On the Kids Question

Warning: more rambling than usual!

I am of an age and in a relationship where, although I know I don’t want kids right away, they are a possibility at an ever-approaching point down the line. Many of my female peers in heterosexual relationships seem to be having or to have had the same conversations with themselves (and with me, obvs, otherwise I wouldn’t know about it): do I want children? If so, when and how?

Some of the women I know are sure about having children, which is great. Some are sure about not having children, which is also great. As for me, I was confused by what I wanted until I realized something important: the question that puzzles me isn’t whether I want to have kids. It’s whether I want to be a mother.

Because I think if the question were instead, “do you want to be a father?” I’d have a much easier time giving a whole-hearted “yes.”

Before I explain, let me clarify the subject. I’m not talking about the disposition or contribution of the many wonderful fathers I know among my friends, family, and acquaintances. My dad is awesome. My friends and family who are dads are caring, attentive, and hardworking. They split the caretaking of their kids with their partners. Some of them shoulder the majority of the parental work.

But the great individuals I know have no effect on the overall expectations for fatherhood and motherhood in the culture in which I live. These norms (and, when I talk about pregnancy and breastfeeding, biological facts) are what concern me when I discuss how motherhood and fatherhood seem to me.

Obviously, the biological facts can’t be changed: if I knew that, like most fathers*, I would not have to undergo drastic physiological transformations, my choice would be easier. But if my boyfriend and I decided to have a biological child, I would be the one who got pregnant.

I would be the one who would have to change my exercise routines, activities, and diet. I would be the one who needed new clothes. I would be the one strangers would be able to identify as expecting. I would be the one to go through labour and/or a Caesarean section. I’m fortunate that where I live and in the demographic I’m from, my personal risk of death or injury in childbirth is minimal, but I would still be the one to face it, along with other risks such as those of miscarriage and pregnancy complications.

After the birth, I would be the one who has to heal. I would be the one whose body might never be the same again. If we chose to breastfeed, I would be the one who had to adjust my timing to it and who may have to endure pain to do it.

Supporting a partner through all that is, of course, a challenge. But if I knew I’d face the challenge of supporting instead of the challenge of experiencing, it would be easier to choose parenthood.

And I would be the one whose career would be assumed to change based on my new role as a parent. Financially, my boyfriend and I contribute equally to our household. But if we decide to have a child, many people would assume that he’d continue with the work he does now, roughly the same as before he became a father.

The career prospects for mothers are much better than they were in even my parents’ generation. But I’d still have to make adjustments. If I wanted to continue with my career as an instructor and a writer, I’d be expected to work around having a child. Because I often work from my home office, I’d be expected to be the physically and psychologically available stay-at-home parent.

If my boyfriend and I both want to balance careers and family, we’d have to work hard in opposite directions: him to carve out a space where he can be a caregiver as well as a professional and me vice versa. Neither is fair. And we’d both have to work hard socially and practically if we decided that he should be the stay-at-home parent, especially since he works in a 9-to-5-at-the-office industry.

Finally, let’s be frank: I’m not good at feelings. I try. I’ve learned a lot as I’ve grown. But dealing with other people’s emotions, their troubles and heartbreaks, takes a lot out of me. It’s a challenge. One that I relish, because I love my friends and family, but still difficult.

As a mother, I’d be expected to be my child’s primary source of psychological wellbeing. In popular thought, men don’t talk about or care about feelings — they do fun stuff with their kids but cluelessly can’t even identify when there is an emotional problem, let alone help resolve it.

Of course if I were a parent, I’d make my priority my child, not myself. And I think my boyfriend and I would manage sharing being the source of emotional energy for each other and our kid(s). But, frankly, it terrifies me that choosing to be a mother comes with the default setting of being a bottomless cornucopia of my scarcest personal resource with, society says, little or no help to be expected from my co-parent.

In the culture I live in, being a bad father (someone who doesn’t pay attention to or provide support for his kids) who is nevertheless a good person is so common that we have cookie-cutter characters like Captain Von Trapp, Howard Stark, and King Triton. But being bad mother is being a bad woman.

Sometimes, society makes it feel as though once a woman has children, any other indicator of her worth is no longer valid. If she doesn’t devote every waking second to their wellbeing — in all the right ways** — she is a failure as a human being.

Sure, I think I want kids, but I don’t want to lose the rest of my identity or cultural acceptance of the fact that I have other parts to my identity. And I don’t really know how many of the things that make now-me me will survive parenthood: my career? My body? My emotional stability? Most of all, I don’t want to have to constantly fight to remind society that I can be an independent person who has her own needs and goals and still put my kids’ wellbeing first at the same time — like any great dad.

I’m not trying to belittle the sacrifices made by great dads: on the contrary, I’ve given them long thought, because I’m 100% sure I’m ready to make them. But the JUDGE ME/DISMISS ME signs demanded by motherhood? I really don’t know.

* Not forgetting you, transgender dads who have given/will give/are giving birth!
** And G-d forbid she deliberately decides not to have them in the first place.