there’s nothing in life i want more than to be a mother
i don’t need a husband or penthouse apartment or fine jewelry. i could do without ever owning a luxury car or dining at a Michelin star restaurant i want to be a mother.
I think my dreams are boring. I want to be known for my art and to make a living off my work, i want to travel the world and live life to the fullest, and I want to be my own person with my own goals and aspirations beyond how i can serve others, but more than anything i want to be a mother. I’ve dreamt my entire life about the role.
Much like others my age I often question how realistic this notion is in this day and age. Is it ethical to bring a child into a dying world? To know that it will suffer and ache and hurt and still choose to create. But babies never stopped being born. Even in times of war and peril and uncertainty people still choose to bring life into this world. Perhaps it’s that we see children as a commodity and we don’t properly treat children with the respect they are due. Our most vulnerable populations are used as political pawns and props to shield against the vile hatred some hold for others.
We use children as shield against women, against transgender people, against regulation, against progress. How will the children be safe the right decries while doing nothing to confront the biggest issues affecting pregnant people and children. They wish to send children off to schools where they learn about the fires of hell, but not basic empathy. Wish to force religion down the throats of children, but fight to starve them and repeal free lunches around the country. Wish rather than to protect women who are pregnant but to allow those who have harmed them to continue their abuses under the guise of paternal rights. The number one way pregnant women die is at the hands of a partner. Most women who are sexually assaulted or abused know their attackers.
Rather than address these issues accountability is thrust solely on women. Pick better partners, wear more modest clothes, live your life on high alert, but why don’t you trust men to take care of you. Every woman i know was taught to never depend on a man, but simultaneously that under the law of the lord you must submit to your husband. Everything about heterosexual relationships is paradoxical. Every first date you go on could be you meeting the afterlife. Yet we are a culture so focused on romance and marriage and children. My brain rots thinking all day about my married life. About the children I will bear and the husband that will come home to me.
I wonder if it’s the culture that has groomed me to lay my ambitions down at the altar of Hera. For every travel I plan I wonder how would I fly I with my child. How would I entertain them as the plane took off and we headed to an entire new universe they couldn’t even fathom? Would I check a stroller or would I babywear? Would I raise them speaking English at home or maybe even Spanish? What ideals would I emphasize and what cultures would I choose to draw from?
How would I give them the most diverse and varied experiences? I would have to hide my pickiness and smile through textures I hated. I would have to learn how best to introduce color into their diets once I figured out how to incorporate solids. How to best avoid micro plastics and other toxins? I worked at crate & barrel this past holiday season and we often had very particular customers. One day in particular, I believe it was closing shift and as I was wrapping up towards the end of my day a woman came in outraged. She seemed to be of mixed heritage her hair a messy curly pattern I was all too familiar with, but her style was what could be considered earthy. She wore hiking sandals and a book bag, occasionally carrying a kid I think in many cultures would be a child too old and too tall to carry. She was insistent on returning these plates. For the life of me and the other cashiers, a girl about the same age as I maybe a year younger, we could not figure out why she was so frustrated. Then we called our manager over to help with the return, the woman also had no receipt which didn’t help, and she cried out, “the plates are toxic for children! How dare you sell them!”
Immediately after the incident I remembered clocking out and taking the train home. How often must that happen for her to get to that level of frustration. Everyday we learn as Americans how much is added to our foods, appliances, clothes, even our toothpaste that is toxic to us. Everything is plastic and has toxins and carcinogens. Our water supply has to be questioned and every filter claims to be better than the other. We’re sold problems and then solutions. Entire industries are propped up by our governments negligence
How do I combat my want for a child with the reality that I don’t feel comfortable or safe having a child at the very least in the state or city I live in. Even states where quality of life is much better, such as Massachusetts, where I lived for a year on a whim, the hospitals are so backed up I have friends who spent days in waiting rooms to be seen and weeks trying to get into see their specialists. My own boyfriend, raised in Massachusetts, exalted the care and the access to treatments and amazing doctors while simultaneously admitting that the waits caused so many to not seek them out. Yet where I grew up the most basic bureaucracies were backed up far worse. The services that people needed were filled with year long waiting lists and people who made just $50 more than the maximum to be able to get access to healthcare and food stamps, but struggled to afford both groceries and rent.
America hates women and children. It’s in every facet of life the need to control and dominate and restrict and regulate. Everyday since roe v wade fell has been hell on earth for those with the ability to get pregnant. I think about the 1 in 12 women in maternity deserts, parts of the country where access to maternal care such as ob-gyns is limited or completely inaccessible, and how as abortion becomes slowly criminalized more and more doctors will avoid these procedures for fear of being charged and losing their licenses. Our maternal death rates are staggering compared to those of most other western countries. Black women especially have some the highest maternal death rates in the developed world.
Everyday across the internet women flock to comment sections and forums to talk about how their pain, their symptoms, and their ailments are ignored or belittled. Told that the extra weight they carry or their female hormones are the problem not the very real diseases or disorders that are slowly breaking down their bodies. I want to be a mother so bad, but I wonder in 20 years or so when my daughter ventures into the world what kind of world will be left for her? Will she be allowed to receive an education, own property, have financial independence, have freedom of choice?
My only saving grace at this current moment is that I am not planning on having kids. That I have the choice to put them off and take my time. There’s no rush or pressure for now. But how do I combat my desire for the softness and warmth that comes with motherhood when faced with the stark reality of pain and never ending worry? The mothers around me couldn’t imagine not being mothers, but the childless women around me couldn’t imagine having children. I feel almost a guilt for wanting to have children, for wanting to be a mother.
For all my naïveté I am fully aware that it is not just the sweet tender moments. It is the sleepless nights that don’t end once your children are old enough to have their own children. It is teaching them how to breathe, walk, talk, live, grow, fail, try. It’s lessons that never end. It is a full time job to raise up a child. I have seen many grow up, been apart of the village that it takes. It’s not a simple task, but is anything worth doing easy?
