Procreative Chance
Back in Seattle, I was friends with a married couple that had been together since they were like, twenty-one and nineteen or something crazy like that. The last few times I hung out with them before I left for the East Coast, the question of whether or not to have a baby was being bandied about rather heavily. I have since lost contact with them, so I don't know the outcome of their debate. I do remember quite clearly the husband's reason for waiting: he wasn't ready, i.e. he didn't feel grown-up enough. Can any of us ever be totally ready?
I do wonder at the element of chance that is involved for most people when it comes to having babies. For starters, there are those of us that comprise the "oops" crowd: Big J and I certainly didn't intend to be six months gone on our wedding day. Pretty much everyone I know who has children is also in this group. Then there are people who plan it, the people who put it off, the people who plan not to do it, and there might actually be a few people who don't bother to give it any thought at all. The problem is that you can start off in one of these groups (I have planned my whole life to have babies, but wasn't planning to have Little J when I did) and wind up someplace completely different. And it changes from one pregnancy to the next.
More specifically, I wonder at how all this possibility affects women. There are so many reasons now to put it off: career, education, spouse, lack of spouse, lack of maturity, lack of funds or health insurance or stability. Obviously, there are a lot of folks who don't take any of this into consideration, or aren't in the mindset at all when making the coital decisions that lead to the "oops". But because a baby can completely derail all our well-laid plans, shouldn't we be thinking about it and helping our daughters think about it from the moment we begin menses? I'm going down a more serious path than I meant to oringinally, but my interest remains. The universe seems such a fickle and flighty thing, so can any of us really "plan" to have children?
How about all of you? What are your stories? I'm really curious to hear what has motivated other people to make the choices they have, so feel free to go on. And what do you think of this whole element of "maybe" involved?
I do wonder at the element of chance that is involved for most people when it comes to having babies. For starters, there are those of us that comprise the "oops" crowd: Big J and I certainly didn't intend to be six months gone on our wedding day. Pretty much everyone I know who has children is also in this group. Then there are people who plan it, the people who put it off, the people who plan not to do it, and there might actually be a few people who don't bother to give it any thought at all. The problem is that you can start off in one of these groups (I have planned my whole life to have babies, but wasn't planning to have Little J when I did) and wind up someplace completely different. And it changes from one pregnancy to the next.
More specifically, I wonder at how all this possibility affects women. There are so many reasons now to put it off: career, education, spouse, lack of spouse, lack of maturity, lack of funds or health insurance or stability. Obviously, there are a lot of folks who don't take any of this into consideration, or aren't in the mindset at all when making the coital decisions that lead to the "oops". But because a baby can completely derail all our well-laid plans, shouldn't we be thinking about it and helping our daughters think about it from the moment we begin menses? I'm going down a more serious path than I meant to oringinally, but my interest remains. The universe seems such a fickle and flighty thing, so can any of us really "plan" to have children?
How about all of you? What are your stories? I'm really curious to hear what has motivated other people to make the choices they have, so feel free to go on. And what do you think of this whole element of "maybe" involved?
We were big time planners, but in the end there was a small amount of Oops to it too.
When we first got married, we sat down and mapped out when we should have a child (we just wanted one -- so far that has held). The least disruptive time, relative to his grad-school/postdoc, seemed to be right when I turned thirty. So we waited until then, and started trying right on schedule. Unfortunately, two things came up that we hadn't anticipated: 1) Scott's experiment was at a stage where he could start looking for faculty jobs a year early, so that if he found one we would be moving when the baby was very young, and 2) it took me a few months to get pregnant. Not that it wasn't still easy, relative to the struggles a lot of people go through, it's just that it wasn't part of the plan, and it meant, in the end, that we put off moving for a few months so the baby could be born.
So yeah, for all our careful planning, we still managed to have a baby at about the most inconvenient time possible.
Posted by
Anonymous |
8:00 AM
You're totally on the other end of the spectrum from us! I can't imagine giving it quite that much thought as to when. Even now, thinking about starting to get prego w/#2 around LJ's third birthday seems too concrete. I just don't think there's a "good" time to put your entire life on hold and have a baby.
But it is certainly worth it for me.
Posted by
Mel |
9:02 PM