Let me preface this by saying that I only decided last year that I like olives, my feelings about Taylor Swift are a moving target ,and I fall on either side of the pineapples on pizza debate depending on the day. My mind changes a billion times a day, I will leave you to guess how many times a year it changes, much more how many times it has changed over the years.
When I was 9, I wrote a “when I grow up” composition and in it I mentioned that I wanted kids; one boy, one girl. I also stated that I did not want to get married and my teacher was so horrified, they made me write corrections and told my mum about my composition (story for another day). I am the age that I am now and my sentiments have changed somewhat but I still imagine that teacher would still be horrified.
Over the past three years, I have had this feeling creep over me. I say creep because even as it approached, I was apprehensive about it. But now I feel like I have nurtured it long enough to be able to talk about it. Over the past three years, I have been settling into the acceptance that I perhaps do not want to have children.
Now, I love kids. I might go so far as to say that I am good with them but that is not my conclusion to draw. In loving them and in spending time with the children that I get to spend time with, one thing becomes glaringly clear to me; although I enjoy children, I don’t know if I am the person to raise them.
The level of selflessness that motherhood requires is not something I have. I believe I am an inherently selfish person and I have to actively work at being selfless. Somedays I win, sometimes I lose and I am okay with that. However, children require constant and consistent selflessness, and I fear the kind of parent I would be on days when I lose my battle against my selfishness. In the very worst case, they would require a complete surrender of my life . My life is nowhere near where I want it to be, but I still like it an incredible amount. I don’t have the altruism to forfeit that.
I also feel like I am already late to this party. Even if I decided to be with child this very instant, I would have the baby at 31 and that would mean I am actively parenting until I am 49, at the very least. I would have to put them through college, also at the very least until I am 53 and come on, the economy being the economy, I will be taking care of this person into my 60s (says the girl writing this from her mother’s house). It just feels like such a long term commitment and I don’t know if I am wired for that.
Equally, I have not met a person that I would want to live with two of. I have known people, tried to negotiate a life with some of them. It has been good for the most part. But not so good that I want to make a miniature version of them and live with both versions for unomphela. I also understand that parenting is a two person job and it requires teamwork. I am a teamplayer but sometimes team players don’t show up. They leave, they die, they get into accidents and after that, its just you. I would not know what to even do with that.
My biggest fear however is I know that I would project so much onto my child. I have poor self control and everything that I feel I fell short on would be projected onto my child. I really see myself as an overly involved, overbearing mother and no child needs that. The downside of this is that I fear I would eventually be so resentful of my child if they didn’t become all the things that I want them to be. All coming from a good place but the result would be disastrous.
Ultimately, if it came to it, I think I would be a good mother. Maybe not a great one, but I would do okay. I, however, do not know if I would necessarily be a happy one. For the reasons I have already mentioned, I don’t know if I could simultaneously be a mother and be a happy person. Important to highlight is that this is just me right now. My mind could change as it has a thousand times before. My maternal instincts could kick in tomorrow, and I may choose the potential joy of the unknown over the guaranteed comfort of the known.
I am, of course, not oblivious to the beauty of motherhood. I have a mother, I have friends who are mothers, family members who are parents, and I see it whenever they talk about or are around their kids…they are held to the ground by something other than gravity (shoutout Twilight), and dare I say, they have evolved into their best selves as mothers, and I love it. They thrive as mothers. I just don’t know if that would be my experience.
This isn’t to start another fight between having and not having children, y’all can have 15 kids apiece or decide to raise llamas for all I care. I am sharing my current thoughts, they may change, they may not. I just like to be able to answer the question “why” whenever it is presented to me and it has been a couple of times.
Above all, this was prompted by this heartbreaking poem I saw on tiktok:
