Two years into our marriage and eight years into our relationship, this big-little question has started to nudge its way into casual conversations with our friends and family. And the public shift in expectations can be striking: pregnancy has evolved from an aversion to an inevitability.
Not that it’s just our friends and family wondering about our procreative intentions. We’ve been wondering, too. A few days ago I complained to Ian that Kourtney Kardashian named her new daughter Penelope, “I liked that name first!” And just last night, before falling asleep, I said to Ian, “Hey, if we ever have a baby and it’s a girl, what do you think of the name Nina?” To which he quickly responded, “Pinta... you finish.” I sighed, “Santa Maria.”
No Penelope. No Nina.
Sure, I enjoy a good baby-name brainstorming session. And I still have periodic, biochemically-induced dreams about being a parent. But these happy parenting fantasies have run head first into two big walls of parenting reality. First, the popular parenting articles and op-eds that have flooded my News Feed in the past few months. Ann Marie Slaughter’s brilliant piece “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All" bravely confronted the under-discussed challenges motherhood poses to careers, while underscoring the inherently demanding and strenuous nature of parenthood itself.
But a recent New Yorker article wins the gold medal in the Birth Control Games. In “The Case Against Kids: Is Procreation Immoral?” Elizabeth Kolbert references various ethicists and oft-quoted statistics about parenting and happiness (read: unhappiness). This disquieting piece stresses the need to hold the should-we-have-kids question in much higher regard:
Whatever you may think of Overall’s and Benatar’s conclusions, it’s hard to argue with their insistence that the decision to have a child is an ethical one. When we set the size of our families, we are, each in our own small way, determining how the world of the future will look. And we’re doing this not just for ourselves and our own children; we’re doing it for everyone else’s children, too.
These persuasive articles may be haunting my pregnancy dreams, but they’re not the main reason I keep perusing the Family Planning aisle at CVS. Nope. Something else is keeping me from jumping on board the baby train. Something even scarier than over-scheduling and sleep deprivation: that we’d have to do it alone.
You see, none of our close friends have children. A few of them are fiercely devoted to never having kids. All but two of our family members live in other states, and the ones that live here aren’t exactly down the street from us. I may be nervous about pregnancy, giving birth, and generally being wholly responsible for the life of a fragile human child. But most of all, I’m nervous about feeling isolated. Feeling like I’m burdening my family and friends with questions and favors, or just losing friends all together.
Maybe modern parenting is isolated parenting, relative to years past - a murky underbelly of the great American virtue of self-determinism and do-it-yourself-ness that perhaps causes some of stresses discussed in the Slaughter and Kolbert pieces above. And maybe that’s why some couples are choosing to opt out of parenting all together.
If our love of parenting our furry son is any indication, I don’t think we’ll be one of those couples. Until then, I’ll always be pondering the endless enigmas of parenthood. But as I sit here on our comfy couch, snuggled under a summer linen blanket, looking out the window at the frenetic city 20 floors below, I see the busyness of the world that surrounds me. Does it have time for a child, or would a baby be a burden? If it takes a village to raise a child, I can’t help but wonder: where’s my village?
3 comments:
Joanna Goddard has been doing a series of interviews about working moms that I think you'd find interesting...
Though I hear you, absolutely, it's hard to think about raising a child without parents or other support networks nearby.
If you want to have children it is the most meaningful thing you will ever do. However, we have friends who were very adamant about never having children, and she got pregnant (unplanned) and she loves motherhood. She is a working mother, and even moved closer to work so she would have a shorter commute to be with her little guy. Something is inside of you comes alive when you have a child. It is very different when you don't have your family near you, Brad's family is 30 minutes away and I depend more on neighbors. The key is find friends who have children but are done having children, because they will love to help you with your baby. I don't think it is as big of deal as your fear (it was my biggest fear - so much my best friend, Godmother to our babe, was having one of those "what should I do with me life?" That I tried to convince her to pack up and 2,000 miles to Utah and live with me until she gets her feet on the ground, just so I would have someone). Selfish I know. We waited to have kids until we (BOTH) felt it was right - feeling right is different for everyone. our right was when we no longer had anxiety at the thought of children and we felt we were financially stable to do it. I knew I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, so we had to get into a position that it was possible. And about the advice thing. I had a friend who I asked some questions to and she told me, "I love talking about pregnancy, birthing, nursing all things babies". Now, as a mother myself, I can say the same thing, and most other mother's can too. So never feel like you are inundating anyone with too many questions. Most moms out there would love to help you. The fact that you have concerns shows that you will be a good mother. (Trust me).
I realize I have a lot of typos and some words that I said it my head didn't make it. I have a little Miss helping me, I hope it makes sense. :)
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