Have Kids?

Why?

I don’t remember making any decisions about having or not having kids when I was a kid. I just assumed like most little girls in the 60’s and 70’s that, of course, I’d get married at some point and have kids.

That’s what grown ups do. They drink and smoke and swear and drive cars and have kids and complain about the kids and go to work and complain about work.

When I was eleven my parents began taking in foster children (because as my mother often liked to say, she loved babies, she just couldn’t stand kids…and she meant that*). My next younger sister and I became little foster mommies, responsible for laundering diapers and six am feedings. Most of the foster kids were infants right out of the hospital although we did foster some toddlers from time to time. By the time I left home at 18 I was clear on one thing: I was not going to have any kids right away.

And I didn’t.

And, as the years went by, I still didn’t. Given the wild life I led throughout my twenties and into my early thirties it’s just a very good thing that I didn’t get pregnant. I’ve never been pregnant and it wasn’t because I was all that careful. I was on oral contraception from age 16 because of excruciating period cramps but I’d go off the pill from time to time and still never got pregnant. I never gave it much thought.

When I was 35 I did a stupendous crash and burn coming through on the other side sober and alive to the astonishment of myself and everyone around me. The early years of being sober and learning to be an accountable adult with a job — one who made the bed and did the dishes and took the trash out and paid the rent on time — was pretty time consuming. I also went through a series of not parent material partners. And never, not once, did I hear that biological clock ticking louder and louder.

I was raised by a woman who, if there had been effective and available birth control in 1958 (and 1960, 1964 and 1967) would never have had kids. She in turn had been raised by a woman who clearly didn’t like or want children. My three younger sisters, including my gay sister, all have children and have turned out to be great mothers. But I’m the throwback to Mom and her mother.

Whatever that mysterious maternal component is that so many women, and not a few men seem to have, it never emerged in me. I have never felt any wish to procreate. There are plenty of people in the world; I don’t need to add to that total. As to missing out on the incredible experience of giving birth and raising human beings, well, I’ve missed out on a lot of amazing experiences in my life. I have a remarkable lack of FOMO apparently.

Then there’s the thing about how precious and dear children are perceived to be in our culture; all innocence and potential. I don’t buy it. Children are basically little lunatics with no impulse control or manners.

Most of my child-free friends love kids…other people’s kids. Not me.

I once shut down a writing workshop to dead silence by asserting that I don’t like kids and I don’t like dogs. Ok, yes, I was going for the shock value and got that for sure, because I do enjoy other people’s dogs most of the time. Kids I take on a case by case basis. I’ve met kids that I could tolerate and a couple I’ve actually liked but get them in groups and I’m out the door.

Now that I’m well past the age of procreation, I am very happy that well-meaning people have stopped assuring me that I still “have time”. Too many people go into parenthood with a skewed idea of what being a parent entails and then are blindsided by the demands of raising children. Children should, in a perfect world, only be born to people who love the company of children and want to be around them a lot.

Clearly that ain’t me.

© Remington Write 2019. All Rights Reserved

*Another gem from Mom: “I should have cocker spaniels instead of kids. You can shoot the cocker spaniels.”