Live From My Prime Childbearing Years

Jun. 8, 2012

By Sara Bee info

Sara is currently living and writing in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sara recently graduated with a BA in English and hopes, ...

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Babies make me squeamish. I can’t figure out if the root of the problem is a strong lack of babysitting gigs throughout my middle- and high-school years, or if it goes back further, to the point at which some gene for maternal impulses failed to develop in the womb. And it is a problem, isn’t it? Who doesn’t like babies? Babies are soft and small and innocent and completely dependent on your tender care in exchange for their unconditional love. They’re like kittens and puppies except better because kittens and puppies can’t smile or laugh or grow up to be people.

We’re probably supposed to favor human young, evolutionarily speaking, but I’d rather have a ten-week-old beagle than a ten-week-old person any day. And I’d rather not volunteer to hold anyone’s infant, either. Not because I don’t know how – I know how. Cradle it close, support the head, and sway a little so it feels loved — or something. I’m not entirely clear on the logic of swaying, but that’s how it’s done. I’ve seen it.

But still, babies make me squeamish, and I’m not really sure what to do with the two-to-twelve set in general, either. Other girls enjoyed being around children as we were growing up, and they sought opportunities to do so, like watching the neighbors’ kids or a sibling or, in the case of one friend, volunteering to work in the nursery room at her church. All the kids in that room had to be reasonably dissatisfied with being at once separated from their parents and facing an hour of coloring in outlines of Jesus as entertainment. But Jenna loved it.

Why? She watched infants there, too, in a different room. These are people with no significant life experiences aside from their own birth, whose own names seem cartoonishly disproportionate to their size. What was so gratifying about holding a flabby, inarticulate creature prone to bouts of erratic limb-flailing that would spark a desire to spend so much time checking bottle temperatures and discarding soiled diapers? At five months, baby Stephan stares at the walls of his crib and plays silently with the brightly colored plastic shapes dangling above his head. But at twenty-five he’s become one of those people who leaves a quarter inch of milk at the bottom of the carton, sticks a new roll of toilet paper the wrong way on the dispenser, and then goes to work as a club promoter. You just can’t tell.

As for me, my parents’ neighborhood was full of empty nesters, and my mother didn’t have any friends with children much younger than her own, so, by default, I rarely had to babysit for anyone. I was frequently charged with watching my brothers, but, since we came of age in the Playstation era, that responsibility only meant an occasional glance into the living room to verify both were still sitting cross-legged in the stupefying glow of our television. And they were, so I went back to reading Time.

But it’s quite unlucky that I graduated from my prime babysitting years with little to no clue about the proper way to interact with small children because, at 22, I’m expected to know. It shouldn’t be awkward, meeting a seven-month-old (or a seven-year-old) but we really don’t have anything in common — we listen to different music, watch different shows, and eat different food. I don’t even remember being seven — months or years. And you can’t talk to infants, of course, aside from making some inane, speech-like noises at them. With the older children, there are limitations: I have to use simple words, sticking to simple subjects that their simple minds might grasp. What did you do today? Oh, you saw a dog? He was yellow? Wo-o-ow. It’s a little enchanting, seeing someone so easily amazed by such a pedestrian sighting as a Labrador retriever, but how do I match that? Today I saw a guy on a bike get hit by a car. No, I’m not sure if he was alright, yeah.

I guess I don’t get the hype. I don’t want to be a mother terribly much because I don’t want to spend nine months passing through various stages of misery, and I don’t want to host another organism, sharing things that I consume to sustain myself until it decides to come bursting out of the very worst possible orifice, and I don’t think babies smell sweet and powdery but more like wet towels that fell behind the washer a week ago, and I don’t want to wreak lasting damage on my bone structure, or to lose several years’ worth of sleep, or to be faced with the task of entertaining a person who thinks fun is smearing mashed sweet potato over his face and flinging it onto the wall like some drunken asshole, or to run after that person — for years, mind you — making sure he doesn’t put something in his mouth that doesn’t belong there, like a grasshopper, or do some other dumb sh-t that might get him killed.

It’s not the children’s fault, but they don’t know any better, and the police will blame you. Having a child means being responsible for the life of another human being who doesn’t even know how to be a human being. You have to keep somebody alive. Then in five years you let your kid play in the backyard and he eats a grasshopper and you find yourself in the emergency-room waiting area because he won’t stop throwing up. How did you get here, again?

And yet all kinds of women choose this fate — well-educated and not, rich and poor, married and single. They do it in spite of the fact that kids are generally sticky, as if they’ve just manhandled a PB&J and we didn’t even have that for lunch. Or in spite of the fact that kids do whatever they want, the fact that little boys will pee as you change their diaper and little girls might just take off all their clothes and run outside. There’s no dignity. Young children are primitive, impulsive little things, reminding me uncomfortably of the primeval role I was unwittingly born into, myself.

Lots of people have kids, and lots of people are great parents. Lots of women have babies — it happens. It has to happen. But I suspect that some of them take the responsibility too casually, almost as if it’s not an option at all.

“Of course I want kids some day!”

“We want three, and we think it’d be cute if their names all started with Y. There’s Yves, Yvonne…” A pause. “We’ll have to keep thinking.”

Once, a friend of my mother’s started talking to me about, “When you have a few of your own.” I corrected her with something about more women choosing to put off childbirth until later in life and that fewer women were doing it at all, choosing instead to focus on their careers. Once I read about a woman in Britain who had herself sterilized in order to lessen her carbon footprint, believing that one more person in the world would only result in more squandered natural resources.

“You say that now!” my mother’s friend said with a twinkle in her eye I found annoying. “But listen to yourself in 10 years. You’ll change your mind. You will.” I imagined a surgeon performing my hysterectomy right then and there just to spite Mrs. Schroeder, whose sons were in the process of trying to catch the family cat using sticks and a pool net.

It all looks very nice from the outside — creating small versions of yourself to feed with small spoons and dress in small clothes so you can do small things together like going to the park to feed ducks or watching the straight-to-DVD Little Mermaid VI repeatedly until the disc goes missing. Have the lives of people who are parents really reached a new level of fulfillment, jam-packed with sentimental moments, life lessons, warm chocolate-chip cookies? If I grow a human being, will I learn to love and live more deeply? Or do people who are parents just want to trick you – to believe the myth so you agree to watch their babies?

Because babies make me squeamish. TC Mark

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image – spfotocz

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  • H.

    Perfect!! This puts into words every thought I’ve ever had about having children. I’ve always known that I don’t want children and have had to endure the “when you meet the right man you’ll change your mind” lecture hundreds of times. I always counter that argument with “you wouldn’t say that to a lesbian” and they normally shut right up.

  • Akohk

    I truly understand you. I feel the same about babies and children, and I always did. As a little girl I didn’t even enjoy playing with a rubber baby doll… it seemed so damn boring and, quite frankly, pointless. I didn’t like to spend time around babies either. You see, I always enjoyed the company of adults and even elders. I felt I had nothing to share -or learn from- kids younger than I was -and sometimes even my own age!. Throughout my teens, everytime I said I didn’t want to marry or have kids, people would tell me I’d change my mind when I became an adult, fell in love and willingly embraced motherhood. Turns out I’m almost 33 years old and nothing’s changed for me. Little babies and children make me squeamish. Why should I want to interact with them? What can we share? Why should these little people interest me at all? I HAVE NO CLUE AND WILL NEVER DO. PERIOD. However, I feel happy when friends of mine get married and have kids, which has started happening very recently. But hey, I feel happy for them, because they are truly happy -even if their choices make no sense to me at all!. Unfortunately, I think I’ll have to start developing an aunty instinct or something for my future sisters’ and friends’ offspring… That’s something I’m afraid I can’t escape unless I move to the Antarctic Pole asap.

  • http://allysonmarrs.wordpress.com Allyson Marrs

    I love kids, but I may just love this article more.

  • Sarah

    “And it is a problem, isn’t it? Who doesn’t like babies?”

    It is definitely not a problem.

    This is how I see it – there are enough people having babies that the fact that I don’t want kids shouldn’t be an issue for anyone else. I would go get sterilized tomorrow if I knew of a doctor who would be willing to do it.

  • DL22

    I respect those who don’t want children, but those babies who make you ‘squeamish’ will grow up one day to be the nurses, doctors, caregivers, lawyers, etc. who take care of you in your old age. Society needs children who will grow up to be tax paying adults and subsidize Medicare and other entitlements- why do you think parents get a tax deduction for every child they raise? Because parents are raising the people who will run the country when we are too old to do it. Places in Europe and Japan are already suffering from problems that arise when women do not produce children- an aged population and not enough working adults to support the retired. So, while some point to having ‘mini-me’s’ as selfish there are others who believe that the truly selfish are those who choose to opt-out of the whole process, essentially getting a free ride from the system with no tax paying adult to replace them.

    • Tom

      “I respect those who don’t want children but will definitely find a way to undermine that decision…” ugh, seriously how are people who pay MORE tax getting a free ride?? Europe is in trouble because we’re single currency idiots, not because we have a population problem.

    • http://twitter.com/Amphx AnnamariaPhilippeaux (@Amphx)

      There aren’t enough people who don’t want children to make a big enough difference in the things you’re talking about. Overpopulation is a huge issue! I wouldn’t worry about a handful of people deciding to live their lives child-free affecting issues like taxes. Trust me, people who have boatloads of children for no other reason because they think it’s cute are a MUCH bigger problem. There is no obligation for people to have children, period. Parents who don’t want children and have them anyway put both themselves and their children in a horrible life situation, and it’s not fair to anyone involved. It’s not a better solution.

  • Tom

    “I respect those who don’t want children but will definitely find a way to undermine that decision…” ugh, seriously how are people who pay MORE tax getting a free ride?? Europe is in trouble because we’re single currency idiots, not because we have a population problem.

  • Jessica

    @DL22 – Are you kidding me? Aging population is due to the baby boom after WW2. It doesn’t mean as a society that we need to replace all of those people and that it’s the obligation of the youth to do so. As a parent, it is the obligation of such parent to provide for the child and send them down the path of being happy and successful, which in term creates a nice new tax payer.

    I feel strongly that my husband and I do not want to raise children for very selfish reasons actually. Simply put, we love our careers and our lives together as just the two of us. And yes, I will pay MORE taxes for that choice.

    Frankly, in my mind, those single parents that have children on the government dollar and choose to keep having children out of wedlock due to the idea of less government support while being married are what is taxing the system. Having an additional child out of wedlock shouldn’t have a dollar amount. In a perfect world, we should be making adult decisions, such as if you cannot afford to do so, you might not want to bear children. Or any children throughout your life at all.

  • Jessie

    Excellent article. I’ve never understood the appeal of pregnancy and child-rearing at all.

    This article reminds me of the “Why breed?” chart on the CHEM site:
    http://www.vhemt.org/biobreed.htm#instinct

    • Jessie

      (oops- that should read “on the VHEMT site”)

  • Saloni

    I love this article because a lot of my girlfriends talk about this sort of thing all the time (we’re all 21-22 years old, finishing up college). Personally, I think I want kids later on – but quite honestly, I think 22 is too young an age to make a decision either way. I don’t agree with people that tell you “Oh, you say that now” because this very well may be the decision you stick with. But I wouldn’t advise that anyone get sterilized at 22 because you just can’t know what you’ll want in 5,10, 15 years — we are SO young. In that same vein, I don’t think people should have kids at 22, either…just put such a huge decision off until you’re more mature and financially secure — foresight is severely limited right out of college.

    Oh, and another thing, I don’t think most women decide they want children “when they meet the right guy.” I think women who want children confirm that decision when they see a stable future for them and women who don’t want children continue not wanting them even after meeting Mr. Right. And some women who want children never meet Mr. Right but have children because they feel ready anyway!

  • Courtney

    I’ve always wanted kids. I don’t have much of a reason, I just do. However, I’ve seen what happens when a woman who doesn’t want children has them anyway, because it’s what is expected. My grandmother didn’t really want kids, but felt pressured by society and her husband and went for it. Though she loves her five kids, she often felt resentful of the life she felt forced into, and was distant as they grew up. I know that my dad loves his mom but to see them interact seems less like a mother/son relationship, and more just two adults with mutual respect for one another.
    On the other hand, my aunt didn’t want children, but after years of marriage she and her husband had a little girl. They couldn’t love her more, but are content with their one.
    I guess that every fit parent has love for their child, but no one should enter into that commitment without serious thought. It’s a big responsibility, and it isn’t just you that is affected.
    Thank you for writing this, though I don’t feel the same way I thought it was an extremely brave thing to do and the way you explained how you felt made a lot of sense.

  • http://gravatar.com/serenacalder sercal

    There are actually more people than you’d think that choose to live ‘child-free’ in order to decrease their environmental footprint… an extreme version is called the Voluntary Human Extinction Project. But I think for most people who cite this as their reason for not having kids, they were never going to in the first place, and the environmental concerns bolstered their decision. Anyways, that was tangential, but an interesting concept, I think.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=626659828 Jen Moon

    LOVE the article! My mom is pretty conservative but has supported me since I was 16 and decided I was never having kids. I love babies, kids, teens…as long as I can give them back! Makes me the best aunt in my group.

    That responsibility for another life is so much, I can’t imagine how often people take it on so easily. Amazing.

  • http://twitter.com/hereticaneue Herey (@hereticaneue)

    Yep. I’m almost 30 and I still don’t want kids. My mom even tried to guilt-trip me about it recently. Right, like I’m just going to give birth to a child that I’ll have to be responsible for for a very long time, just so she can play with a baby every now and then. No thanks.

  • LIS

    I’d love to have kids in the future, but I don’t ever question why other people don’t, or understand why others try to pressure them to. Hey if you feel so strongly against having kids, then please don’t ever have them! We don’t need more unwanted babies in this world!

  • Sin City Siren

    Great post. Wonderfully written. I’ve lived on both sides of the divide. Everyone was shocked when I changed my mind about having a baby because I had been so staunchly against it. But I don’t say that to “prove” that you will change. That’s BS. Change. Don’t change. Be true to you. The last thing the world needs is another baby with a parent who doesn’t want to be a parent. And, I say this with love and the wisdom of some age: Don’t be so hard on yourself, no matter what you do. You are so damn young! You’ve got lot’s of time!

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    [...] this: Back before I wanted a baby, I was exactly like this. I don’t say that as a slight, either. It’s a compliment. Just because I changed my [...]

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