Sooey Says

The fact that women, given a choice, will choose not to have children, should tell society something about how wrong it really is on womenifest destiny - that all women want to have children, are destined to have children, feel a biological imperative to have children, eh?

I just spent an afternoon with four old friends from University, all of us desirable (to each other, anyway) company with only two of the five of us having had children and only one of the five of us being (still) married. Interestingly, she is also the one in the best economic condition of we five - by far - (I'm in the worst - by far) and said quite plainly that since a relationship is not and never has been her priority in life, she remained more or less happily married to preserve her very comfortable and otherwise, beyond marriage, satisfying lifestyle.

Which led her to comment on how inexplicable she found my choice of lifestyle. And she wasn't being judgmental, either (which I've often assumed people are being when in fact they're probably just bewildered, too). She could not for the life of her comprehend extricating herself from her marriage (if only for financial reasons) and she couldn't understand why anyone who didn't absolutely have to for reasons of do or die would bother - simply because, in her considered opinion, it wasn't just too much for her to consider giving up a comfortable lifestyle - it was too much for her to consider giving up anything.

She just didn't care that much about her marriage, to put it exactly as she did.

I'm pretty sure her eyes would have rolled right out of her head if I had offered up that, when you have kids, even ending a marriage only ensures it will remain much as it was when it wasn't at that terrible time before it's over. As anyone who has done it knows, marriage with kids is never over, it just morphs into a tune you can't get out of your head.

Anyway, if you read Antonia Zerbisias' blog (and who doesn't?!) you'll notice a comment by a blogger-in-arms, Sheena, who asks the following childbearing question, which my little get together with my barren friends (as my ex used to refer to them - which is probably why I think it's hard to combine marriage and friends) put me in mind of:

So how come nobody really asks the question - why do fewer women want children these days? Why is it simply not interesting?

Why don't they care about the next generation? Anyone wonder if maybe the female intuitive intelligence has clued in on something? I do.

Well, Sheena, I wanted children because I wanted to get something out of being married. Yes, indeed. I had three kids to make marriage seem worth it - which they did. Now, that may sound harsh on marriage, but I think it's as close to the truth as I can get without stepping over the truth and into a dare.

If I'd never married, I wouldn't have kids. I'd have great friends (marriage makes it hard to keep up the kind of friendships most single women enjoy - see ex re above), a fabulous career (marriage makes it hard to keep up in the workplace with all the afterhours of fun and frolic that make work something you want to do as opposed to something that pays the mortgage, which you have if you're married because who wants to be married and live in an apartment - and if you have kids forget having any fun at all after work hours), a cool pad (marriage makes it hard to have the kind of place you'd REALLY like to have because men and women have different aesthetics - VERY different aesthetics - like fussy cats vs drooling dogs), do lots of travel (marriage makes it hard to have the kind of travel life of your heart's desire because instead of running off to have wild and crazy sex with the waiter at the marina bar, you're stuck nursing the old ball & chain through Montezuma's Revenge), and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.

I guess. Except, without meaning to, I've always preferred a relationship to friends, I lack career ambition, my housing desires are pedestrian, I find travel complicated because I'M the one with Montezuma's Revenge (which is why I don't even have a passport), and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc. So I got married and when I realized what marriage was, I insisted on kids - at least.

Welcome to the new millennium womenifest destiny.