The Ambivalence of Parenthood
I'm 37. I could go either way and be happy. It's stressful as hell.
I didn’t grow up with an inner knowing that I wanted to have a kid. I also didn’t grow up with an inner knowing that I didn’t want to have a kid. So what does a person swimming in ambivalence do?
During my 20s, I thought I would probably have a kid someday. I didn’t reflect on why. I was never confronted with it until I fell in love with someone who had a vasectomy and was staunchly anti-parenthood. This relationship made me evaluate and interrogate my own desires, and whether those desires were actually mine or something thrusted upon me. Did I actually want a kid or was I just conditioned into thinking I wanted one because I’m a woman? I found it to be the latter. I didn’t want to end that relationship for a baby I’ve never met. I didn’t have that “I HAVE to be a mother” urgency that I know some people have. Though that relationship ended, it changed my perspective and I’m thankful I had the experience to really excavate my feelings and thoughts.
I have consistently dated people who don’t want kids. But sometimes, I wish they were slightly open to the idea. I have a hard time with absolutes. I like options. I like choices. I like to keep the doors (and windows) open. On the other side of this, I’m grateful that the people I date don’t want kids, because there is no pressure on my end. I don’t have to worry about whether I can get pregnant. I don’t have to think about the status of my fertility.
I have forever felt unsettled by the way others make this big decision by way of, essentially, not deciding. Obviously, this has nothing to do with me, but I do feel a pang of frustration, annoyance, resentment at people who decide without really deciding. The people who are mostly in their 30s, in heterosexual relationships, and who decide not to use birth control one day to see what happens. The folks for whom “falling pregnant” really does seem to be a fitting phrase as they seem to have no fertility issues or concerns. This non-decision ends up deciding for them. I have been immensely intentional in most areas of my life—almost to the point of it feeling nauseating. I have sometimes wished that I could leave various things up to “fate,” but I also know I don’t actually want it that way.
If I want to have a kid, I want to be as intentional about it as I possibly can. Though I typically lean towards not having one, the decision feels more difficult when I meet people who I feel like I could co-parent with in really beautiful ways. I have only dated two people who have made me feel this and neither wanted kids. It is more about the partner for me—especially since the U.S. generally treats parents (and children) like shit, so a good partner seems like it would be important.
I often think about and re-read a specific issue of Cheryl Strayed’s “Dear Sugar” column when I’m ruminating about parenthood or any other big life questions. In it, she writes: “Every life, Tranströmer writes, ‘has a sister ship,’ one that follows ‘quite another route’ than the one we ended up taking. We want it to be otherwise, but it cannot be: the people we might have been live a different, phantom life than the people we are.”
We each have a “sister ship” path in life that we can’t take. What would my life have been like if I stayed in Italy in 2006? What would my life have been like if I stayed in Chicago in 2012? What would my life have been like if I hadn’t been assaulted various times? Who would I be if I didn’t go to grad school and incur thousands of dollars of debt? Some of these were choice-less. I didn’t have an option. Some I did have options. Options feels good. They’re expansive, and in my experience, especially important for those of us who are survivors of sexual violence.
When I think about the “kid” question, it’s about choosing the path that has the least amount of grief attached to it. But, if you’re ambivalent like me, which path is that? I don’t believe in regrets so I know I wouldn’t regret whichever choice I make, but the FOMO around this is strong. Either way, I will miss out on something: whether I have a kid or whether I don’t. There is stuff to be lost and gained in both scenarios.
Strayed continues:
If I could go back in time I’d make the same choice in a snap. And yet, there remains my sister life. All the other things I could have done instead. I wouldn’t know what I couldn’t know until I became a mom, and so I’m certain there are things I don’t know because I can’t know because I did. Who would I have nurtured had I not been nurturing my two children over these past seven years? In what creative and practical forces would my love have been gathered up? What didn’t I write because I was catching my children at the bottoms of slides and spotting them as they balanced along the tops of low brick walls and pushing them endlessly in swings? What did I write because I did? Would I be happier and more intelligent and prettier if I had been free all this time to read in silence on a couch that sat opposite of Mr. Sugar’s? Would I complain less? Has sleep deprivation and the consumption of an exorbitant number of Annie’s Homegrown Organic Cheddar Bunnies taken years off of my life or added years onto it? Who would I have met if I had bicycled across Iceland and hiked around Mongolia and what would I have experienced and where would that have taken me?
There are so many things that terrify me about pregnancy, birth, and parenthood (especially since I live in a state that cares more about the fetus than the person carrying said fetus). But I am someone who has lived in a body that consistently feels terrified, so the fear around All Things Baby doesn’t necessarily help me rule anything out. I do firmly believe I can be happy in either scenario. I do firmly believe that my worth is not tied to hetero-patriarchal norms and expectations. I am, perhaps, lucky that my ambivalence shows up in this way—as a sort of subversive, I’ll-do-what-I-please-and-not-feel-bad-about-it way.
Lastly, Strayed says:
I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.
My ambivalence is the ship that carries me (for now, anyways), and really, what is ambivalence but the ability to be flexible, open, and bursting with options?
🎉 Things of the Week
Blogging is back and I’m so into it. Thanks to Raechel for sharing this
This gorgeous piece on grief and language by Mele Girma (also a Raechel share)
The most gorgeous Tweet ever:
Apparently Botox can affect the brain, which makes sense
Getting acquainted with the singer, Lingua Ignota, who a commenter described under a YouTube video of hers rather succinctly: “Her albums are like a therapy for depression, anxiety, and victims of toxic parents and spouses. Her style is like a baroque version of doom metal and DSBM.”
Playing Spiritfarer, “the cozy management game about dying.” So so so beautiful!
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I’ve been looking for these words - some validation and reasoning for my own feelings that were hard to properly grasp. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for writing this! I resonated with every word. At 38, it can sometimes feel like this gigantic, loaded decision that needs to be made sooner than later. I'm still unpacking all the options, and it's nice to know I'm not alone in the ambivalence <3