OVER TIME A WOMAN CAN FEEL LIKE HER OLD SELF AGAIN. BUT I’VE HEARD THE JOURNEY IS LONG. SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT YOUR NEW NORMAL.
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How many children do you want? 👧🏾👦🏾
I grew up wanting four children. Three was an odd number so four felt perfect for my own family. But now I want two, and this new number isn’t something I’ll overlook. Not because “having children is a blessing” or because I have any belief that “the bigger my family is, the better” – I don’t think my purpose lies in being a mother. Rather, I can’t overlook this change because it’s directly related to conversations that have refined my perception and understanding of motherhood. I want less children now because I don’t want my body to go through pregnancy four times. I don’t know if I want to mother four children. And knowledge I have gained about what child rearing can do to my body, relationships, sense of self and future all have a part to play.
I’m young, right? 👶🏾
Nowadays I feel more awake than ever, and this constant phenomenon of meeting myself reveals that although I am the oldest I have ever been, I am also the youngest I will ever be. I feel very young and full of possibilities that are easier to embrace while not being a mother. Yet I have accepted that despite feeling like a child myself, 26 is a great age to have children as biologically my body is ready for it. If I want to be a mother with energy for most of my child’s life and I want to increase the odds of having children later in life, perhaps I should have had a baby yesterday. But here I am, living at home with my family, in a relationship, yes, but not moved by the thought of having a baby (today). Instead I am dissecting exactly what it could mean for me.
I think about how life would be if I have a baby. Not to speak down on fathers and their participation in a baby’s life, but this is more for women; there’s an extra mental load on us simply because we carry and deliver. So I can’t help but worry that despite the joy in my relationship, having a child will make things inequitable. I can hear some women telling me that is a guarantee, and others saying it’s down to the man I have a child with. But I haven’t lived that reality. I can’t know what my experience will be until I’m in it. Will my partner as a father think all the thoughts I will think when the baby is here? Will he instinctively think of their last feed and will he sleep through their cries in the night? I don’t know. Is me thinking about this while being child-free an example of doing the mental labour before I’ve even made anyone a father?
What I will acknowledge is that social media has placed these considerations in my mind. I accept that many topics are exacerbated online, and perhaps there’s a high concentration of dissatisfied women ranting about their motherhood experience, which makes me feel like it can only be like that. But it has reached a point where too many women acknowledge how hard motherhood is, even though they “wouldn’t change it for the world,” for me to be delusional about how that state of being would affect me. The least I could do is seriously think about it. Some women wish they had children despite having no interest in it until they approached menopause. Others want children and have them – early or late, and regret their choice. When faced with many possibilities in life I conclude that there is no right answer. Only a choice to make and live with. Extreme precaution and confident certainty guarantee nothing – especially when it comes to children.
How will my body change? 🤰🏾
Then there’s my body. I’ll never forget when my friend said her auntie expressed that her insides felt like a bag of chains rumbling around every time she sat down after having a baby. She had lost her core strength. It’s no secret that childbirth rearranges a woman’s body and mind. Then you go through a process of hopefully coming to love the new shape that carries you. It’s of no benefit to think negative thoughts about your body after childbirth because it brought life into the world and that in itself is beautiful. That’s what they say. Maybe your husband will still love you in your new shape and you’ll put on that weight that you could never keep when you were a bit younger. That’s what I tell myself.
But besides that all, I constantly wrestle with the thought that my body as a woman serves one purpose only. Here I am being very generic and clumsily separating the physical body from a woman’s greater sense of purpose. My honest and perhaps naive perspective is that as women we have beautiful, attractive bodies that are partially designed to attract men. When attraction does its job and we fall pregnant and give birth, our bodies don’t want to play with us anymore. Boobs sag and weight is gained. Hair thins at the edges and teeth fall out. Bladders weaken, vaginas stretch and feet go up a size. The baby takes so much from the mother to survive and that in itself is a sacrifice. But what about the woman? Some “assets” that we took pride in and attracted a man in the first place aren’t as vibrant as they used to be. And a lot of women’s confidence draws from these assets. Even though self-esteem should flow from more than that, it’s still a relevant matter.
Of course that was generic. But I find it so intriguing how childbirth can change a woman’s body over time. How much it puts her life at risk when she is in labour. The arguments to save the baby (new life) rather than the mother when things go awry in childbirth. Is that all her body was here for? When I first thought about this, I felt quite angry. All it takes is one child to do that and a bit of “shine” has come off you. Is that reductive? Perhaps. Yet over time a woman can feel like her old self again. But I’ve heard the journey is long. Sometimes you have to accept your new normal.
Child-free content… it’s getting weird… 🚼🚫
A lot of the child-free content I’ve seen online says it’s selfish to have children – from the perspective of there being no generous or humble justification for having a child, to bringing a child into this corrupt world being a simply mindless action. Child-free people also admit that they themselves are too selfish to have children. They don’t want to wake up early to take them to school, witness them receiving opportunities they never had, or want to think about where to put them when they want to travel. And fair enough – if you don’t want children, do not have them, because all children deserve to be born into loving and stable homes.
I will add that the dislike for children nowadays is becoming unnecessarily flamboyant and simply, weird. Complaining about children running around in public as if it’s not essential to their development, or frustration at their cries even though they can’t speak and therefore can’t articulate their emotions is backwards and immature in itself. An absent desire for children does not justify the treatment of them as second-class citizens. Children are some of the most vulnerable individuals in society. Additionally, people seem to forget that they grow up. They don’t cry and throw their food on the floor forever. They turn into adults eventually. Likewise, people that want babies so much must remember that their babies will grow up too. Yes, you want a baby, but do you also want a pre-teen and a young adult? Because that’s what they’ll turn into, for the better or worse. Personally, I am excited at the thought of conversing with my teenager to understand how they see the world (if they want to talk to me lol).
When I reflect on some the child-free language I’ve come across, I feel quite concerned for where the world is today. To a great degree, or at least from the perspective of the internet, there seems to be a decline in self-sacrifice. Beyond convenience being the cost of community, self-sacrifice is the cost of raising a good life. Parenthood was never supposed to be easy or convenient. In this piece you can see that I grapple with wanting to make the most of my child-free life and acknowledging that perhaps the sooner I have a baby the better, because despite my fears it is still something that I want.
When will motherhood best suit me? 🧑🧑🧒🧒
I can’t have my cake and eat it too. At some point my child-free time will end. Also my child may not have the youngest mother raising them. [Sidenote: I don’t even think that’s a big issue. Provided you’re a healthy mum, you shouldn’t worry about being the oldest mum at the school gates because a lot of us are having kids in our 30s – 40s anyway. There will be a sea of us.] Anyway, my point is that there is sacrifice within my own life if I want certain things. Or anything really. I’d rather chill all day but I know I need to focus on my work if I want my professional and creative dreams to come true.
It’s a trade off, and life is a sacrifice, for myself, and eventually my children. This just makes me want to make the most out of this chapter of my life, because once it closes it will never open again. That’s how I feel about romantic love too. The memories without my partner are getting further away, which makes me cherish the time I spent alone more than ever before. They are frozen in time, and my new reality is just as beautiful. I pray I have the same experience as a mother. That although it is different now, I can’t help but see the beauty of motherhood too. I begin to see the start of motherhood as a potential trade of one package of happiness for another.
I reflect on the desire for children as a first-generation Nigerian girl in the UK, a 26-year-old late bloomer who grew up in a Pentecostal church and has been questioning her faith for the past five years. I’ve seen the cost of living rise and in turn questioned if I could experience a financially stable, stress-free motherhood. I’ve felt my heart move when I see children and I feel at peace when I carry babies. I worry that my parents would be too old to enjoy being grandparents by the time I pop one out. Can I have children anyway? What if I do and I regret it? Am I overthinking it, or is thinking about it this much the least I could do? I heard I’ll never be ready for it anyway. What do I know?
These defining factors all play a role in what I want out of life. Nothing I want is certain. But to be honest, the idea of a child-free life forever doesn’t excite me. However if I can hold onto this life I have now, for as long as possible, I will ride it until the wheels fall off because I love not being responsible for another life. But if that’s the sacrifice I will have to make when I want children, then I accept those conditions – only when it is time. Whenever that will be.
Some Variables 