Serious WTF. My understanding was that almost regardless of age, you were supposed to give it a year or so before even starting to worry about infertility.
That's what I understood too, and that year has its compensations. These people's need to plan frightens me.
One of my friends (just turned 30) has been trying to get pregnant and I've been telling her the same thing -- it's been less than a year, not exactly time to freak out yet, especially since she's had one of the most stressful years of her lives, which can't be helping. (She's a Katrina relocatee.) She's come around to my side and we both blame sex ed for all of her fretting -- in school they made it sound like if you had sex without birth control EVEN ONCE, you'd surely get pregnant. So when you are off birth control for a few months, you can't help but think something's wrong if you're not.
3 is a very good point, and rings true to me, about the conviction that many people have (prior) of their own fertility.
Then there was that sad woman at work you wrote about a few months ago: older admittedly, but that kind of thing adds to the atmosphere too.
Some of us guys don't want to have to keep humping uselessly away. We want to get the job done and go back to our video games and have some fun. Probably some babes feel the same way. What a wastefull, inefficient process!
There's also the issue of multiple births to be considered. The double strollers are very chic, triples even moreso, and it is much easier to get them with medical assistance.
Also, I doubt many of these women are giving proper consideration to the advantages of mitotic division.
Bill Cosby had a routine in which he suggested that childbirth would one day work like the Polaroid camera -- you kiss your wife, wait a few seconds, bam -- out pops the baby. It takes a few minutes for its features to solidify; if you don't like how it looks, you don't use the developing solution and it will fade.
Some of us guys don't want to have to keep humping uselessly away. We want to get the job done and go back to our video games and have some fun.
Yeah, and sometimes we're tired and would rather just watch Law & Order.
Bleg to the Britons:
Which of these places is Gloucester closest to? (I suppose I could resort to a map.)
Belfast
Birmingham
Bristol
Cardiff, Wales
Caversham
Crawley
Edinburgh
Gatwick
Glasgow
Harrogate
High Wycombe
Horley
Liverpool
Manchester
Menwith Hill
Oxford
Portsmouth
Reading
Other
talk about how this all fits into the felier faster thesis and you're a lock for a column on slate.
me, i'm deeply grateful that people don't immediately become pregnant after a little willie / hoohaa rigamarole.
10, are you writing more fiction lately than usual? If so, what got you back into it?
a little willie / hoohaa rigamarole
I laughed.
3 gets it mostly right; most sex ed is so horribly bad that it leads people to think they can get pregnant standing downwind from a boy. This also leads to, I think, an overestimation of how well natural family planning works. Woo, we delayed conception a whole four months!
No, it's for my job. I'm trying to decide which per diem to request. I guess maybe Gloucester is "other."
This has been the boringest Unfogged comment evar.
Don't discount the eye-babies, matty. I don't even want to hazard a guess how many of those are aborted each year.
It's northern England, isn't it? While my geography is weak as anything, I'd guess either Manchester or Liverpool.
Now I'm going to go look at a map and see how badly I've embarrassed myself.
Gloucester is southwest, right? Near the Welsh border and that old port - Bristol? I visited a friend from a small town in the area and he said most English people didn't know where he was from so he'd say Gloucester or Bristol instead of the town name.
Or I'm completely wrong about Gloucester and he said somewhere else.
This has been the boringest Unfogged comment evar.
And the answer to 16 is: Quite badly. Eb is right.
I'm going to waste all of your blegging help and put "other" though. It just occurred to me that the per diem gods probably don't care about geographical proximity, because cost of living can change dramatically from place to place.
I'm really embarrassed how boring this is. I ban myself.
Isn't Gloucester in Brittany?
But! But! Surely there is another way? Maybe we (I) can do a population comparison, and or per capita income comparison to find the best match (I think either of those would provide some rough guidance).
Anything to prevent me from solving the problems I have to solve, which are even more boring and what's worse, incomprehensible.
"my experience with pregnancy hasn't been that it was difficult to achieve, but rather, uhhh, easier than I preferred, let's just say"
So how much do you have saved up for your kids' psychologists when they're 13 and they see this while reading through the unfogged archives?
25: Do you really think that stuff affects kids? I know that I was an accidental pregnancy, and, what's more, that my parents nearly aborted me (for health reasons; my mother had cancer at the time), and doesn't seem my self-esteem has suffered for it any.
25: I can say the same thing without hurting anyone's feelings -- managed to get knocked up with Newt after having decided to have a second kid but before we quit using birth control (there were scheduling issues). So, a wanted and planned child as the result of a birth control failure.
The guys involved have to be out of their minds not to counsel a little spousal patience. Those glorious baby making days will never come again, especially once you have delivered your bundle(s) of stress inducing sleep depriving non-pharmaceutical birth control. "I think I'm ovulating" still tops my list of sexiest phone calls.
I was just trying to riff on the "that's Northern England"/"That's in the southwest"/... stuff. Not too successfully especially because I was trying to get it in around #19 or 20.
25: Heh. Both of my kids were intentional. A couple of unplanned pregnancies were terminated (plus one miscarriage). My parents were only 22 when I was born. They had been married 6-1/2 months.
That was, predictably, a few years prior to Roe vs Wade.
My experience has been rather odd- my wife and I both had some apparent fertility problems. So we didn't wait the requisite year before making a consultation appointment, since some treatments can take up to 6 months to show results. However, twice now we conceived a week or two before the scheduled appointment. It turns out that our success rate, once she has a normal cycle (not anovulatory), is 66%.
Our plan for the future, should we want another, is to simply make another appointment. Conversely, our method of birth control will be to remove all the pages from the phone book with ads for fertility clinics. I call this the Verizon method.
27, 28- not really, I was mostly kidding- but I'm sure some teenagers go through a phase where they wonder about stuff like that. My sister in law was an accident (sort of obvious by the spacing of the kids) and it's just a family joke.
I was an accident. So was my 17YO brother. The only planned child in my family was the 14YO.
I was born nearly nine months to the day after my parents' wedding.
ewwwwww.
My parents, staunch Catholics, will never admit that they must have planned kids, but, like, kids don't all pop out at 3 years and 4 years apart by magic.
25 - If his kids are reading the Unfogged archives at 13, I suspect Apo will have had to ring the psychologist before they made it this far. By the time of that chicken picture Ben posted, at a minimum.
I was born nearly nine months to the day after my parents' wedding, too.
Aren't you 26, Cala? What month is your birthday?
38 and 40 are, indeed, Ew-Worthy.
They remind me of my biggest complaint about big religious weddings in which both the bride and groom are acknowledged virgins. All anyone can think about during the ceremony is, "They're going to do it tonight!"
39: They won't have to wait that long. I let Keegan watch the first installment of Nightmares and Dreamscapes, because he had begged to see it. I had TiVo'd and previewed the first episode, where William Hurt is attacked by a bunch of toy soldiers. Not at all scary. Alright, little man, we can watch it. So we did and he liked it. Then the next one, Crouch End, came on and it scared the living shit out of him.
38 and 40 are, indeed, Ew-Worthy.
I don't understand. Why is that ew-worthy?
Because the joint occasion of your marriage and the conception of your first child deserves the ceremonial gift of a ewe, at least, if not a whole flock.
Don't discount the eye-babies, matty. I don't even want to hazard a guess how many of those are aborted each year.
oh, crap. i wish i'd have known about that before i spent the weekend in california. there are going to be a lot of swimsuit areas in a family way.
47: I doff my cap to you, madam; well done.
46: Because being able to pinpoint, roughly, a date on which your parents actually had sex makes it harder to block out the fact that they actually ever did so. So, it's not ew-worthy to me, personally, but I can see how it would be to Tia and Cala.
block out the fact that they actually ever did
I dunno, my mom's pretty hot in a Shirley Jones sort of way.
Well, you can get unlucky and get pregnant pretty damn easy. I don't blame sex ed: I blame the culture of baby panic, and the reality of the childcare/work balancing act (which has also gotten so much coverage that people panic about it, too). I can easily imagine a lot of ambitious young women thinking, "I want a baby, and I want it to arrive within this 3-6 month period" and just being unwilling to wait a year or so to see if it happens on its own.
That said, I have a friend who was on Clomid for about a year, along with some other crap. It was fucking awful for her: like all the insane pregnancy hormones seemingly magnified by a factor of 2 or 3, plus the anxiety of trying to get pregnant, the stress on her marriage, all of it. I do not envy women who go through that. And I can't imagine doing it if you weren't sure you really needed to.
49 is correct- the ew-ness extends to people you don't like who have children. (Tbogg often laments the fact that there is proof that James Lileks did have sex at least once.)
Wow, that was way to bloggish a comment.
I don't think their age should matter (in fact, if one does have a problem, it's surely better to find out as early as possible), although yeah, 4 months seems a bit, erm, impatient, to say the least. (Although the longest we ever took was 3 months, and I would probably have been climbing the walls after about 5.)
And even if it's boring, I'm relieved I was right to think Bristol was nearest, it would have been embarrassing to have been wrong.
I never got the "ew! My parents have sex!" thing Sure, I wouldn't want to see it happening, but as I wish upon everyone I like to have satisfying sex lives, I wish it upon my parents, too.
(Although the longest we ever took was 3 months, and I would probably have been climbing the walls after about 5.)
Surely that's not a productive way to go about it?
I would probably have been climbing the walls after about 5
That position is really sub-optimal for conception, asilon.
I don't think their age should matter (in fact, if one does have a problem, it's surely better to find out as early as possible), although yeah, 4 months seems a bit, erm, impatient, to say the least.
But seriously, this is reasonable. Someone in their 20's who isn't pregnant after a year or so of trying shouldn't put it off because they're young -- the WTF is all about the getting fertility treatments after 4 months.
For ewww: my parents told me that my mom was pregnant with my little brother (the now 17YO) as they were looking at dates on the calendar that hung in the kitchen to figure out on what night they had sex that my mom got pregnant. I mean, they stopped looking at the calendar when I walked in the kitchen, but as soon as they told me she was pregnant, I knew what they had been doing based on the snippets of their overheard conversation.
Also, I can't be the only kid who ever walked in on her parents. (And then wanted to gouge out her eyes, post-haste.) I was in junior high and was really annoyed because I was going to a slumber party at a friend's house the next night. At that age, I was offended that they couldn't wait to do that until I was out of the house for the evening.
59: You haven't seen her. It's an objective evaluation.
Thank god I never walked in on my folks.
When PK was little, though, and slept in our bed, he woke up once or twice while we were having sex. I think it was when he climbed on top of Mr. B. and started saying things like "go faster!" and laughing that we realized maybe it was time to set up some boundaries.
And I can't imagine doing it if you weren't sure you really needed to.
Oh, I can. Like diet pills or students demanding anti-depressants. They *might* be sure, but they shouldn't be, and their doctor probably shouldn't be prescribing it without a good medical reason.
Given how long it takes to run all the fertility tests, I don't have a problem with starting fertility treatment young, but I do think it's probably unwise to start treatments before one is certain there's a problem.
25: my sixth and seventh siblings were accidents and knew it. They are, if anything, happier and more successful than the rest of us, particularly with regard to marriage.
Why did my parents have 7 kids, you ask? Because of two miscarriages.
"Because of two miscarriages."
Can you explain that reasoning?
51: Since I thought 3 was reasonable and rang true to me, let me say I didn't think sex ed was being blamed, just alluded to as a reason why people overestimate their own fertility. What do you mean by the culture of baby panic?
65: Otherwise would have been nine.
66: All of the media coverage of infertility with the 'Don't think you're going to be able to get pregnant if you put it off to your late thirties, missy!!!' tone.
This has been an installment in the continuing series of LizardBreath's answers to questions addressed to other people.
The current culture of baby panic = all the people telling educated women that they'd better watch out or they'll miss their fertility window and it will be ALL THEIR FAULT because they decided to pursue their career instead of staying home and having babies and won't they feel horrible for being SO SELFISH if that happens?
And the two go well together. I must have a baby by the time I'm 24 or else I'll be working for ninety gazillion years and I will have to go through fertility treatments and oh no! we've been trying for three months it'll never happen because everyone knows it's easy to get pregnant.
And I can't imagine doing it if you weren't sure you really needed to.
ahhh, but what you're sure you really need depends on the quality of salesman. I once knew a very rich insurance salesman who just sipped his claret and drawled that "I can take a twenty-six year old Master of the Universe, earning a million sterling a year, and in thirty minutes, I can break him down so that he's buying savings products to protect him from fears that he didn't even know he had".
I have to admit that dsquared's response was pretty much my first instinct--it's all about the benjamins.
Oh, absolutely. Which is also why half the country has been on three or four different antidepressants.
I guess the WTF the post started with was not that there was a baby panic among people in their thirties, which any sentient being knows, but the speed with which it has migrated down to women in their teens. That is news.
When Becks told the workplace story back in the winter, the part about young women thinking they had plenty of time was the point. Some no longer think so, for no good reason.
It's interesting how much people want to "timeline" their lives. I have several friends who, at twenty-four, express panic because they're not in a serious relationship, and goddamnit, they need to have had three kids by the time they're thirty, and how are they going to meet a guy, date for a respectable amount of time, get engaged, get married, wait before deciding to have kids, and have three perfectly-spaced babies in six years?
I don't know what it comes from. Why are people so fixated on having a life they imagined when they were 6?
These people are in for a rude awakening about planning out their lives. I wasn't ever going to have kids, and wasn't going to get married before I was thirty. So far it's gone:
23: Married
28: Kid.
31: Divorced.
35: Remarried.
36: Kid.
Just how I'd planned it.
I wasn't all that firmly attached to the plan, but my rough intent lifecycle-wise was childless spinsterhood, possibly with cats. Turns out the nanny's allergic to cats.
I don't think that's it due to a life imagined when you were six. When you were six, thirty was really far off. You could totally be a fairy princess and the first ballerina astronaut president by then. When you're twenty-four, you realize that while you have six years until you're thirty, if you want three kids by the time you're thirty it requires a lot more planning. When you're six, it's so far off you don't do the math.
It's maybe stupid, but I know that I was somewhat surprised that if my life goes on something like it's current track, I'll be at a minimum, thirty, before I have a kid. My mom had three at age 29.
55 and 56: So I could leap *off* the walls onto the bed?
No, never walked on on my parents either, thank fuck. Although they divorced, and remarried each other, and a friend took great pleasure in phoning me on their wedding night to taunt me about the likelihood of them doing it as we spoke. Few near misses here, but we use the lock on the door.
I had 3 by the time I was thirty, and another before I was 32, but it wasn't planned for more than a few months previously. The worst wedding I ever went to was one where everyone said the bride had been planning it since she was 5, and it really showed.
Oh, how I hate that phrase. I've been planning a lot of things since I was five -- being the first figure skating gold medallist astronaut cancer researcher -- but I haven't been planning my wedding since then and I'm sort of resenting the idea that I'm supposed to buy into this idea that it's the most important day of my life. The marriage, maybe top five. The party? No party should be that important.
No party should be that important.
Well, not if you're going to approach it with that attitude.
I walked in on my parents. but I think it was, um, pre-the-act. More cuddling and assuming the position, as it were.
I suspect the baby craze is very much the pendulum swinging in the other direction—20 some years ago, many women faced a wave of new opportunities (academically, professionally) following the 2nd wave of feminism—but with those opportunities came a trade-off. And many women chose to explore those opportunities, and either chose a life without children, figured out some way to balance kids with those choices, or found themselves at 38, 40 years old staring down a future of daily injections and temperature taking in the hopes of changing their path. So today many 20-somethings see that, and are deciding on a different path (and yes, for all they plan it may all go awry), but it's not much different than my folks, who got married in their early 20s and started having kids 9 months later (and are still together now 40+ years later).
There are definite advantages and disadvantages to having kids in your 20s (dis: higher likelihood of smacking your kid/less patience; adv: you are still young enough to redefine your life when they go to college), but all in all, the folks represented in this article seem a bit, well, impatient.
62 merits an "ew" from this clown.
Slightly OT, but what surprises me is the intensity of feeling related to the inability to have children. Yes, of course, I've never been there and it is easy for me to say, I have four kids. But whether or not you are able to have kids says absolutely nothing about your worth as a person. And while having kids is great, it's not like you can't have a really great life without them. I understand that this is a social norm, but it just makes much less sense than most norms, particularly the intensity of the feelings associated with it.
There seems to be a lot bound up in it, Idealist, that's more than any comparable achievement. First off, if the woman is infertile or struggling, she's probably discovered it after a miscarriage or two or tons of trying and lots of expectation/disappointment cycles.
Plus, there is a cultural sense that so-called barrenness is punishment or a sign that things just weren't meant to be that way; it's frustrated a friend of mine who miscarried twice when she was being told 'maybe it's not meant to happen' and she'd hear about the latest celebrity baby or run into a teenage mom smoking and figure 'why didn't I deserve a baby when [that witch] did?'
Judith Warner good on this very topic today in the NYT, for those who can get behind the wall.
While I personally feel much like Idealist in 86 (not having children isn't a terrible tragedy), it is probably the case that it is this position that is rare in the hisory of human civilization. And yet, it seems natural to me. Man, are we in the midst of rapid cultural change.
fuck fuck fuck
and this is why I hardly post.
Roberta, the kitty's instructions don't say this but you should back all the way out to the main page. Don't ever refresh a thread where you can see your comment.
NOTE TO THE ADMINS.
I agree with IDP's subtext in 96: the instructions on the kitty page are actually somewhat misleading for the casual user. "Go back and refresh" seems to lead many users to hit the backspace and resubmit their entry. May I suggest something like "Close this box and reload comments"?
I never got the "ew! My parents have sex!" thing Sure, I wouldn't want to see it happening, but as I wish upon everyone I like to have satisfying sex lives, I wish it upon my parents, too.
But then why did you get so upset at me when I made a pass at your mom?
I think it was when he climbed on top of Mr. B. and started saying things like "go faster!" and laughing that we realized maybe it was time to set up some boundaries.
Yeah, you can't have two head coaches. Just won't work. (Did this really happen? If so: wow.)
It works if you just hit back & post. Unless you've previewed, and then it double-posts.
86, 90: Y'know, this is an interesting aspect of this issue that really doesn't get mentioned much. People get very upset at not having children—and children are indeed singular joys—but not having kids opens a whole world of opportunities that you won't have otherwise, like accumulating vacation time, or getting to take it for an actual vacation, or being able to quit a shitty job, or retiring before you're completely decrepit, etc.
I mean, I totally love my kids and don't regret them by any stretch, but having them has closed more doors than it's opened. I look forward to the day when Keegan starts mowing the lawn, certainly, and maybe they'll care for me when I'm an invalid (though I'll probably heart attack out before that's necessary), but there are certainly much, much worse fates than not having children and decided advantages besides.
Sure, I wouldn't want to see it happening, but as I wish upon everyone I like to have satisfying sex lives, I wish it upon my parents, too.
This was Silvana in 54, and it really mirrors my own experience growing up---but I'd always ascribed those ideas to the enthusiastically pro-(married)sex) version of the religion I received, and now that I know Silvana was raised at least nominally Mormon, I wonder...
children are indeed singular joys
And, potentially, sorrows. Just sayin'.
"Keegan" is a great name. Wots the other one called?
I still think that in some areas of the country (read: my relatives), you're not fully an adult until you've made the next generation. Because you can do things like drop everything and take off to Europe, or quit a shitty job, or go out every night of the week.
I've only posted here maybe 5 times, but how come I never see a kitty?
Ordinary trinitarian protestant growing up felt the same way about his parents. Saw them standing together once, nothing special, about like an ED add today, but I was a teenager and I rather liked the idea.
When I first saw 105, I forgot you'd be answering a question, and thought you were alluding to "uncovering his nakedness."
105: Not bad. But I know other "Noah"s; "Keegan"'s a first for me.
Apo, the pressure to have kids is real, though, and for some of us it starts at a damned early age, even when it's not overt. I'm thinking of offhand comments from the more obvious (my mother: "I've enjoyed raising children so much that I'd hate to see you decide against that opportunity") to the less obvious (my grandmother: "A two-seater car is just selfish, and of course it would be impractical for children"). The message is that, basically, you've have to embrace some selfishly counter-cultural identity not to have kids.
Yeah, these are Mormon women, caveat, but they're not fundamentalist Mormon women; I wouldn't say that that sort of pressure was in any way unusual.
Sure, the pressure is real. But the freedom afforded by not having kids is just as real.
but they're not fundamentalist Mormon women
My exposure to Mormonism is pretty limited, but aren't moderate Mormons pretty conservative, as compared to conservatives? I don't really have a sense of the ideological scale involved for Mormons.
110: I see a shift in those two comments: your mother recognises a choice will be made, your grandmother thinks it's going to happen and you'd better be ready.
The pressure is more present to one's mind, though. After all, I don't feel very free being single. I still have responsibilities and obligations. I pay all my own bills and such, but there's a sense in which none of that counts, and I'm still just 'away at school'. And I don't think that would be the case were I away and married with children. As long as I don't have kids, the fantasy that I'll move back into my childhood bedroom is still alive. Because I'm not an adult yet.
112: Not necessarily. Harry Reid, for example.
Harry Reid's pretty conservative.
Yeah, he's probably not a good example. But while Mormons do tend to lean heavily to the right, there's a wide range of views. Region is a factor too; I'm sure Mormons are less conservative where JM grew up than in, say, Provo.
115, 116: Yeah, but is he conservative to Mormons? Or do they think of him as "hippie leftist and free love guru Harry Reid"?
I don't see how "in the normal course, you'll have kids" = "conservative."
113: I agree with your understanding; however, I'd point out that my mother has weighted in favor of children the future choice to be made.
112: That's a fairly complicated question. Let's put it this way: back three generations, my Mormon relatives have been fairly successful scientists/engineers. My brilliant female Mormon relatives who gave up their careers to raise kids were largely studying science.
Yes, in terms of values, there's some serious conservatism operative there: the wife works and supports the kids while the man pursues those higher degrees. It's posed as a partnership--and I have to admit that I haven't entirely escaped the notion.
Even when my brother-in-law used his entire family network of lit-majors to pass his Shakespeare requirement. I knew, everyone knew, that my sister was going to write his paper for him. I kicked--and it sounded petulent to my family--but I contributed ideas, regardless. I think he aced the class.
110 -- by "Fundamentalist Mormon women" do you mean women living in those offshoot colonies in like Colorado City and rural Manitoba who are kept in harems, and not recognized by LDS as Mormon? Or something else?
121: I mean that they're Mormon, with the cultural prejufices that might entail, but that they're not so unusual that they shouldn't be included in the category of /generally social-conservative women trying valiantly and unsuccessfully to imagine the 21st century/.
97 - I changed the kitty page to say to close the comment box and reopen it to see your comment, per JM's suggestion. You advanced users can continue to use back and refresh.
And W00 ROBERTA! A fruit basket dee-luxe for her!
119: Really? The presumption that you, where you are a woman, will pair off with a man and have kids doesn't strike you as conservative?
124: no. Presumptions are rebuttable. The circumstances, the vulnerabilities of having children are not inherent either, and aren't the same everywhere.
101 / 54: My ex-Mormon ex-wife told me that sex guilt isn't part of Mormon life. They even have dances in church, and my son learned to dance in Mormon churches (not because of his mom, just neighborhood friends.) The dances are chaperoned, but I imagine that kids manage to sneak in little rubs and squeezes here and there.
Girls are supposed to marry at about 16, and guys at maybe 18, so Puritanism isn't needed as much.
Jackmormon's 120 gave me an idea overnight, which is namely, to ask whether any of the techies who hang out here have written programs using OpenSsl, and if so would they be willing to answer a question or two about a homework problem I'm working on. If so please drop me a line, anacreon at gmail.comm, and thanks.
I still think that in some areas of the country (read: my relatives), you're not fully an adult until you've made the next generation. Because you can do things like drop everything and take off to Europe, or quit a shitty job, or go out every night of the week.
yes. many parts of the country. if you are a woman.
however, once a sibling of yours has a baby it becomes very very clear how much more freedom you have as a non-parent. my god. little kids have to be watched & can't be let out of sight, unless they're asleep, ALL DAY, every day, until they're 4 or 5 at the earliest.
on the other hand the feeling of saying, "oh wow, this diaper definitely needs some changing" and handing baby over to my older brother: fabulous.
Once you have a kid, you're going to lose most of your friends without kids. You need to make friends with people who have kids, and their kids have to be within a year of your in age.
I managed to keep most of my friends from before I had kids (we were the first ones in a circle to have kids by several years), but you certainly do see them a lot less.
128 is very true, though after you change diapers for a while, it's honestly no worse (and a quicker task) than wiping down the counters after cooking dinner. Except for the occasional explosions where it shoots out the neck of the baby's outfit and all over the car seat.
104: I know how heinous this is, but I can actually see the sense of that point of view. There is something uniquely sobering about the responsibility involved in parenting, as mmf! points out.
Which isn't to say that I think ppl who don't have kids are irresponsible, immature, selfish blah blah. But according to conventional definitions of "adult," the kind of responsibility one has for physical/economic dependents like children is huge. I think this is true for both women and men, too, even if the conventional male/adult/children connection is more about breadwinning than baby care. I also think that one experiences an awful lot of that same aspect of adulthood if one has a relative who is disabled b/c of illness or age.
On the other hand, there are a lot of things about conventional ideas of modern adulthood that one loses when one has kids, and some of them are the same things that make one "not an adult" from a different viewpoint. There is something really infantalizing about not being able to go out with friends, about having to check with your partner in ways you didn't before one of you had to be always on kid duty, about spending big chunks of your day discussing Sponge Bob.
I think our society has taught us (and we so easily buy into it) that instant gratification is the norm. When we're ready to "start trying," we're ready to get knocked up NOW. I've been off the Pill for a whopping 3 months and have questioned why I'm not ovulating yet. I'm 30 years old and have been on the Pill for 11 years. I need to chill the fuck out and I know it. I'm not broken, my body is just adjusting to being on its own. Thank you for the reminder here.
However rationally appealing the thought of a child-free life is (all that extra bloody money for a start!), that's just not how most people make their decision to have children, is it?
Keegan after Kevin Keegan?
Not after anybody in particular; I just liked the way it sounds. First time I'd heard the name was John Keegan.
Ah,I can't imagine he's quite so well known with the British public as Kevin. It certainly is a good-sounding name though.
But according to conventional definitions of "adult," the kind of responsibility one has for physical/economic dependents like children is huge.
Good lord, I'm not denying that. Yes, my life is nowhere near as tied down or as expensive as those of my friends with babies.
On the other hand, I don't think it's unreasonable to think, at age 27, that it's unlikely that I'm going to move back into my bedroom and ask mom if it's okay if I go out on a date first. I'm not saying my life is as complicated as it would be if I had children and a house and an SUV, but I'm not fourteen any more either. It's not unreasonable to expect that invitations that are addressed to my parents and 'the girls' might not refer to me when I live in another state.
Perhaps it's more the grad school problem. I'm in school! I can't have been paying my own bills for the past five years, because I'm IN SCHOOL. Like little kids.
