Mirrored TSWP Entry - Sunday, January 5, 2003

[illusionofjoy]

I recently had a conversation with an old friend of mine. A few months prior she had given birth to her first child and is currently living with her significant other in a different state. She had actually attended SUNY Potsdam with me for a brief period and prior to that, we had graduated from high school together. It really didn't surprise me that she had given birth, as she had always wanted a family.

In this more recent conversation, she informed me that she was now an aunt as well as a mother. Her younger sister had also given birth. It would seem that he family tree was branching off quite well.

Before I learned of this latest development among people I knew, I had been chatting with a 17 year old whom I had met via "Hot or Not." While I try not to make a habit of picking up the underaged, I had thought her to be at least 20 based on appearances alone. Apparently the visual deception worked both ways, for when the question of age was asked point blank, she discovered that I was five years older than she had assumed.

In any case, the high-schooler told me that her plans were to get married, have kids and be a stay-at-home mom. In other words, she planned on pursuing the 50's housewife ideal personified in such TV Land staples as Leave It To Beaver. Interestingly enough, I knew people from my high school who did just that. Of course, their lives didn't exactly turn out like the programmes on TV Land, but those are stories for another day.

It feels a bit surreal to me that people I've known for most of my life are getting married and having children. It shouldn't really come as a surprise though, seeing as how most people opt to start doing such things in their early to mid twenties, and I stand somewhere inside of the threshold of that age range. From a personal vantagepoint, however, I just can't see myself getting married and I certainly can not see myself having any children at this point. If the duration and stability of my relationships up to this point were of any indication as well, I'm not the only one who believes that I should not be getting married or reproducing at this juncture.

My knee-jerk reaction is to run counter to society's expectations of me. Naturally this means avoiding marriage and the inevitable nuclear family lockdown that would ensue afterwards. Beyond bucking society however, the thought of giving up my freedom for the so-called "security" of that sort of relationship with another human being, followed by the responsibility of making sure yet another human being makes it to reproductive maturity makes me feel slightly ill.

At the same time though, the societal expectations are so ingrained in us that even I catch myself thinking, "well, wouldn't it be nice to create a little me?" Would it not be nice to have some sort of biological legacy to piss off all the morons of the world like I did while I was still alive? Then again, there's always the possibility that something would go wrong and my kid would end up being one of those morons. If that were the case, I'd have no choice but to smother him in my disappointment and write the little brat out of my will.

I guess that's another reason why I shouldn't reproduce.

Comments

[czerach.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I have NO desire at all to get married, especially in this day in age when only 50% of marriages succeed. And as for kids, I'll have to steal this priceless quote from my step-sister... "If I'm going to have something feed off me and leech off my energy, I'd rather have a tumor." Besides, I'm too selfish to have kids. Who wants their life to be over quicker than it has to be?