or other
close relatives) also has schizophrenia. (E.F. Torry, 1996).
I’d consider having a child with a woman who was strong and intelligent if I thought she’d make a good mother and could handle the potential obstacles. But first I’d have to get my life together and be in a good financial situation.
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I cannot have children because of an accident I suffered at age 16. I was like a vasectomy from an impact to the groin.
However when I got married my wife had a daughter and she became my step daughter. I only raised her for about 8 years, She has since graduated from high school . Se still lives with us and is in community collage. In this situation there is no fear of genetic passing on. But I am a capable parent.
If I could make a baby, I would. I don’t fear the genetics, I would gamble. After all I could do everything my parents did not do and the child would turned out better, but most likely the SZ would not take over, because I know the warning signs, I would not ignore them as my own parents did.
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I have thought this one out before. There is a 13% chance that one child of mine would have it, so I would only have one kid. I sort of hope for a son, but that is only because I am the last in my family tree. I am the fourth of my name, my legal name is yaddy yaddah IV. I sort of hope for a V. I would be okay with a daughter. I would probably hold my kids to great expectations, like I do myself.
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The stats say 10% if one parent is afflicted and 40% if both have SZ. Having schizophrenia makes for a tough life but honestly I’m still glad I got to live my life even if there were some parts I’d rather erase or forget about. I want to have kids, I really do, they’d probably be raised based on SS income unless the girl I’d marry worked. I’d like to have 3, two boys one girl but that’s unrealistic, I even have the names picked out for them, gotta meet someone first of course…
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My wife does not have any mental illness, but understands SZ as some of her friends are. Were both in our forties so its not going to happen, I think about artificial insemination but if we have to go thru that, I would prefer to blow it off, or not worth the risk.
The chance of a child developing sz with one sz parent is between 9 and 12%.
Sorry,just noticed you researched this.