How do you know when you want children, or even if you want them? I am curious as to whether I should wait for a lightbulb moment that zaps my brain and wires the message “It’s baby time!” through my mind in baby pink and blue bubble writing, or whether my womb will gradually start throbbing with desire if I meet someone I can see a future with. I don’t think about babies often but when I do I am always confused.
My mum and the mother of one of my best friends tell me that I will crave the pitter-patter of tiny feet, that it will just come upon me one day, like a strong urge to pee. “Everybody has kids eventually,” they say with knowing smiles. My friend’s mum also reminds me that I need to find a partner first.
Then there are the women I know who are all, bar one, steadfast in their planned devotion to motherhood. None of us is yet pregnant, but because I am single and on the fence about the whole kids thing, I can’t help but approach the end of my 20s with the feeling that, whatever happens, I will not be in the parent club at the same time as my friends. This feeling of being on the periphery of everybody else’s “normal” is a bit like that moment when the lights are switched on in a club at the end of a really good night. My friends skip off into the light, while I’m hanging around in the shadows, trying to squeeze the last drop of fun out of the evening.
But then again, having children just to keep up with everybody else is the worst possible justification for wanting them, so I am trying not to let those comparisons cloud my mind. I don’t subscribe to the idea that not having children makes a woman selfish; there is nothing more self-centred than planning a family simply to validate one’s own existence or to try to keep a relationship alive. And I know deep down that, for me, a child-free life wouldn’t necessarily be one shrouded in darkness. Love can be found in many forms – through work, mentoring, volunteering, and with nieces and nephews. And I have always known how to make myself happy and engineer life’s events to create an exciting, fulfilling existence that satisfies me socially and spiritually. I am just unsure whether a family would spice things up or water it down.
I envy those who are vehemently against having kids and those who have always wanted them
The middle ground of indecision on this issue is an awkward place for a control freak like me (I envy those who are vehemently against having kids and those who have always wanted them). At a recent party, I loved playing with a friend’s five-year-old cousin, but felt relieved when the child’s mother distracted the child after 20 minutes, and when I think of childbirth, I feel a bit nauseous.
Adopting a child (not a baby) has crossed my mind, though. Over the years, I have developed an increasing fondness for kids, but I don’t ever remember being a child who mapped out her future in crayon with a fenced house and two kids – I always pictured a bachelorette pad and a dog.
Birth rates in the UK are falling, which makes me think that, increasingly, parenthood is a choice people make, not one they are pressured into. For now, my indecision isn’t bugging me, but who is to say how it will make me feel in another five years.
Source : The Guardian