We know it, women have a biological clock. And even if it’s not ticking very hard yet, it feeds a lot of talks after reaching a certain age. You should know all about your child’s lifestyle.
Now that I am in my 30’s, there is a question that comes almost every time I am having a drink with women my age: and you, do you want to have kids?
This question came up a few times when I was in my 20’s, but way less often. And it wasn’t a real question at this time, more a hypothetical future exercise, like what we would do if we won the lottery.
At this question, I always answered the same thing: I would like to have one, at some point, but not now.
It was a question for the future
My 30th birthday came, then my 31rst, my 32nd… And I was still single. I didn’t feel the pressure too hard, but still, deep inside, I had some kind of a retro-planning in my mind. If I want to have a child at 37 maximum, I have to start trying by 35.
So being married by 34 we can’t just jump into all of that, we have to take some time to know and enjoy each other, travel, live together so moving on together when I’m 32 which means that I have to meet him well, last year.
It didn’t fit. So, moving on in time, I had to accelerate my retro-planning: we can get married faster; we can take a little less time enjoying each other… However. I didn’t feel that pressure all day long, but it certainly was there. I wasn’t desperate to find someone new, but I certainly hoped for it to happen soon enough.
And it fed a lot of talks with my girlfriends
Since my 32nd birthday, I met the love of my life and we got married pretty fast. One could say that my planning is back on track. But still, my answer has yet not changed: later, sure, but hell, not now.
Because I feel that I’m not a grown-up yet. I don’t have the room, the time, the patience, hell, I don’t have the skills. But mainly, I don’t feel that I want to.
I never actually wanted it, like feeling it in my body, dreaming of it, visualizing it. But I thought that this urge would come with the age, the growing-up, the right partner, that my biological clock would bring it to me at some point. So, I wasn’t worried: I don’t want it now, but sure, at some point, I will.
Now, I’m 34, I found the right partner and I have my life together (ish). Now the worry is not “will I be able to do it” anymore, but “will my biological clock wake up before it’s too late?”
I have some friends who don’t want to have kids and to be honest the first time that one of them confessed it to me, it was kind of a shock. Of course, women have the right to control their bodies, and I’m sure a woman can be perfectly happy without kids.
But when a 25-year-old friend tells you that she doesn’t want to have kids that are somehow different I had never wondered which ones of my friends wanted kids, and which ones didn’t. This probably means that deep down I assumed so far that all of my friends wanted kids. That’s how all women are supposed to be, right?
Wrong. Well, should be wrong at least. Yet, I feel that there is still some kind of shaming of women who don’t want to birth their 1.8 babies. They are considered selfish, careerist, a little bit less than women.
And that’s without the pressure of parents who want to meet their grandchildren.
My mother is funny, she reverse-pressures me. She wants so bad to show me that I can do whatever I want and that she’ll support me whatever choices I make, that’s cute. She always says things like “oh I would be very okay not having grandchildren”, even when nobody asked anything. In these times, well, I feel the pressure. I want to shout “hey! I’m here Not dead Uterus still working!”
But, I don’t say anything. I don’t want to open this debate.
Or maybe I do. Having an open talk about it seems healthier. The fact that neither my parents nor my husband’s parents asked us about it makes me feel that there is some kind of taboo around this question As if they didn’t dare to ask the question because they were afraid of the answer, thinking that I’m probably too something or not enough something else to want to have kids.
What about you dear readers, do you want to have kids? Are you still hesitating? Did you make the choice not to have children? Or maybe you want it and are afraid that it’s not going to come?
