This Post Has Lots of Question Marks
Posted by Moose on March 27th, 2007. Filed under: Gene Pool.How do you decide that you really want children? That you’re not just blindly obeying a deeply entrenched instinct to breed and perpetuate the species, regardless of your own life and need for many free hours to watch cartoons? How can you adequately prepare for a new life – one that is completely unrecognizable? And also full of vomit?
Note to my mother: Don’t get too excited. Suppress the granny lust. I’m only thinking. I promise that when I do decide to have kids I will actually call you, not make you read it on my blog.
We talked years ago about the desire for small offspring, small offspring that I really hope won’t inherit my thighs. (Note to the thighs: Stop.) As per usual, I rambled on for minutes that turned into something closer to an hour, incoherent thoughts that were eventually convincing, if not exactly concise. As per usual, he summed up his thoughts in one sentence: “It’s a relationship you don’t get to have with anyone else.”
My relationships are very important to me. Occasionally they are even more important than The West Wing or my need to read an entire novel in one sitting. Here’s where I have to pause and gasp frantically for air: my current relationships can withstand being ignored for several days, even a month or two, if I need to hibernate.
Guess what! You can’t do this with a small child! And not just because it would probably land you in jail! I feel strongly that a child would have to be a first priority. Not the only priority, but there are only so many hours in the day. A few things that are important to me would have to drop off that list. Having a baby isn’t like taking up knitting. I can’t just devote a few hours a week and expect to have a cute scarf. Or baby. Whatever. I will be assigning most of my waking hours to a small being who requires my assistance in all bodily functions. I don’t always like dealing with my OWN bodily functions. Except the eating. I’m awesome at the eating.
Then we get to the emotions. If you know me, you know that me and the emotions, we are close friends. We snuggle and coo and make kissy noises to each other before I dump that bitch out the window with a stern admonition to never return. Five minutes later, I’m thrusting up the window and begging her to come back. Yes, she can bring all her friends, yes even Negativity, Paranoia, and Irrationality. From the beginning of this (hypothetical) child’s life to the very end of mine (one hopes), I will feel a range of emotions: love, guilt, fear, annoyance, adoration, insanity. I will be making choices, all the time. To flip or not to flip? Preschool or home school? Pot or LSD? (I mean, for the baby.) How will I know if these choices are right? How many hours will I spend worrying that I have destroyed my child’s chance for happiness because I took away the sippy cup too soon?
I’ve never in my life had to put another’s needs before my own. At least, not consistently. On an everyday basis. Every day for 18 years. 23 years if the kid is a slacker. I wonder if I’m ready to give up my freedom – not just some of my freedom but most of it. Probably all of it, at least for the first few months or years. Would it be better to wait until I’m 30? 35? Would I have more emotional maturity, more resources to draw on when I’m in day number three of no sleep and I’ve begun to hallucinate small green squirrels attacking my baby? Or, worse, attacking my lunch? Or should I give up this “emotional maturity” thing for the pipe dream it is? More importantly, will my mom still be willing to babysit on 30 seconds notice if I wait that long? I’m banking on the (possibly incorrect) notion that you aren’t ever ready for a baby until you HAVE a baby. So you get your ass ready because there is a small, new person screaming at you. Yes, it is your responsibility and no you can’t give it back.
Speaking of asses, I don’t know if I’ve properly enjoyed my unstretched skin and relatively compact limbs. Am I really ready to sacrifice my (mostly) flat tummy for a baby that may or may not scream its small screamy head off for the first eight months of its life?
Am I really that shallow?
(Yes.)
In my original life plan, I was going to be 34 and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize before having a baby. We’d live happily off the income of my numerous bestsellers and I could walk my infant past picture gallery of all the many countries I’d visited, including the North Pole and Arkansas. I would tell my small cherubic child, the one that never cries or poops, that someday it too would be a genius, win a Nobel Prize, travel the world and most likely become the first female President of the United States, the one goal I had decided to sacrifice in favor of securing my rightful place as number one jam maker in the county. Children like jam more than they like Presidents. Oh, the sacrifices I make for you, you poop-free, hypothetical child. I’ve decided to make strawberry jam rather than foreign policy.
I exaggerate. I’m not actually planning to win a Nobel Prize, nor do I ever intend to visit Arkansas. My life plan isn’t even terribly well thought-out. So I’m open to change. (She says through gritted teeth while hyperventilating.) I also don’t flatter myself that I will produce a great leader or this century’s answer to Beethoven. If genes prove consistent, I’m more likely to inflict the world with another Boston fan. I’ll just settle for not raising a serial killer. No, it isn’t likely, but someone changed the Zodiac Killer’s diapers. I can’t even ponder this without wanting to rip out my ovaries, much the way I do when I think of all the hormones. The excessive hormones, those I don’t do so well with even under normal non-pregnant circumstances, the ones that when pregnant will probably leave me sobbing on the floor about the miserable injustices of having a remote control that doesn’t grow its own batteries. Nor can I think about the many, many diseases that wait to strike small children, the plastic bags floating free before drifting onto their little heads to asphyxiate them, the deadly tags on the mattresses, the rats waiting to eat a small, tender face while I sleep. No, I don’t live with an infestation of rodents but YOU NEVER KNOW, DO YOU? Any one of these options, if thought about too long, is liable to make my head explode and shower gray matter all over the walls. I don’t think the dust buster is up for that.
I’m learning that life plans, like Nobel Peace Prizes, don’t always show up the way you expect them to. And disasters are inevitable, so I should probably just get over it.
Lost freedom and skin tone aside, I believe the relationship you have with your child is a very special one, different from any other you will ever have. This seems blatantly obvious, doesn’t it? Even with the inevitable sleeplessness, headaches, worry, vomit, and all the other things I can’t possibly imagine at the moment, I want that experience. I want that boundless love. I want it to carry me through the sleeplessness and the worry. (That’s what it does, right? Something must.) And, as I understand it, that love is also the only thing that keeps you from leaving your infant out on the curb next to the recycling for the racoons. I don’t even know quite how to explain this, but it feels like choosing life. (In the having a life sense, not the pro-life sense. Please don’t hurt me.) Often, I prefer to stay at home on the couch than go out where people are, or read a book rather than make a friend. In short, I like to hide. But having children forces life upon you in a very fundamental way, and I look forward to that.
But I’m delegating the vomit.
Related posts:
March 27th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
great. now i want jam. thanks.
i have also thought a lot about “The Child Question” over the last year or two, and i’m still pretty much on the fence.
on the one hand, i think it would be really fun to be a dad, and do dad things like make up outrageous stories instead of giving straight answers, perfecting the “pull my finger” technique, sneezing very loudly, etc. and of course, there’s the whole “hey there’s this little person here, and he/she is made up of bits of me and how freaking awesome is that”?
on the other hand, i’m not sure i’m selfless enough at this point in my life. there’s so much i’d like to do that would be sort of impossible (or at least extremely difficult and expensive) with a kid…
March 27th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Get to the nearest television and watch Supernanny immediately. That’ll stop this madness once and for all.
(p.s. sorry Moose’s mom)
(p.p.s. mmmmMMMM…jam…)
March 27th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
that post really pretty much describes all the random nonsense that goes through my head when I think about children. except that at the end I usually decide against kids and in favor of hiding. (not that I have anyone to have children with in the first place, so it’s mostly a moot point.) I’d hate to inflict my neuroses on a kid (not that it’s the worst thing that can happen; that’s what my mom did to me and I’m only marginally screwed up. right? right?) but I think I’d be constantly disappointed in myself for not keeping my emotions under control and being unable to create some kind of Leave-it-to-Beaver existence for the young’uns.
March 27th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Personally, I think the worrying is a good sign. People who DON’T worry make me worried. I think I have some of their kids in my class right now, and let me tell you – THEY SHOULD HAVE WORRIED!
You’d be one of the good ones, I’m sure.
March 27th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Thanks for the reassuring note to me. I can’t imagine many things more horrible than finding out about my coming grandchild on your blog!
As I’ve told you, I’ve never had a moment’s regret that I had you (and your brother)–DESPITE your crying over wrinkled socks; keeping me up all night when you were sick; nursing leisurely (for eight hours a day, every two hours at one point); having to take syrup of Ipecac (sp?) because you had eaten a leaf from a neighbor’s tree that might have been poisonous; calling me one evening from college in NYC complaining about your downed computer and your report due the next day so that I worried about it all night, when meanwhile a friend fixed the problem right after you hung up from talking to me but you neglected to let me know; and I could go on and on but this already probably doesn’t make much sense.
You will be an AMAZING mother. I remember going to the park with you and the two little girls you were a nanny to and being IN AWE of how loving you were and how beautifully you handled them. Your children will indeed be blessed to have you as their mother. (And yes, I’ll babysit on a moment’s notice.)
March 27th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
And you don’t get any kid do-overs, either. I hear you. The idea of being pregnant appeals to me. (Hey, honey! Our little combo being is growing inside me! Cool!) The idea of raising a child? Not so much.
March 27th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I keep wondering if the babysitting ruined me. The litterbox, oh, almost anything can happen in there. But the colors in the diaper? The nasal asphyxiation due to the phenomenal transformation of breast milk and baby carrots? (Did I mention also that neither of those were formulated as soylent green?) I am beginning to think I can handle most of this, but when 2 friends with their own offspring at different points in their lives recount the “explosive situation” in the restroom at Macys the other day, and the kinder who was rejected for not being pottytrained despite best efforts already, you cannot tell me that the diaper issues will be resolved once peeing on a stick for spectacular results. Also, I sometimes unvoluntarily toss cookies when someone else tosses cookies in my presence, I do not know how my mother did it.
One questions: can I teach the child to use the box?
March 28th, 2007 at 6:34 am
I totally know how you feel. I never thought I’d want kids or that I would be able to handle the huge responsibility (& the whining!) of kids. Then life took that decision out of my hands and now I have a 3 year old.
The worries that you have now are good. Like Sam said above, its the people who don’t worry that are trouble. However, I will say that after the baby is born, those worries only intensify. I went through a period where I worried all the time, but I think I’ve finally got it more under control.
And yes, the reason babies are made so cute is so you don’t just drop them off on a curb somewhere after a particularly difficult day. Just when you think you’re at your breaking point, they always do something that takes your breath away and reminds you how absolutely amazing kids (especially your own) are.
I think the thing that has gotten me through this the most so far is my mom’s reassurances that I really am doing a good job. And reading what your mom said above shows that you probably will be a good mother and will have tons of support (which really makes a huge difference).
So, in short (haha), I don’t know that anyone is ever 100% ready but when it happens things just kind of click. There really is nothing more amazing than watching a small baby turn into an actual thinking, creative person.
p.s. dirty diapers? never got used to them!
March 28th, 2007 at 7:55 am
My 18 year old daughter’s favorite response to anything I say or do is “oh great, another thing to tell my future therapist.” Ah, I have taught her well.
But really I think I did a pretty good job, even though I was only 22 when she was born and according to every person in my family I was the most self absorbed person in the world.
March 28th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Whatever you do – DO NOT GO TO ARKANSAS! They have DRY COUNTIES!! No booze in the county limits. And everything is fried. So you NEED beer! And you cannot have beer. That whole state is wrong. And I should know – I have family there.
March 28th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
I’ve yet to hear a tick or a tock from my biological clock. 31 years and counting. But this comment is meant to not be about ME, it’s meant to say that your mom’s comment was so lovely. Awww.
March 28th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Besides baking great chocolate chip cookies and creating contests to win said cookies, the fact you are THINKING and DEBATING issue makes me believe you could be a caring parent and the world would benefit from your gene pool.
April 3rd, 2007 at 7:54 am
First time commenter; Schnozz loves you so, I had to check you out and have been enjoying your blog for a few months. I felt compelled to weigh in here, for some reason.
It’s sort of funny because before we had children, my husband and I went through this whole litany of lists about why we were or weren’t going to do it. We wanted to have children for the “right” reasons, but the truth is, there really is no universally compelling reason for me to procreate. The world is already too full of humans; however good a parent I might be, someone else can do just as good a job; I’m not so special that I believe creating offspring will enhance the future of the world. After months of talking, we never did come up with a “reason” to have kids. And still, we did it. Why, right? I guess the biological impulse to procreate is a strong one, one that doesn’t necessarily listen to reasons and lists.
Not that the question about children has any right answer. And it seems your commenters have already detailed the ways that children are hard. And they are. But goddamn, if they aren’t somehow totally worth it, too. One of the really pleasant things about having children, that no one seems to talk about, is how raising them lets you return in many ways to the joys of your own childhood, to sand castles and blowing bubbles and kick the can and guilt free ice cream cones and afternoons at the swimming pool, to seeing the world fresh and amazing and new like your children see it, where squirrels are exciting and thunderstorms are an adventure and forts constructed from sheets and chairs become Peter Pan’s lair. Having children can be strangely healing, too, because it’s kind of like you get a do over of your own life through them (not in a creepy, helicoptering way, but in a “I’m making different choices this time” way).