I’ve been thinking about motherhood. Before certain boyfriends, friends, and family members get all excited and think I’ve been dancing a computer-generated baby dance a la Ally McBeal, let me qualify this by saying that I’ve been thinking that perhaps I’m not cut-out for a life of minivans, spit-up, and dirty diapers–much-less saving up for someone else’s college education.
This whole mommy-will-I-or-won’t-I business didn’t start because I’m painfully aware that every egg is precious. I don’t think those eggs are any more precious than all the wasted sperm in this world. The thought of letting my body play host to someone who will spend her teen years hating me is rather unappealing. I challenge anyone to a discussion about whether women are hard-wired to want children.
My preoccupation with wrapping myself in a full-body condom came after a year of being inundated with glowy-halo images of motherhood. Perhaps the inundation was self-induced because I chose to write a thesis on Nancy Pelosi’s message strategy which was comprised of statements on how being a mother is the most important thing a woman will ever do next to leading the United States Congress. And then there’s my anthropological fascination with the Circus Freak Show channel TLC and their prized Duggar clan. The fact that Michelle Duggar has had 18 precious blessings with a 19th on the way excuses me from any responsibility to keep the human race going. Lastly, Facebook has exposed me to the fact that people I knew in high school now have three or four children and they are insanely happy about it. Sometimes I want to turn on TLC and hear a tired, exasperated woman utter the words, “I wish I didn’t have any kids.”
If you are anything like my six grade friend Jenny’s mom, you might say that I have a “negative attitude” about all the love and joy in life, but that’s not necessarily true. I love babies and I think they’re cute and I can coo with the best of them. I think my boyfriend’s neice and nephews are loads of fun and adorably precocious and playing with them is always fun after a good night’s rest. But the responsibility that goes along with having children of my own is almost too much to bear–and that’s coming from someone who relishes responsibility, delegating tasks, and telling others what to do. Screwing up a project is one thing, but screwing up an innocent human life because I chose an innapropriate punishment makes me want to return to the womb and never come out. Moreover, I have a mother so I know how much an off-hand comment can ruin one’s self-image forever and ever.
But it’s not just the fear of raising an anti-social loser that makes me fear motherhood. I’m not sure I like children enough to have them around every day. I didn’t even like kids all that much when I was a kid. Honestly, I found adult conversation much more interesting and I always wanted to hang out with the parents when I went over to a friend’s house. And when I was growing up my mom ran a day care out of our home. While I can acknowledge that these kids helped pay the bills, family vacations, Chrismukkah gifts, and my college education, they also did a lot to shape my unabiding love for silence.
I suppose I can reserve the right to say that all of this holds until I change my mind, perhaps when I enter the 35-40 demographic, but until then I think I want to be a really cool aunt who will let the neices and nephews do whatever they want and stay up all night when they come to visit me for the summer. I’ll give them advice about first loves, first heartbreaks and all the other stuff they can’t talk about with their parents. I like me as the mentor. Plus, I get to indulge in all of life’s joys while avoiding paying for braces and grounding them.
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