You Should Have a Baby

In my thirty-two years, no one has ever said to me, "You should have a baby," in those exact words. What they have said is,"When are you going to start a family?" and "When do you think you'll have kids?"

Like lots of other demands, our culture phrases it in the form of a question but it's still an expectation. "How many children would you like?" doesn't really allow for an answer of zero.  I am one of those women who has always wanted to have children. I have always wanted a daughter. I have always wanted to adopt. I have all sorts of ideas in my head about what I want. In my deluded fantasy of life, I ordered two blond and blue-eyed daughters, the first to be born nine months after the wedding. 

I am also one of the lucky women who didn't get what I wanted when I wanted it. It took two years, a miscarriage, and a couple hiccups in order to get our beautiful flower baby. I could not be happier in retrospect. I learned a few lessons along the way about shutting the hell up. 

When the topic turns to babies in any company that isn't my very best friends, I shut the hell up. When someone tells me, "I don't want kids," you know what I do? I tell them that's fine. Or I smile. Or I shrug. I have seem older women try to hard sell babies on young women with a fervor that could impress a cult leader. Perhaps they aren't aware that there are seven billion people and human race is doing alright in the reproduction department. Perhaps they haven't seen the heartbreak of a disinterested or negligent parent or worse.

Probably they haven't been miscarrying into an industrial pad while well meaning old ladies ask, "When do you plan to have a baby?" as if the planning makes it so. Even in my darkest time of wanting a baby so badly, I always felt that wanting and not getting is still preferable to not wanting and getting. A bad parent is heartbreak for the child and society. My short experience with infertility has made me an unusual ally of the child-free by choice and has only strengthened my belief in reproductive choice. 

Having a baby was the best thing I have ever done. I am pretty sure that my cousin who lives in Central America and is finishing her dissertation will say the same about her doctorate when she gets it this spring. I am very glad that she has never tried to guilt me into getting an advanced degree. She has expressed to me that she doesn't want to have children. So what? That's her life. The only thing you have to do in your life is pay taxes and follow laws. The rest is is a choose your own adventure and just like those books, things don't always turn out the way you plan.