May 22, 2005

• Hello ladies and gents. Thank you for all your great comments recently. I really do cherish our dialogue. In fact, one comment I received last week from blogger TimsHead prompted me to write this essay. TimsHead made a comment on my essay about mentoring that I might make a good mother one day. The desire for motherhood is an assumption we make of all women, and even though I have tentatively decided that parenthood is in my future, I wanted to write about a few of the reasons (besides that the obvious and overdone reason that this world is too nasty a place for me to bring any fresh genes of mine into) why motherhood is in many regards, a big uncertainty for me. So thanks for all your great comments, and a special thanks to TimsHead for being the gadfly for this. I really appreciate it. With this essay more than ever (its personal this time folks), your comments are cherished. Thanks—I hope you all had a fantastic weekend!
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  The Mother Load
  © The Author, 2005

  As a child growing up in a conservative suburb of Detroit, I was given the strong impression that adults without children were suspect. They were irresponsible, selfish people, and any mention of these childless hedonists was accompanied by a big roll of the eyes and a look that implied that these people were obviously strange. Our family did not know too many people without kids (as not too many people move to the suburbs if they are looking for anything other than “good schools”), so I guess that in our small community, people without kids might be a little out of place. One way that my mom asserted her opinions about the gluttonous tendencies of the childless was with statements like, “Yeah, [insert childless wack-o’s name here] is really great—he/she has a great career, a huge house, jet skis and a pool—but you know—they don’t have any kids.

  Sentiments like these are not restricted to my family alone—obviously the expectation to breed is everywhere. With that in mind, it is really important to me that my “decision” to have a child (much later in life, mind you) is a choice that is reflective of something I actually want, rather than something I agreed to in order to escape the inevitable familial and societal backlash that accompanies the choice to remain childless. Worse, I hope my “decision” to have a child has not been made simply because my body can have one. I want to be sure that my decision to have a child is the right one, but the trouble is, I just can’t seem to think of any logical reasons for me to reproduce.

  When I was a girl, I couldn’t think of a more dull game than playing with baby dolls. I loathed them—especially the ones that had functioning plastic urethras. I still can’t fathom why a kid would want to change a dolls diaper for fun. Many kids in preschool couldn’t wait to play house. I hated playing house. I much preferred playing restaurant—I’ll poison your food and you pretend to die. Now we’ll switch—my turn to die! I had a much better time playing with my arts and craft supplies, playing make believe, lip-synching to my favorite bands, or pretending to be psychic with my stuffed animals. Care giving just seemed to be entirely dull and un-gratifying to me. My thoughts on the issue haven’t evolved much.

  As I started to make friends in elementary school, many of them said that they wanted to be mommies when they grew up. I found this to be a repugnant idea. I wanted to be a writer or an artist or a paleontologist or a radio disk jockey—mommy was never a part of my plan.

  As a teenager, babysitting was the pits. Sure, the money was all right for an 13-year old, but the best part of the job was getting to sample all the different cereals and sodas that the children’s households contained. The actual kids were irritating after the first 45 minutes or so.

  Granted, I did have two younger brothers that I had the pleasure of knowing since they were babies. Anthony was born when I was nearly seven and Julian was born when I was ten. I loved playing with them and reading books to them. I still love to nurture their ideas and their development and it has been amazing to watch them become individuals—even through their present unflattering teenage years.

  Aside from learning that I am capable of enjoying a child’s company, the presence of little brothers in my life gave me a glimpse into the realities of parenthood. It is not that lovey-dovey stuff of Johnson and Johnson commercials. Parenthood is stinky. It is exhausting. It is brutal. And the stakes are so ridiculously high and society is of little assistance. Until recently, my mom never really had time to lead her own life, as the challenges that parenthood throws at a person tend to dominate everything. Since I was a kid, my mom taught me that there were endless opportunities in this world to make a life out of. It surprised me then—and it dumbfounds me still—that in this limitless world, anyone would choose the messy, loud, time consuming, shit reeking servitude called motherhood.

  When I met Shaun, I indulged in a few girly thoughts about what our genes would be like combined in another human being. But then I would hyperventilate into the nearest paper bag and be plagued with thoughts that a crazed, run away sperm had evaded the vigilance of my birth control (and spermicide, and condom—that sperm would have had to yielded the son of god if it penetrated all those barriers!) and fertilized one of my fearful teenage eggs.

  However much I avoided pregnancy, the thought of what our kid might look like (in my head our genes combined would yield a smart, skinny, cartoonish-looking character) prompted me to make a young and naive “decision” that I someday wanted to have a kid with Shaun. But just one. It was already enough that I had “decided” to have any kids at all and one was pushing it. I would have this child at age 29, because if you pop a kid before 30, your chance of contracting a nasty woman-type cancer is reportedly reduced. I figured that if I was going to ravage my body (even temporarily) for this gene-mixing experiment, I might as well have some health benefit come out of it.

  Now that I realize that 29 isn’t so far away, I get a little panicky. Having a kid isn’t even on my radar yet. Where will pregnancy fit in with grad school, getting my doctorate, writing novels, making movies, traveling the world, and figuring out a path to world peace? My life is open, easy, fun, energized—why I should spoil that with having a kid?

  While that question may seem selfish and self-centered—at least it is logical and can be supported with obvious motivations. Having children intentionally these days simply cannot. We are no longer struggling to maintain our species—in fact, there are so bloody many of us that is seems that over population is likely to threaten existence (of both humans and other, more innocent animals). So why all the breeding?!? Why can’t we give it a rest?

  The only logical reason I can come up with is human’s innate fear of death. Certainly that was a motivating factor for cave men. I can just picture a cave brute pacing around his little cave den, scolding his cave wench on the 14th day of her cycle, “Hurry up and ovulate already! I’ve got to fertilize your egg so the species can continue after I die trying to kill us a wooly mammoth for dinner!” This type of replacement reproduction did not limit itself to the cave; modern male soldiers going off to war are infamous for marrying their sweethearts and furiously attempting to knock them up before they are off to stare death in the face on the battlefield. Apparently it is easier for us to accept death if we think we are thwarting it by mixing a little amazing bundle of our genetic code with someone else’s. Hey, it may not be a clone, but it’s all we’ve got in terms of biological immortality.

  Since I don’t particularly fear death (I live a pretty cush life here in America), and neither Shaun or I are going off to war anytime soon, fear of death probably won’t be a motivating factor for me to reproduce in my fertile years. Now, if for some horrible reason Shaun did have to stare death in its bloody face—I’m sure I’d flush my ortho-tricyclin down the toilet in a second.

  It seems that many people who don’t face death justify their need to reproduce with love. Phrases like, “I love you so much; I want you to be the father of my children,” implies that love is a logical reason to impregnate someone. This concept makes no sense to me. Loving Shaun doesn’t translate into a desire to create another human being. However, one of the reasons I love him is because I know I can trust him to give 110% of himself in any situation he is in including, I assume, parenting. He is a gentle, loving, and funny person and I’m sure a child will appreciate that as much as I do. But potentially sharing him with a package of our genes does not necessarily motivate me to want to reproduce.

  It may seem like all this attempted logic and multiple assertions of my avoidance of children throughout my short life may imply that I should obviously steer clear of motherhood at all costs, but things are not as simple as that. I actually love elementary kids and teenagers. The majority of people in these age groups that I meet are really cool and bonding with them has been amazingly fulfilling and soul nourishing.

  I met a six-year old girl named Emily at my sister-in-law’s wedding last spring with whom I had a great conversation. She told me all about her imaginary pet: a deformed cat named Elvis. Emily also stole my cell phone and pranked all numbers in my phone book. I should have been mad, but I overheard her pranking and I was trying not to laugh when I reprimanded her—her pranks were pretty funny. Emily and I really got along and I honestly can say she is one of the best people I have ever met at a wedding.

  I also mentor a great 15 year-old through a local community organization. She is sardonic and opinionated and once you get past the standoffish teenage attitude that presents itself in the first ten minutes of hanging out with her, those good elements really shine through. Many people like to write teenagers off and assume that they are an ignorant, obnoxious lot. While this may be true about teens when they are hanging out in groups (“group think” can illicit rancid behavior from teens and adults alike), the majority of teens that I have interacted with on an individual level are much more sophisticated than the assumptions that are made of them presume.

  To be honest, I would love to parent a child above the age of four. Care giving to a baby is what really seems like a completely unrewarding situation. I mean, after experiencing the gruesome, nightmarish hell of pregnancy, your great reward is a screaming, writhing, red-faced baby? Come on! Nature could have at least thrown mothers some sort of a bone there.

  Babies are monsters. It’s amazing to me that the human race survived seeing as how babies are just about the most irritating things on the planet. Babies only eat and shit and cry. They are completely defenseless, they take eons to be able to do the littlest thing (like hold their heads upright on their necks), and they are not even cute. Frankly, I’m surprised that more mothers don’t eat their young.

  Obviously, I’m only half serious.

  At the risk of sounding like a complete ass hole (even though I’m sure I’ve come across as a selfish, irritable prat already), I’ll venture this: if it were strictly up to me, I’d adopt a six year old. And not just to get out of the whole birthing and baby shebang, either. I just feel like there are lots of people who are already pre-made and they need parents and I’d like to help raise someone, so what’s the problem? It’s an easy fit, right? But then how do you go about picking whom you are supposed to raise? Do you pick the cutest kid you can find at risk of them becoming more of an accessory than an actual person?

  There are tons of yuppie moms strutting about Lincoln Park who are using adopted children as accessories. These select women window-shop in the middle of the day, chatting on their cell phones, sipping an iced latte while they half heartedly push a designer carriage containing an Asian girl baby (dressed in Prada), as if the child were only a mere upgrade from last season’s purse dog. I exaggerate and oversimplify things here, but I worry that if these Asian girl babies don’t grow up to be the pretty “model minority” their privileged adoptive parents thought they would be, the parents will throw the towel in. I can see how it would be easy for adoptive parents to dismiss the problems that their kids will inevitably develop (not because they are adopted, but because working though difficult issues is a part of any person’s development) by stating, “well, what can you do? They are just not one of us..”

  On my step dad’s side of the family, there are two adopted people, now adults, who are forever kept on the sidelines of the family. When a rat bit Uncle Deridge’s testicle and he was rendered infertile (true story—I don’t know or want to know what a rat was doing in such close proximity to my great uncle’s loins), adopting two cute Italian kids seemed like a good idea. But when one of those kids grew up to be a snarl toothed woman with multiple ex-husbands and no self esteem and the other turned out to be a weird, gun obsessed drunk who you’d rather die than sit next to at a wedding, the family seems overly eager to throw their hands in the air and exclaim, “whaddya gonna do? They’re adopted!”

  Humans’ nature to shun children that are not biologically related to them can also be seen in the twisted archetypes of step parenting. On one hand, you have the evil stepmother and the abusive stepfather; both are eager and willing to rid any evidence (aka children) that their current partner used to bang someone else. On the other hand you have the type of stepparent that many of my contemporaries and I can relate to: the laissez faire step parent.

  The laissez faire stepparent is sweet and nurturing, but when their child needs punishment or boundaries set, they are always quick to wash their hands of the matter and refer the child to the biological parent in the house.

  The tendency to dismiss genetics that are not our own can even be found in single parent households. My biological parents have been divorced and living in separate households since I was a toddler. When I really pissed either of them off, they would look at me, a snarl upon their faces, and say in a low, guttural growl, “You’re just like your father,” or “You’re just like your mother.” This was a way for them to wash their hands of me at any given moment—to say, “you’re not mine and these issues you’re having are not my responsibility.” I know that this type of hurtful phrasing is not exclusive to my childhood, and it furthers my concerns about adoption. While I would never think that Shaun or I are the type of people that would treat our adoptive child this way, I have to admit that there is no “type” of person who acts this way. People act this way—its one sick fabric of our makeup. Many adoptive parents manage this instinct well, but I doubt they do it without acknowledging first that the tendency exists in them simply because they are human. These adoptive parents are amazing and they are far better people than most of us who are unable to overcome what culture and history has imbedded in us: that blood is thicker than water.

  So, if adoption is a challenge that I don’t know if I’m strong enough to handle, and I don’t fear death and loving Shaun isn’t accompanied by a craving for a fetus to occupy my uterus, is parenting in my future at all?

  Perhaps you cannot rationalize the desire to have kids; it could just be a warped mix of instinct and a craving to love (and be loved) that prompts people to continue the life cycle. However, one item that I am ignoring is that babies are a bi product of sex (duh). The pleasure of sex is a perfectly logical pursuit! The fact that sometimes this blissful activity produces children is just something humans (or rather, people who have heterosexual sex) are forced to incur in order to indulge their licentiousness. While this reasoning is the strongest I can create for human reproduction, it does not pertain directly to me, as I ingest birth control responsibly and regularly. As thus, I have to think of a good reason to stop taking it.

  So, do I want to be a mother in five or six years? I guess so, but I don’t know why.
  Regardless of whether a bun is in my oven or not in 2011, I refuse to believe that I will be an irresponsible hedonist if I do later choose to forgo motherhood, despite what this culture might try to tell me. There are many ways that people can offer positive contributions to the next generation without actually producing members of it. I mentor, I tutor, and my life goals focus heavily on serving the youth of this world. It does not take motherhood to motivate me to become involved in cultivating a healthy environment for the next generation, but knowing that seems to have made the decision of whether to parent or not even more difficult.

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  What are your thoughts on parenthood? If you are a parent, how did you make that choice?

  • 9:28 pm
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