Childcare, childhood, childfree
Yesterday some weird insane guy was hanging around in front of my office and heckling me, and I was talking about it with Z later, saying about feeling unsafe and scared and he’s suggested I carry my didgeridoo around for protection.
And then we talked some more about childhoods and ourselves as children, our early aspirations [even as a kidling he wrote a long thing about wanting to be an electric engineer - if that’s a sensical combination in English] while I wanted to be a celebrated ballerina [replying with disdain “Well you don’t seriously think I’ll be just ordinary” to any adults who questioned at the time how I knew I’d be famous], and a vet, and a locksmith. I was cunning and curious, and I devoured books and stories and that as long as I had something to occupy me I had no problems being still. On the other hand he was shy around adult strangers [while I largely viewed adults as fodder for my charm] but he was a little live wire, constantly strung full of energy and needing to be running around all the time because it calmed him down [while in my childhood you could only physically activate me with a cattle prod].
And among all this banter and chatter we talked about children, the children in our lives [his nephew and my contingent of Sure Start smallfolk], and I could feel the old mix of turmoil-anxiety-despair that the thought of hypothetical motherhood arouses in me. My attitude to children is hard to describe. I don’t dislike children [after all, I work with them] and provided they’re reasonably quiet I enjoy spending time with other people’s children [particularly the ones who like words and books] but the thought of having children of my own doesn’t fill me with glowing warmth so much as panic.
It summons thoughts of being chained, and thoughts of whom I could unload my biological progeny on.
Frequently I find children a strain. I think that’s the key. The experience of childcare is not uplifting for me. [I mean it’s ok to spend quality time with other people’s cute children when the primary responsibility of childcare is not on me, that’s play, but having to take care of children day to day, attend to their needs, answer their demands for attention- it makes me want to kill myself]. Because much as I like people, people [especially small people] are a huge drain on my energy and in order to cope I need to be away and alone for periods of time so I can re-charge. Because physical children stand in the way of my relationship to the children that matter most to me - abstract creative children. Visions, ideas. These are the ones which uplift me, which re-energise me, my primary source of value and meaning. I think I would be the sort of parent that would breathe a sigh of relief as soon as the child was out of my sight and my hair hopefully in the care of someone who actually loves spending time with that kidling.
I am pretty sure that I don’t want to have children, ever, if it was only up to me. And pretty sure that I would cave in to produce some to the pressures of a partner who really wanted children provided said partner was willing to take on the brunt of the childcare.
And that doesn’t strike me as the ideal attitude for parenthood.
I’ve always believed that children should be born to those people who not only want them but have the capacity [emotional and financial] to take care of them and I’m not sure that I will ever be that person.
I think a lot of it is down to a strong independence and temperament [handily reflected in a natal Moon-Uranus conjunction], where I was never going to be the type of person who dreams of reproducing and staying at home to take care of the children [truly, that feels like a prison sentence to me] I think the natal tendencies have been exacerbated by the damage of my childhood.
I didn’t have a very good relationship with my caregivers, with whom emotional relationships were never safe, much as they did contain huge amounts of love. Frustration, unhappiness, emotional abuse, invalidation - these were dealt out as freely, as frequently as hugs and kisses, and love wasn’t unconditional but dependent on a variety of factors and withheld as a sign of pathos or punishment. Rejection and abandonment. My grandmother’s emotional freezes in stark contrast to my mother’s episodes of hysteria and my father’s rages. My grandmother’s punishments, threats and manipulations. My father’s many absences and the big vanishing act he pulled when I was 8 and a half. And my own subsequent journey into strange lands and hostile territories whose language I did not speak and where I could truly rely only on myself for safe passage and protection.
I learned early on that the world was not safe and that love was not safe either. That those you loved could hurt you wit words and withdrawals and abandonment and dying. There were ways in which I was never permitted to be a child, because even when I was playing I was not truly carefree. The familial ice was very thin, and one wrong word or step or mood could bring the world tumbling down. Shatter it like glass. Dissolve it into threats and rages. And some days were filled with light and fun and someday were filled with jagged edges and you never knew, waking up, what kind of day it would be.
So children, even hypothetical ones, arouse many many dimensions of turmoil in me.
Because I don’t want to be a bad parent, and I am not sure I have the capacity to be a good one.
Because I feel this terrible anxiety and despair thinking of how dependent kids are. How much, how long, they will need me. And it makes me think No, don’t need me, please don’t need me because maybe I won’t be able to be there for you, maybe I will die or have to leave you and then the world will shatter for you as it did for me. Or maybe, even worse, I won’t ever be able to truly love you because I didn’t truly want you, because you trapped me and my body trapped me, because my unhappiness and anger will leak from me and you will inherit it, you will absorb it, you will drink it with my milk.
And then we talked some more about childhoods and ourselves as children, our early aspirations [even as a kidling he wrote a long thing about wanting to be an electric engineer - if that’s a sensical combination in English] while I wanted to be a celebrated ballerina [replying with disdain “Well you don’t seriously think I’ll be just ordinary” to any adults who questioned at the time how I knew I’d be famous], and a vet, and a locksmith. I was cunning and curious, and I devoured books and stories and that as long as I had something to occupy me I had no problems being still. On the other hand he was shy around adult strangers [while I largely viewed adults as fodder for my charm] but he was a little live wire, constantly strung full of energy and needing to be running around all the time because it calmed him down [while in my childhood you could only physically activate me with a cattle prod].
And among all this banter and chatter we talked about children, the children in our lives [his nephew and my contingent of Sure Start smallfolk], and I could feel the old mix of turmoil-anxiety-despair that the thought of hypothetical motherhood arouses in me. My attitude to children is hard to describe. I don’t dislike children [after all, I work with them] and provided they’re reasonably quiet I enjoy spending time with other people’s children [particularly the ones who like words and books] but the thought of having children of my own doesn’t fill me with glowing warmth so much as panic.
It summons thoughts of being chained, and thoughts of whom I could unload my biological progeny on.
Frequently I find children a strain. I think that’s the key. The experience of childcare is not uplifting for me. [I mean it’s ok to spend quality time with other people’s cute children when the primary responsibility of childcare is not on me, that’s play, but having to take care of children day to day, attend to their needs, answer their demands for attention- it makes me want to kill myself]. Because much as I like people, people [especially small people] are a huge drain on my energy and in order to cope I need to be away and alone for periods of time so I can re-charge. Because physical children stand in the way of my relationship to the children that matter most to me - abstract creative children. Visions, ideas. These are the ones which uplift me, which re-energise me, my primary source of value and meaning. I think I would be the sort of parent that would breathe a sigh of relief as soon as the child was out of my sight and my hair hopefully in the care of someone who actually loves spending time with that kidling.
I am pretty sure that I don’t want to have children, ever, if it was only up to me. And pretty sure that I would cave in to produce some to the pressures of a partner who really wanted children provided said partner was willing to take on the brunt of the childcare.
And that doesn’t strike me as the ideal attitude for parenthood.
I’ve always believed that children should be born to those people who not only want them but have the capacity [emotional and financial] to take care of them and I’m not sure that I will ever be that person.
I think a lot of it is down to a strong independence and temperament [handily reflected in a natal Moon-Uranus conjunction], where I was never going to be the type of person who dreams of reproducing and staying at home to take care of the children [truly, that feels like a prison sentence to me] I think the natal tendencies have been exacerbated by the damage of my childhood.
I didn’t have a very good relationship with my caregivers, with whom emotional relationships were never safe, much as they did contain huge amounts of love. Frustration, unhappiness, emotional abuse, invalidation - these were dealt out as freely, as frequently as hugs and kisses, and love wasn’t unconditional but dependent on a variety of factors and withheld as a sign of pathos or punishment. Rejection and abandonment. My grandmother’s emotional freezes in stark contrast to my mother’s episodes of hysteria and my father’s rages. My grandmother’s punishments, threats and manipulations. My father’s many absences and the big vanishing act he pulled when I was 8 and a half. And my own subsequent journey into strange lands and hostile territories whose language I did not speak and where I could truly rely only on myself for safe passage and protection.
I learned early on that the world was not safe and that love was not safe either. That those you loved could hurt you wit words and withdrawals and abandonment and dying. There were ways in which I was never permitted to be a child, because even when I was playing I was not truly carefree. The familial ice was very thin, and one wrong word or step or mood could bring the world tumbling down. Shatter it like glass. Dissolve it into threats and rages. And some days were filled with light and fun and someday were filled with jagged edges and you never knew, waking up, what kind of day it would be.
So children, even hypothetical ones, arouse many many dimensions of turmoil in me.
Because I don’t want to be a bad parent, and I am not sure I have the capacity to be a good one.
Because I feel this terrible anxiety and despair thinking of how dependent kids are. How much, how long, they will need me. And it makes me think No, don’t need me, please don’t need me because maybe I won’t be able to be there for you, maybe I will die or have to leave you and then the world will shatter for you as it did for me. Or maybe, even worse, I won’t ever be able to truly love you because I didn’t truly want you, because you trapped me and my body trapped me, because my unhappiness and anger will leak from me and you will inherit it, you will absorb it, you will drink it with my milk.