Save The Life of a Child

**title inspired by a Simon and Garfunkel tune

Writers should never father children. Likewise, a woman should never put down her pen in order to push a child into the world. Similarly, if two writers choose to marry, may they be blessed by infertility. Writing warrants wombs of words, those who write aren't ready for wobbly limbs. Writers teach lessons that bypass toddlers' minds. They spend more time properly punctuating parenting advice than they do pushing their child to potty train. It's messy.

Novelists never get to the point of punishments. The progeny sent to time out will remember the 12 minute anecdote over the three minutes spent in the corner.

The short-storiest leaves off the important bits: socks then shoes, don't swallow tooth paste, and never speak with a mouth-full of anything. Every preschool teacher prepares for these children. They identify the child who gets off the bus wearing two pairs of pants (one not on his legs) and socks on his hands as being from the home of a writer, specifically the short story kind.

Poeticians leaves their families hanging, metaphorically at least. They speak a dialect of babble-ish, sounds too strange for forming minds. Children who hear such language are lost between baby talk and the far sweeping sounds of the sea.

Columnists like their writing to be neat. While cleaning house, they are known to arrange small children on bookshelves and put others in the corner. Children don't need to be dusted!

I know too many children of memoir-ists who have been defeated. Their white flags of surrender read, "My Parent is a Writer and She Writes About Me."

Please, writers, consider twice before becoming a child-rearer. You wouldn't send an unbound book into the world, what makes a child any different.

Writers have the chance to send their genes to future generation through writing. They have enough trouble forming headlines and remembering deadlines; they don't need to add birthdays to their list. Imagine the child who gets a report on the economy and the editor to opens his mail to find a card with singing bears.

Parents are profound influences on their children. In the arms of any parent, children squirm for words. Let those words be "I Love You" or "Dream Big" and not the words from the first line of the first page of the book you think are writing.