(no subject)
A recent post on Jezebel, aptly titled "You Will Never Make Everybody Happy With Your Womb, Ever," put me back into a bad spot mentally. See, I don't like children, and that's a Problem.
I try not to be parent-shaming, I really do. In fact, there's no reason to shame them at all. When people I know have babies, I get happy for them, and I'll squee a little because hey, this makes them happy and that's cause for celebration. When people I know want babies and can't/don't have them, I'll get sad. If a baby belongs to family, I'll usually end up fond of the little bugger and even sit for it.
But.
I honestly don't see the appeal of babies at all. While everyone else is going OMG BAAAAYBEEEE, I'm in the corner thinking whoop-de-freaking-doo, you reproduced, it's really not that hard, people have been doing it for millennia. I hate the tendency of babies to reduce every sane, intelligent adult in the room to a blithering idiot. I wish that every conversation when there's a baby around didn't revolve around it. I don't care about what your child is eating. I don't want to watch your child do something overly adorable. I certainly don't want to listen to it scream, which kind of hurts. I want it to go away. Babies are really not that great.
This attitude has been labeled everything up and down the gamut from immature to hateful and I'm tired of feeling like I'm the sole problem. (Sure I'm hatey. I hate on everything if you give me the chance. But does that mean my argument's always and completely invalid?) I even judge myself for it; I sort of think there's something wrong with me as a woman, or I'm going to end up making a grave mistake, because I cringe at the thought of a baby of my own. But I'm scared, and I see motherhood as an erasure of self, where 18 years of my life are swallowed whole by the ceaseless demands of another person, where people are going to be more interested in my baby than in me, where I'm incapable of any agency or career outside of parenting. I worry about the way mothers are judged and criticized and discriminated against economically/careerwise, and I worry about how the burden of child-rearing will always fall unevenly on the mother no matter how much the father cares and assists.
People are like "oh, you don't have to think about this now." Of course I do. I'm marrying Will in less than a year and he wants a kid sometime between 30 and death so he doesn't have to grow old and die alone and who has the responsibility of providing? Plus his sister's got an eight-month-old, so I've been doing a little involuntary vicarious living just by being around his family. People also point out "oh, but you love your nephew, you're so good with him." Yeah, well, I was good at science too. Skill does not mean fitness and certainly not enjoyment. I wish I could put off thinking about it like everyone seems to think I should, but the specter of motherhood looms in the distance, threatening to unroll those 18 years of the end of me.
A child screams on the train, I flinch, and Will scolds me. Easy for you to say.
tl;dr: I hate kids, but it's not like I go out of my way to kick them or anything, and I wish I didn't have to feel like there's something wrong with me.
I try not to be parent-shaming, I really do. In fact, there's no reason to shame them at all. When people I know have babies, I get happy for them, and I'll squee a little because hey, this makes them happy and that's cause for celebration. When people I know want babies and can't/don't have them, I'll get sad. If a baby belongs to family, I'll usually end up fond of the little bugger and even sit for it.
But.
I honestly don't see the appeal of babies at all. While everyone else is going OMG BAAAAYBEEEE, I'm in the corner thinking whoop-de-freaking-doo, you reproduced, it's really not that hard, people have been doing it for millennia. I hate the tendency of babies to reduce every sane, intelligent adult in the room to a blithering idiot. I wish that every conversation when there's a baby around didn't revolve around it. I don't care about what your child is eating. I don't want to watch your child do something overly adorable. I certainly don't want to listen to it scream, which kind of hurts. I want it to go away. Babies are really not that great.
This attitude has been labeled everything up and down the gamut from immature to hateful and I'm tired of feeling like I'm the sole problem. (Sure I'm hatey. I hate on everything if you give me the chance. But does that mean my argument's always and completely invalid?) I even judge myself for it; I sort of think there's something wrong with me as a woman, or I'm going to end up making a grave mistake, because I cringe at the thought of a baby of my own. But I'm scared, and I see motherhood as an erasure of self, where 18 years of my life are swallowed whole by the ceaseless demands of another person, where people are going to be more interested in my baby than in me, where I'm incapable of any agency or career outside of parenting. I worry about the way mothers are judged and criticized and discriminated against economically/careerwise, and I worry about how the burden of child-rearing will always fall unevenly on the mother no matter how much the father cares and assists.
People are like "oh, you don't have to think about this now." Of course I do. I'm marrying Will in less than a year and he wants a kid sometime between 30 and death so he doesn't have to grow old and die alone and who has the responsibility of providing? Plus his sister's got an eight-month-old, so I've been doing a little involuntary vicarious living just by being around his family. People also point out "oh, but you love your nephew, you're so good with him." Yeah, well, I was good at science too. Skill does not mean fitness and certainly not enjoyment. I wish I could put off thinking about it like everyone seems to think I should, but the specter of motherhood looms in the distance, threatening to unroll those 18 years of the end of me.
A child screams on the train, I flinch, and Will scolds me. Easy for you to say.
tl;dr: I hate kids, but it's not like I go out of my way to kick them or anything, and I wish I didn't have to feel like there's something wrong with me.