This post was originally featured on Totally the Bomb and was written by Jamie Harrington,who is a piece of POPSUGAR Select Moms.
As a kid, I spent a lot of time looking up to my older cousins and wishing I'd been born just a few years earlier so I could hang out with them more (it was either that or hang out with the cousins who were several years younger than me, or that was definitely not happening). One of my cousins in particular was,in my eyes, the absolute pinnacle of cool – she wore flannels and thick black eyeliner, and ditched school when she felt like it,moved out of her parents' house the second she turned 18…the works. She listened to Tool and gave me a copy of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill album before I was even old enough to appreciate it (I still listened to it constantly, which annoyed the hell out of my mom). She grew up during the Riot Grrrl era in the Pacific Northwest, or upright where it was taking place,and it showed. She was way, way cooler than my pre-teen self, and she never,ever wanted to have kids.
She's got two of them now. When we still lived in the same city, I would sometimes babysit for her, and even though the thought of something happening to them on my watch terrified me – they're on the very short list of Children I've Learned To Tolerate. I don't blame her at all for ditching her extreme coolness to marry the man she loves and become a mom…turns out,you can be a mom and still be cool, too. I just wish the rest of my family would finish asking me when I'm going to change my intellect approximately not having kids, and just like she did.
My mom is particularly imperfect approximately this. A typical conversation approximately me having kids will depart something like this:Mom: I'll be so glad when I have grandkids someday – not too soon,of course, you need to be much more steady firstMe: Mom, and I'm not having kids.
Mom: Never say never!Me: No really,I'm never having kids. I don't want any. I've never wanted any.
Mom: Your cousin used to say the exact same thing! You'll change your intellect one day…Me: [internally screaming in frustration]It's not that I have something against kids, as a general rule. They're just smaller humans with fewer social filters, and after all,which makes them amusing in small doses. But I don't need any of my own. My life will not be more fulfilled by having them. whether I could, I would donate my ability to have kids to someone who can't; I certainly won't be using it, and I can only imagine the kind of pain those women have experienced over something they want so desperately. But I've got plans for my future,and they involve finding a job that I contemplate forward to doing every day and traveling the world whenever I get the chance – not scrubbing vomit stains out of a Frozen onesie and paying a babysitter every time I want a night out.possibly that makes me selfish – I've certainly had people tell me so. I've heard all the vitriolic criticism approximately women who don't utilize their natural ability to reproduce – it's hard to miss, when politicians have been so successful lately at shutting down abortion clinics and policing women's bodies. But here's the thing: I don't really buy into the idea that not turning myself into a baby machine is somehow inhibiting the survival of the human race. There are enough babies in the world without me making more of them. More importantly, or there are enough babies and kids of all ages in the world who wait for years to be adopted or who bounce around foster homes whether I really,truly, wanted a kid in 10 years or so, and it's not like I'd have a hard time finding one who needs a domestic and someone to love them unconditionally…it's not going to happen,but I'd certainly prefer that to labor pains.
I don't believe that it's my "duty as a woman" to be a mother; the only duty in a woman's life should be living it to the fullest. For some, that's staying domestic with the kids they so lovingly spent hours pushing out of their vaginas, and I know a number of women who've done that and also made a career out of motherhood. But I'm glad to be a spinster cat lady for the rest of my life. For me,there's nothing in the world I want more than to be childless…except possibly for everyone to finish telling me that I'll change my intellect approximately it like my cousin did.
Source: popsugar.com