A few years ago, I was talking with a woman at church. This was an older woman, I would put her at 70s or above. She had asked me what I was doing those days, and I told her that I was in grad school to become a school counselor. She raised her eyebrows and her eyes grew wide - "But don't you want to get married? Why aren't you married yet?" (This woman was very old-school.) I replied that I'd love to get married, my circumstances were simply due to a lack of opportunity. She calmed a bit after that, but was still concerned - "But what about having kids? Your eggs are going to go bad if you don't get a move on!" I listened, patiently, and said that science had come a long way and that women were having babies well into their 30s these days with few complications. But that didn't placate this woman. Her next question was "How many kids do you want?" I was getting annoyed by this point, and decided to really shock her. "You know, I don't think I want kids." She was silent. Then:
"What an awful thing for a woman to say."
Yikes. Shocking, indeed. She was genuinely appalled by my answer. I made up something about having to get to my classroom for church school, and said goodbye before she had a chance to say anything else. Like, the things that women hear in this society (and in the church) when they say they don't want kids.
"That's pretty selfish of you, you know."
"How could you not want kids? You owe it to yourself and your family to have kids!"
"It's not really up to you, though, it's up to your husband."
"You'll have to learn sometime how to set aside your own wants and learn how to take care of someone other than yourself."
"Kids are a gift from God. Saying you don't want kids is like flipping God the finger."
"You were created to have kids. And God doesn't make mistakes."
"Being a mother is a woman's highest calling."
"Not having kids will make your life empty."
"Think about the women who can't have kids. Their choice was taken away from them. Saying you don't want kids is like slapping all of them in the face."
Thanks to statements like these, I used to feel really guilty about not wanting to have kids. I wouldn't admit to anyone that I didn't think I was cut out for being a mom. I was afraid of what people would say. I was afraid that they would make me feel really bad about it. I didn't know how to reconcile my own wishes with society's pressures. I began to feel there was something wrong with me, some key attribute of being a woman that didn't make it into my DNA. I was told I'd be letting down my parents, my future husband, my potential family, even my entire gender.
Should a woman have a child simply because the world tells her she should?
In order to work through this dissonance, my therapist suggested I make a list of reasons I don't want to have children, and then determine if I think they're valid or not. Only my opinion counted here. These are the reasons I came up with:
1. The way my daily energy level is right now, I could not give a child the attention and energy it needs and deserves. Now, things could change between now and childbirth, but what if they don't? Sometimes, I barely have the energy to make it through the day at work before I come home and lock the door and unwind by myself. I blame a fair amount of this on depression and anxiety. I wear out easily some days - physically, mentally, emotionally, socially...is a worn-out mom the one that a child deserves?
2. There is so much junk that I could pass on to a child. Depression, anxiety, terrible eyesight, crooked teeth, benign positional paroxysmal vertigo, crazy uterus, panic attacks...it would be so hard for me to live with the idea that my genes set the stage for my kid to have depression and/or anxiety. I couldn't bear to see my kid go through either of those conditions.
3. I value my alone time. And not just because I'm antisocial or haven't "grown up" yet. Introverts need alone time to process what has been going on, process their thoughts and feelings, process what's coming up, and process all the new experiences they had during the day. I need that the way a runner needs to run. If I don't get enough process time, things go downhill quickly and I become an unpleasant and upset person. I remember a few months ago a Wednesday that was packed too full. I worked from 7:30 to 3, then I had an event training from 3 to 5:30, then a friend and I went to dinner, then I went to church after that for praise team rehearsal. I was starting to feel frayed before I even walked into the building. I had been going for 12 hours straight, no alone breaks, and I wasn't done yet. I tried to keep it together, but I ended up pretty crabby and people definitely noticed. My body just couldn't handle any more talking, noise, the loud music, or putting on the "social" face. I try to avoid packing my days like that one because I don't like the person I become at the end of them. And when you throw a kid into the mix, that alone time disappears. I've heard many moms complain about how they haven't read a book in years, or how they can't even get a few minutes in the bathroom without being interrupted. I fear I would be an absent mom if I put myself in that situation. Babies and kids need a lot of attention, and at this point in my life, I couldn't give it to them.
4. I worked very hard for my career. There is no way I could ever be to be a stay-at-home mom. But it seems that women can't have it both ways. Working moms are judged on all sides for returning to work after having a kid, with the implication being that they're not devoting as much time as they should to being a mom because their job gets in the way. Oh, you need the income to support those kids? Well, I guess you have to work outside the home, can't be avoided. But we're still going to be in the corner over here judging you for having kids in the first place, when you knew you wouldn't be able to stay home with them. I don't want to be around this guilt. It's trading in one guilt ("how can you not want kids?") for another (how can you bear to have someone else raise your kids while you're at work?"). The implication here, of course, is that women can't excel at both career and motherhood simultaneously. This implication is, unsurprisingly, absent when it comes to men. Have you ever heard of a man being accused of being a bad father because he doesn't stay home with his kids? Have you ever heard anyone say that man can't (or shouldn't) have both a career and children? The double-standard is there for women all the time. No thanks.
5. I worry about what parenthood would do to my approach to counseling. I like to think that I wouldn't let that get in the way, but I also don't know what it's like. I have seen school counselors mother their students, compare their students to their own kids, and give advice based on what they would tell their own kids. I never want to do this. That would not be my best way to counsel. Would it be different for me, though, since I've already made this decision not to let my own experience as a mom affect the way I work with students? Like, if you think about it hard enough, can you prevent it?
6. I am at a higher risk for peripartum and postpartum depression than other women because I have a history of depression. Of course, there is the argument that I'll be better prepared if it rears its ugly head, since I know what symptoms to pay attention to, but I don't know. It's not like having a pill ready and then taking it when you feel depressed, and presto it's vanquished. Many psych meds, including the ones I take, are not recommended for use when pregnant. Can I afford to go off those meds for 9 months, knowing that they manage my pre-existing depression and that going off could further increase my risk?
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To me, all of these reasons are valid. At least, they are now that I've thought about them and determined them for myself. I can't bring a kid into this world simply because I'm afraid of what someone else will think if I don't. They are certainly reasons to not have a kid now. Or, in the next 12 months, rather. What about down the road, though? Will I change my mind? What would change my mind? I've heard people say that they never wanted kids, and then they met the person they eventually married, and everything changed. Will that happen to me? Will I meet a guy, fall in love, get married, and then magically reverse my decision about kids? Maybe my hang-up is that I don't have an image of anyone with whom to raise children. I certainly couldn't do it by myself. But if that face got filled in down the road, would I change?
Here's another thing to think about - what about the kids in this world who don't have parents? If a woman who doesn't want to have her own children is such a crime against society, how much more of a crime is it for a child to be without a loving and reliable parent? I'm not saying we go after the parents of these kids (we already vilify them, and it's not helping) - I am saying we make it as easy as possible for an adult or a couple to foster and/or adopt a kid who needs a home. More than that, society needs to value foster-care and adoption far more highly than we do now. Budgets for foster-care and adoption agencies are being slashed year after year, and social workers are doing more work with fewer resources than ever before. We lament how many kids are stuck in the system until they age out, never knowing the blessing of a 'forever home.' But how many of us are opening our doors for them? I'm not trying to guilt you about not taking in a foster child. For many, it's just not feasible for one reason or another. But that doesn't mean you can't contribute to a foster kid's life. What if we hung out with them at their group home? What if we got involved with a community program that works with kids in foster care? What if we bought school supplies and shoes and winter clothing for students in foster care so that they could start (or continue) their school year just like the rest of their peers?
Right now, I can't see myself having kids. I can see myself being a foster parent. In the last year and a half, I've worked quite a bit with refugee and immigrant students. Here at Zeeland, I have had 3 over the course of this school year - 2 Spanish-speakers, and 1 French-speaker. They are all foster kids through Bethany Christian Services who have arrived in the United States speaking little or no English. My heart aches for them sometimes as I watch them get used to a new country and new culture, figure out how to fit into their host family's lives, learn a brand-new language, and do all the stuff that goes with being a high-schooler. It's incredibly overwhelming for them. High school can be overwhelming for an English-speaking student who was born here, for heaven's sake. Even as a Spanish-speaker, there's only so much I can do for them while they're here at school.
I could see myself being a foster mom for a refugee. Even without a husband. Objectively, having a foster kid is not that much different from having a biological kid. There's still the drain on alone time, there's still my career to consider, and I wouldn't magically have more energy. The difference, I suppose, is that these are kids right in front of me who need someone right now. To me, that feels different from a child who hasn't even been created yet and who I don't necessarily want to create. Does that make sense?
As for the people who have had trouble having kids, I'm sorry if this discussion has offended you or caused you to think less of me in some way. I don't know what it's like to face that reality, and maybe I never will. I can listen, appreciate your resilience, and bear witness to your struggle, though. A good friend of mine has given birth to two sons through IVF, but only after an intense struggle with infertility. I can't know how she felt then or how much that has changed now that she has kids. And I certainly don't pretend to know. But what I can tell you is that my lack of desire to have my own kids does not have to cancel out or de-legitimize your reality of struggling to conceive. Can we hold both of those ideas? In one hand, we have the people who desperately want kids and can't have them, and in the other hand, we have people who don't want kids but are probably able to have them. There has to be room for both and understanding for both. The same thing happens with the idea of marriage (to a lesser extent, though) - we have the group of people who desperately want to be married but haven't found someone, and we have the group of people who don't want to get married but have had marriage proposals. We're all just different. What works for one person's life may not work for another's life. I will fight for your right to access whatever means necessary to conceive a child. Can you appreciate my right to not have a child?
In the meantime, let's do something for all those children who already exist and need some good people to look out for them.
