From Salon

From the outside looking in, family life seems chaotic and irritating. Meandering through the world like multiheaded beasts that sweat and squeal and bicker and grumble, families take up too much space, make loud, unpredictable noises and leave big messes everywhere they go.
It's easy not to want a family when you see one lumbering toward you from a distance. It wouldn't make much sense to wish for an army of little mouths that need to be fed and limbs that need to be washed and butts that need to be wiped. It wouldn't be logical to long for big piles of filthy laundry and stacks of dirty dishes and tens of thousands of necessary errands and appointments. No one daydreams about snotty faces and unmade beds and day-care bills.
And when you throw in your childhood memories, a string of mildly oppressive family activities, pesky chores and unbearable car trips, punctuated by countless little breakdowns and clashes and standoffs and shouting matches, it can be troubling, indeed, to contemplate creating a topsy-turvy emotional fiefdom of your own.
But once you have a family, all of that fades away. When you settle into the necessary rhythms of recurring Monopoly games and slow-cooker recipes and activities designed to contain the chaos of small people, neurotic worries sink into the background. Emancipated from the incessant demands of the ego, you're free to revert to your basest, dorkiest state. Conveniently, this is also the state that kids like the most: the singer of dumb songs about putting on your shoes, the aggressive landlord at St. Charles Place, the wide-eyed moron who's awed by big trucks and helicopters, the freak who'll dance to anything, from Radiohead to the nursery rhyme electronica of children's toys.

Becoming a cheerful, enthusiastic halfwit turns out to be tremendously relaxing. And while a family can feel like an unwieldy clown car with a flat tire and bad steering, most of the time, it's pretty fun to drive.