Maternidad
What I want to hear when I tell you that I don’t want kids.
maternidad, la: motherhoodI’m on a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Berlin. A dad and his pre-teen daughter board my carriage. ‘Free seats!’. Someone’s excited. ‘Wait, daddy. I still need to put this up here’. The daughter is stuck by the luggage compartment, struggling to heave her unicorn suitcase onto the already wobbly pile. ‘No need. I can do it’. Decisive steps, a fatherly grip, everyone’s stowed safely on the train.
This scene, witnessed a few weeks ago, was the most recent time I felt certain that I don’t want kids. No matter how cute a suitcase they may carry. As I watch the Dutch countryside pass by, I think of all the reactions I have received in response to pronouncing that decision over the past 32 years.
‘But you had such a lovely childhood yourself!’ - So what?!
‘That would be such a waste of your genes!’ - Flirtatiously. Twice. By two different men. No comment.
‘I’m sure you’d find a compromise.’ - As a counter-argument to an inevitable separation should my partner want a child with me. And what compromise would that be? Unless we turn into seahorses and my boyfriend carries the child.
‘Just you wait until you hit 30. Tic toc.’
But it’s been almost three years since I turned 30. And I’ve kept my eyes peeled, taking in any cosy family scene coming my way. Is it hiding there that uncontrollable desire to procreate? Lurking behind the screens of stroller-pushing parents smiling blissfully at their phones? But nothing. To this day, my first reaction when someone tells me about a pregnancy is to ask whether the condom broke followed by a surge of panic should I ever suffer a similar fate.
Even as a child, I found my peers’ infantile behaviour bewildering. While others played with their dolls, I preferred to save the battery power needed to activate Baby Annabell’s novel cry mechanism by keeping my doll in its original box. And somehow I never flipped that baby switch. To this day, most people who know me would say that I don’t think babies are ... cute, to put it mildly. And yet, it’d be a misunderstanding to think that my rejection of motherhood is founded on a witch-like hatred of children. On the contrary, it’s motivated by love. Love for my own life and embracing the childfree self I see.
I love lying in bed in the morning after an hour of reading and picturing the years to come unencumbered by early childhood developmental needs. How many different careers I’ll try, cities I’ll live in, languages I’ll learn, friendships I’ll grow. My childfree future feels expansive and I can’t get enough of it.
Of course, I could probably also do all these things if I had children. But when I look into the exhausted faces of parents with kids, I wonder at what cost. Solutions-Sean would surely interject that if you’re still doing the maths, you’re not ready for a child anyways because the calculations will never work out in favour of children. But as I am not suffering from child-rearing-related sleep deprivation I can see this comment for the false dichotomy - (a) Ignore the costs and have children // b) Reject the costs and don’t - that it is. Because the only productive answer in response to someone stating that they are prioritising their freedom over motherhood is: How can we create a housing market / economy / world in which motherhood no longer feels like such a damn trade-off. So I opt for c) Rejecting the burden of childcare for myself and using that penned up maternal instinct (plus my great genes and trauma-free childhood) to try and improve life for all. Who knows, I might even find one or two compromises along the way.
