Ugh.... tired... er, tired but childfree.

[flexagon]

So on Friday I went to TKD against my better judgement. Yesterday I woke up with grand plans to do the same, but my body quickly informed me that no such thing was happening. So I dragged myself out to the couch and lay unmoving for 3 hours while I finished reading The Dispossessed, then went yipes! and scurried to get on the commuter rail to Sharon and my dress fitting. That was fun, as I now have hope that I won't be showing the guests more of me than they'll enjoy seeing, and the dress really looks great; and I got to go to a neat fabric store where we got a pre-made (but not pre-attached-to-anything) veil that matches the dress. Mmm, pretty... must go to bead store soon to buy sparklies for the veil. Dinner, home, join rather furious web discussion of The Dispossessed, sleep.

Today I feel much less zonked, though my hamstrings still hurt from last Wednesday. Who took out my muscles and gave me gummi worms, huh? Actually, this still feels better than it used to after too many wheel kicks, so I can't say there hasn't been progress. I couldn't do much in the way of SLDLs when I lifted today, though.

If anyone wants food for thought... I finished The Skeptical Environmentalist today and I thought I'd be writing up that review, but what I really ended up writing was the "why I'm childfree" story I promised to the nokidding.net guy. I guess I felt like doing it, not least because I feel I'm done thinking about the issue for now. Doing the promised write-up was sort of the last thing I wanted to do before dropping it for a long time, although I can still understand why something about all my friends' babies, and missing a pill, and all of HLM's friends not having babies, stirred it up from the bottom of my brain pan. So, here it is, and feel free to comment.

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[Soyfetus]'s Story

I was raised in the northwest, the only child of two strict but loving parents. I wasn't happy--I was too poor, too smart, too uncool and too unskilled at social interactions for my peers to like me. I didn't understand, and still don't understand, my parents' decision to keep our family as poor as they did; it had harmful repercussions that are still coming to light. Suffice it to say, I wanted to get out of there and pursue a career path that would be far more prosperous, and because I was intelligent, I was able to do it.

During my early years of college, when I was discovering what it's like to be among one's real peers, and life had finally done some flowering for me, I was with someone to whom it was incredibly important that he become a father. Before that, I hadn't encountered someone with such a strong opinion either way, and my own opinion wasn't well-formed beyond not yet, so I spent a few weeks doing some serious thinking. I read everything I could find about childbirth in The New Our Bodies, Ourselves, and A Midwife's Story by Penny Armstrong, and I spoke with my mother and a few other women about what it was like to be a mother. My mother even got a friend of hers who was a nurse to write me a letter about how births usually went in her hospital. (I was afraid of labor and tried hard to envision it as an empowering, bearable thing at least as often as I imagined it going horribly wrong.)

I thought about all of it very hard. In the end I realized that my negative gut reactions were being backed up by my mental ones, and decided I didn't want children. Here are a few of my reasons:

• The sheer amount of time and money it takes to raise a child is overwhelming, and kids don't always turn out as one would like. I don't feel inclined to spend so much of my life writing on a blank slate when I could be working on someone I already know is finally coming out okay--myself. I know I would be hugely resentful of the time and attention a child would demand of me.
  
• I don't really like children anyway. I get very impatient, very quickly, with their huge amount of energy combined with their lack of understanding and cruelty. And there's no need to even go into how I feel about baby fat and baby drool--it's not pretty! As a result of these attitudes, I'm almost sure I would be a bad and probably abusive mother. (A terrible person? Hell no. At least I'm seeing this probability and acting to keep it from happening. A terrible person would say "oh, with mine it would be different" and end up shaking her infant to death.) I didn't have a very happy childhood myself, and hate the idea of causing someone else to have an even worse one, but I'm sure I would, because the damn kid would be making my life hell, and.... I'd be bigger. What an awful series of thoughts. :o
  
• I don't want to go through labor. Anyone who's ever seen a woman in labor knows this isn't a trivial reason! I don't want to go through that much pain; I don't want my hipbones moved apart; I don't want to gain weight and lose definition in my abs. I've spent too many years in the gym making my body into what it is--I don't want to lose it all to a 6-pound parasite.
  
• Despite all of the above, if I had a child I would probably end up loving it anyway, in a certain way. Most people do end up loving their children--and how terrifying! The freedom to love who I choose is one of the things I most value about adult life. I don't want to end up like my father, who sometimes spends ten minutes denouncing people who live where I live, vote as I vote, and believe as I believe and then says "Of course I love you, honey--you're my daughter!".
  
• I do want to become financially comfortable, have an adventurous and satisfying marriage, travel the world and have a productive and creative career. I want to read books and write books and spend time in the gym and enjoy conversations with my friends. All this will be easier, far easier, without children, especially the "good marriage" part. (I was a good kid, and I saw the kind of conflict I caused between my parents.)
  

I did have one good reason to want children (aside from my current partner's desire to do so), and that was wanting to pass on my genes. This is a pretty standard Darwinian urge, and besides that, I knew I was healthy, attractive, and intelligent. It seemed like a shame not to pass on at least a little of that, knowing that more stupid people than smart people are now breeding in the US, and so it was at that point that I became seriously interested in egg donation. I replied to a couple of the want ads that came out in our college newspaper, but nothing ever came of it.

A few years passed. I broke up with the daddy gotta-be, graduated from MIT and formed a new relationship with someone who would turn into a screaming ball of nerves if he became a parent (you should see the way he worries about our cats). I had thought it would be hard to find a man who didn't want to be a daddy, but it really was no harder than finding one who was compatible with me in other ways; hard enough, but once I had found the one, I'd found the other.

When we had been together for two years I got an email from an old friend, a gay man I had gone to high school with. We struck up a conversation, and soon he mentioned that he and his partner wanted children but obviously had some hurdles to overcome, being gay. Oh, I replied, I'd love to donate you an egg, but the kid would need braces and contacts, and anyway you'd have to find someone else to actually carry it, because I'm not about to go through that. He wrote back saying that the two-woman system is actually the best way for gays to end up with legally solid custody of a child, and asking if I had been serious; I had been. And so we decided to make a baby together. It took time to find an agency, a gestational carrier and a clinic--I was 22 when we agreed to do it, 23 when my eggs were harvested and 24 when the baby was born.

My egg donation probably isn't the interesting part to people reading this on the NO KIDDING! page, so I will simply say that it hurts, but not nearly as much as pregnancy and labor. I had to give myself injections for a few weeks. My parents freaked out when I told them what I was doing, and one of them even threatened suicide, but I stood firm and they both eventually calmed down. I got to meet the gestational carrier, who at 27 had two children of her own and now wanted to help someone else. And at the end of it all, I knew that I'd passed on my genes and placed the resultant child in a home where she was very wanted and would be raised far better than I could ever do it. I have no doubts whatsoever that this was a good thing to do, and the open nature of the donation makes it even better. My bio-kid will never have to wonder where she came from or what her biological mother is like, because she will have the opportunity to know me. She'll never have to wonder whether she was wanted, because she'll know her daddies spent tens of thousands of dollars just to bring her into the world. Raised in a gay household, she'll learn tolerance and acceptance of variety in a way my parents were never able to teach it to me.

This first baby is almost two years old now. I've met her once; it was a nice experience, although I was a little uncomfortable with her as I am with most babies. She has eyes just like mine, though, which is neat. We're planning to make one more baby next year, this time using the other man's sperm, and after that I will look into the Essure procedure for permanent birth control. Two passings-on of genes is an appropriate limit for someone interested in maintaining a stable human population, and now that I've seen how rewarding open egg donation is, I have no particular desire to also do an anonymous one. My parents, who have divorced (and one remarried) in the meantime, are now fine with all this, although I'm marrying my partner in a couple of months and my fiancé's mother isn't very happy with my lack of desire to "give her grandchildren." I have explained to her that I really think having a child would destroy my life as I want and need it to be, and I'm hoping that over time, as she sees that her son is happy with me and our life together, she'll get over it.

My biggest worry now is that doctors will give me a hard time with getting sterilized after my second donation. If all goes well, I'll be 27, which the doctors will probably see as "having plenty of time to change my mind." I don't see any reason for staying on the pill longer than I have to, though, and luckily there are quite a few doctors in my area who are already doing Essure. I am hoping that one of them will see reason and plug me up. I don't see the decision to not have kids as such a big deal, really--it makes as much sense to me as my decision to get an engineering degree, to get a cat, to not smoke, to do all the other things that have made my adult life so much happier than my childhood. I don't think about it all that much. It's just one of the things I've decided makes sense.

To those who are sitting on the fence with respect to having children or donating eggs, I urge you to take advantage of the childfree information sites. Take the parenthood quiz and consider how you feel around children. Think about how you might feel knowing that your genetic child was out there somewhere but you would never meet him/her (unfortunately, almost all egg donations are still anonymous, so that would probably be your situation, unless you have infertile friends you can talk to about it). Most importantly, consider all your options, not just the usual ones. If you are concerned about population growth or have something genetically wrong with you but want children, consider adoption. If you want to bear a child but don't want it to be your child, I happen to think you're crazy, but consider gestational surrogacy--it's in demand. If, like me, you would like to pass on your genes but don't want your own child, consider egg donation. If you have ideas and values you'd like to pass on, consider being a teacher, mentor or scout leader. Don't be trapped into thinking you have only the two basic options--to kid or not to kid--and even more importantly, don't be trapped into thinking you only have one. You have many.

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I suppose I'll catch hell for the "6-lb parasite" bit, but... that's a part of how I feel, and brutal honesty is part of this. I'd be curious to hear what you guys think about the kids issue--bluechromis is the only one I even have a clue about, but all of us are at an age (if not necessarily in a position) to be thinking about it, no?

Comments

Doh.

[hiddenbear.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the hams! If you have to take a day off though, today was a beautiful one to do it.

nokidding article

[hiddenbear.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. I think that I had heard most of your arguments in the past, but it was good to see them laid out in one place. Your past was new to me, so that helped fill in the picture.
I have always found your views on kids to be enlightening. Before I knew how strong your conviction was, I was dubious. But once I saw it in your eyes, I knew that you had thought it out and that got me thinking. You were the first person I knew who felt that way, and it opened my eyes up to the possibilities.

In general, I think that I have a very simplistic view on the kids issue. Growing up, I always pictured myself having kids at some point. Although I know that I am not good with them now, I am mostly confident that given experience with my own, I would quickly learn and my nervousness would fade away.
Lately I've had to rethink some of my views of the future though. I had never thought that I would be single at 26. I certainly thought I would have kids by 30.
However, my single status seems unlikely to change in the near future, and I'd put the probability of my unmarried status remaining past 30 at about .99.
Given that, I've had to think about what life would be like without kids. Donating sperm would not quell my desire for children, since it isn't a gene-based desire. Actually, I feel there are enough problems with my genes that I would only trust myself to be able to get my offspring over them.
Both my brothers are married, and I'm sure I'll have a niece or nephew within the next five years. Perhaps at that point I will be able to get my kid-fix in with their kids, and my desire for my own will subside.
However, it is still something that I long for, and the possiblity that I won't ever have them scares me. For now, I am extremely happy, and having kids would, in many ways, only interfere with the things that make me happy. However, I feel that ten years from now, if my life is still the same as it is now, I will be quite bored with it.
When I lay it out like that, it makes it seem that I want kids to keep my life from getting boring ... how selfish! But perhaps being selfish isn't totally wrong, and I am confident that I would be a very loving and giving father.
Given that marriage is a ways away for me (if at all), and that kids are quite a bit further (again, if at all), I know that I have a lot of time to keep thinking about this all, and that is a very good thing!

Re: nokidding article

[flexagon]

You do have a simplistic view, but more than likely a functional and healthy one. I've only read a couple of well-reasoned arguments for why people want to have kids (just because there's no particular pressure to explain that decision), and both have been in books about people who are adopting them. The books I'm thinking of are The Kid by Dan Savage and The Martian Child by David Gerrold. In both cases a prime motivation is the desire to have someone to remember you when you're old and/or dead, and another is to have something to do with your life after you get done "playing" in early adulthood. So, your reasons, and your intuition that your life as it is now would be unsatisfying after 10 years, are quite normal, and I think you'd be a great dad. One thing I should have mentioned--and still will since I haven't actually sent this to NO KIDDING yet--is that parenthood/teaching is possibly the most important job in society. It should be done right, and it should be done by those who love the idea. That probably means you! (My personal bet is that you will indeed be married by 30, because you have a kindness that just shines... and all it will take is one person who gets tired of being with testosterone-crazed assholes and realizes she wants someone she can talk to. But I realize that person has not come out of the woodwork yet.)

At any rate, I'm glad my story is eye-opening. As my last paragraph says, I think too many people don't think through all their options (as for you--you could be a single-parent dad through at least two different avenues, adoption or the exact bio-kid route E and V went through, if you were to decide that's more important than finding a partner first. It'd be hard, but there you go... options, options.)

I really admire you

[webfaery.livejournal.com]

There are far too many women out there who have kids, but shouldn't. It's definitely not true that all women have a maternal instinct.
A terrible person would say "oh, with mine it would be different" and end up shaking her infant to death.) I think there are a lot of women who don't even make a conscious decision about having children. They get pregnant and have children because that's what women do. There is no thought process that goes into it. When I first got my green card we were living in South Carolina. I wanted to work, so I got a job at the local school district. I survived about 1 day of substitute teaching. That was a nightmare. I have no teaching qualifications, but that didn't matter. All I had to do was pass a test. I got such a high score on the test I just about blew their minds and they offered me a job in the special services office. The school district was rural, poor, predominantly black. Part of my job was to set up appointments for homeschooling for the pregnant schoolgirls after they had their babies. It blew my mind that so many children were having children of their own. These were mostly kids from single parent families. A mother and her 4 children living in a single-wide with her sister and her 3 children and the grandmother as well. Then as soon as the girls are physically old enough to get pregnant, they do. They have babies so they have someone to love. They have no idea what's involved. They go from dolls to babies. It was so sad - and so scary to see that.

There is a huge amount of pressure on women to have children. If a woman has been married for a couple of years and is still childless, they are continually asked, "when do you plan to start a family?". If a couple is still childless after a few years, it's usually assumed that they want to get pregnant but can't, for medical reasons. I'm glad to see the your convictions are strong enough that you won't be swayed.

I have 3 sons, aged 18, 20, 22. I have no contact with them at all. It breaks my heart. I was married to an extremely wealthy control freak. When I divorced him, he made my life miserable. He paid the boys to live with him and to misbehave for me. They had all the money and all the 'toys' they wanted if they kept him happy. They got nothing from him if they did anything to make me happy. My decision to move to the States was extremely difficult, but I had a chance of happiness. I kept as much contact with my boys as I could, but when I'd call them I'd get nothing but abuse. I won't go further into those details except to say that when we moved to Utah, my ex started tearing my letters up and sending pieces of them back. I admit that I made mistakes, I'm not totally blameless in the whole situation. I sometimes think that I wasn't a great mother, tho' my friends who have known me for many years disagree with that.
Before I met my current husband I had a tubal ligation. I didn't trust my hormones. I didn't want to get to 40, fall in love and decide I wanted more children. I took control of my life. It just so happens that I am now married to, and very deeply in love with, a man who has no desire to have children. I think it is probably one of his worst nightmares. I have had a few emotional times when I've wished I could have another child. Mainly in the first year or two after I moved over here. I was missing my children so much, it was almost unbearable. Also, there was a time last year when I had a small yearning for a child. I think that finding myself so strongly attracted to another man kicked those hormones into high gear again. I am more than a little bit glad that I had myself immunised all those years ago (not that I would have allowed myself to becaome pregnant in that situation). Letting my hormones take control would be the biggest mistake I could make.

Congratulations for knowing your own mind, for being realistic, for doing the research, and being strong enough to say no to having kids.

Re: I really admire you

[flexagon]

I have 3 sons, aged 18, 20, 22. I have no contact with them at all. It breaks my heart.

Jesus, what a sad story. I had no idea! Children certainly don't always turn out the type who will dote on you in your old age... though in this case it sounds like the husband was the real lemon rather than the children themselves. :( I have very little to say except it would be nice to think they might want more contact at some point in the future. Maybe, maybe. Money can speak very loudly though.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your stories--that is valuable to me. Women's stories, added up over time, contain so much wisdom. It seems like we as a gender have seen it all. Reading what you said, in particular, really helped me see how the baby urge could come and go according to life situation, loneliness, sexual urge. That does make sense. (And it was wonderfully responsible of you to recognize that before it happened and act on it.) I'm sure being a good mother is very difficult--equally sure that you would have given it your best shot, which in most areas is damn good. I was a lousy daughter and I know I would continue the cycle--but bleah, we talked about that already.

Thanks for your support and, again, for sharing.