Motherhood - heaven for some, absolute nightmare for others (including me)
I have quite a few recurring nightmares:
The classic one that lot of us have - my teeth falling out. Ew.
Working as a barista and being alone in a shop with a queue of customers all the way out to the door. I believe that’s PTSD from my barista days talking. Shit like that actually happened way too many times.
Being back at school, not being able to go to the toilet and having a test I did not study for. Again - most likely PTSD from school days.
And last but not least - finding out I'm pregnant and it’s too late to have an abortion. In that dream, I'm always trying to find a solution to get rid of that growing thing inside my body and wondering if I should throw myself down the stairs. Then I wake up all sweaty, but also fucking grateful that my stomach is still nice and flat from all the Pilates I've been recently doing and there is no growing fetus inside it.
Growing up, did I want a kid? Probably. I definitely dreamed of falling in love, getting married, buying a house and all that shit. I don’t vividly remember if a child was part of that picture, but I definitely used to love playing with baby dolls pretending I was their mum. But that was at a stage when you still have a really romantic outlook on life. Before any of the real stuff hits you and you realise that life is not a fairytale with a guaranteed happy ending. And before you saw a very graphic video of a woman giving birth and her vagina being cut with scissors to allow more space for the giant baby to come out. (If you’re already pregnant, maybe don’t watch that.)
When I was twenty, all I wanted was to move to London and build a life for myself there. A life where every day would be exciting and I'd do all the little things I love on a daily basis. Read, write, drink coffee, listen to music, going to concert, hang out with friends, go to parties and have lots sex with men who looked and sounded like Spike from Buffy. Love was definitely on the list too, but kids? Nope. Not at all. The idea of having a child was repulsive to me. I kept thinking ‘How could I have a child? I am still a child myself.’ Twelve years later, I still think the same.
And here you know the plot - I did move to London. That’s when my relationship with my parents started to fall apart. As an only child, I guess they didn’t take it very well that I moved away, and for a long time they suspected I would come back and settle for the regular, basic life - a shit job, a shit partner and a kid. Every year I would come home for Christmas and every year we would have the same argument during a Christmas dinner. Every time I heard “So when will you give us a grandchild?” the blood in my veins started to boil. I wasn’t going to throw away my life to have a baby I didn’t want with the first idiot I met, just to make them happy. I wanted more for myself.
Part of me gets it now - when you have nothing going on in your own life, you want other people to give you something to be excited about. And I guess trying to convince your own kid to have a child is the easier option, rather than looking in the mirror, realising you’re miserable, and taking charge of your own life. But even as I get older and become more understanding, it’s hard for me to forgive them for the pressure they put on me and for the fact that I had no support from them to live the life I wanted. And I don’t mean financial support (which I also didn’t have) but the emotional one.
Through my early twenties, I watched some of my closest friends get married and have kids, and I saw my parents being disappointed that it wasn’t me. Through my late twenties and early thirties, I watched those same friends go through divorce or get stuck in sexless relationship with two kids, telling themselves every single year “Next year is gonna be easier because they are gonna be older.” But it never will be easier, will it? Because kids are forever. I remember a friend telling me, when we were twenty-four, that she and her partner had decided to have kids early, because when the kids turned eighteen, they would still be young enough to enjoy their lives. And I was thinking for myself, “I don’t think it works that way…” First - I’ve met far too many men (she’s got two boys) who, even in their late twenties and thirties, still live with their parents. So assuming they will be off your necks when they turn eighteen is very naive.
And second - parenthood is not something you can just get through early in your life and be done with it. Your life, your body, your relationship with your partner, and your relationship with your friends will never be the same. That’s something most people don’t think about before they start to breed. Most people have kids just to have them. Because that’s just what people do, right? Once they find their other half, they buy a car, they buy a house and start having babies. Not realising that the babies are going to be there every single day for the rest of their lives. Whether the kids are eight, twenty-eight, or fifty-eight years old.
My parents used to tell me that I’d change my mind about wanting kids when I got older. I'm thirty-two now, and I probably want kids even less than ever. It’s not just that I don’t want kids, I genuinely don’t like them. Very rarely, I see a child I actually find cute and when I do, I still don’t feel broody or like I want to be anywhere near it. When I see a cute dog, though? Gosh, the sense of longing I feel for having one of my own! You know how some people complain about dog owners acting like their dog is their child? That’s going to be me. My dog is literally going to be my precious little child, and I'm gonna be calling myself mommy. It’s the same when it comes to seeing a hot man with a child. It’s an immediate turn off for me. However seeing a cute guy with a tiny dog? That gets me weak in the knees. My ex boyfriend hated kids just as much as I do, and listening to him complain about his little niece making a mess in his kitchen was literally foreplay for me. Mutually hating things together in a relationship is definitely my love language.
I'm not in touch with my parents very much, but I know they’ve more or less accepted that no grandkids are coming out of my vagina, destroying my portal of pleasure and income. They also kind of got what they wanted. My younger cousin got knocked up before she even finished high school, had the baby, and now my parents babysit him all the time. They even take him on holiday every year. They love him so much they took down all my pictures from the walls and replaced them with pictures of him. I'm not gonna lie, when I saw it, I felt like I was in an episode of Black Mirror. I haven’t gone back since.
Funny thing is that my parents, my mum especially, don’t even like or respect my cousin. My mum think she’s genuinely dumb, unable to get a proper job, and constantly getting into trouble. And yet, I am still the black sheep of the family. Even though I make my own money, have built a beautiful life for myself in a city like London entirely on my own, I'm a responsible and caring person, but guess what? I am a sex worker. Which, for the majority of people, is still considered a bigger failure than having a kid you can’t even care for. Women without kids, in general, are still seen as failures. Society, even now, thinks it’s more appropriate to have kids you don’t even want than to not have kids at all.
Don’t get me wrong, times have definitely changed, and more and more women of all ages are coming out loud and clear saying they don’t want kids. Women in their sixties are proudly sharing their childless lives on social media, proving that they are happy and fulfilled. And most of them look absolutely fabulous and twenty years younger.
But some people still haven’t caught up, and they think it’s okay to tell women what to do with their bodies and their lives.
Recently, one of my clients said “You’re gonna be thirty-three next year, so maybe it’s time for a baby soon?” Some men really know how to kill the mood, don’t they? And I had to keep smiling and pretending what a wonderful gentleman he was. If he wasn’t paying me, I’d have kicked him out the door in seconds.
A few years ago, a different client thought it was okay to tell me that I was surely going to change my mind about not wanting kids one day, as it wasn’t something I’d want to miss out on. To be honest, a few minutes earlier he’d told me I’d have medical problems from being vegan in the future, so being a sexist prick was to be expected from him. But he wasn’t as smart as he thought, because when I asked him what it was that I was missing from my diet, the only thing he was able to say was B12, which doesn’t even come from animals. Well done, you.
I really do not understand how men like these two were ever able to build successful businesses with such a lack of social awareness and old stuck up views. Of course you think having a child is amazing - you’re about to fuck a gorgeous woman who’s fifteen years younger than you while your wife is with your child actually raising it.
I have a few female friends who really want to be mothers, and I know they will be incredible at it, but I also have a lot of female friends who are just like me. They prefer to have time for constantly trying new hobbies, like knitting or Egyptian archaeology, rather than raising kids. And I love them all equally and respect their decisions.
The only parents who really annoy the shit out of me are the lazy ones. I think they call it gentle parenting these days? They’re the ones who take their kids to a cafe and let them scream and disturb everyone while they’re catching up with their friends. I really don’t believe the whole ‘You need to let them let it all out and show them that having emotions is okay’ thing. Bitch, the only thing you’re showing your child is that it’s okay to be selfish and disrespect the peace of everyone around you. Well done for raising an inconsiderate prick. Just like you need to train and raise your dog, you need to train and raise you child. What I see on social media is people with a puppy really putting in the work to raise a well-behaved dog, while when it comes to people with human child, they suddenly start acting as if they've had a lobotomy and block the whole sidewalk or entrance with their pram. But now I'm just getting all wound up thinking about the mothers in my neighbourhood and losing my original thought. (I guess now you understand what I meant when I said that I really don’t like kids).
If people really thought about whether they wanted to be parents, there would be so many fewer unhappy kids, unwanted kids and kids without a home. My mom tried to push me to have a child, yet she spent most of my own childhood either working, partying, or hooking up with a new boyfriend. She told me so many times in my life that I was selfish, simply for choosing myself. But what I think is more selfish is bringing a new life into the world and then not being utterly and completely obsessed with that human, with unconditional love and support. Have you ever seen the subreddit r/regretfulparents? It’s the saddest and most disturbing forum I’ve ever seen. People admitting they want to leave their child and never come back. Saying how much they hate their kids. Men despising their wives since becoming parents. And basically everyone wishing they could go back to their childless lives.
A few weeks ago, I went to see the new movie Die My Love with Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattison (awesome duo). It was a wonderful portrait of postpartum depression and of a mother who should have never become a mother. I saw what would have been my future if I had settled down and moved to the middle of nowhere. She was so desperate for her old life to come back, for attention and for not being stuck with a baby all day every day. She wanted her partner to fuck her the way he fucked her before the baby. She wanted to feel like the main character of her own life again. All the things I mentioned before, people don’t realise, will never be the same. I absolutely loved the movie. Amazing performance from both Jennifer and Robert. Honest, raw and even provocative.
I don’t think less of women who devote their lives to being mothers. And no one should think less of women, who decide otherwise. Women are beautiful, complex creatures. Some want to be mothers, some want to focus on their careers, some want to travel or be artists, and some just want to come home and enjoy their own company. And they are all worthy. It’s almost like life is not a competition, you know? Your life is your own, and it should be your decision what you’re going to do with it.
I cannot help myself and need to end this post with a very important question:
Kids? In this economy??
L. x