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It's been almost a month since my last post.  Too much crap going on.  Planning the trip (we leave Friday!!), in-laws came to visit for a week, moved my sister-in-law out of her apartment, etc etc.  Other than that though, there isn't much new.  Pretty sure I have a herniated disc in my neck, so on top of my sciatica, working a desk job has been tons of fun.  I'm pretty sure my job is killing me.  People aren't meant to sit for nine hours out of the day.

My sister emailed me last night.  I'm not ready to go there.  Way to bring everything up right before we go on vacation, thanks!  I'll be happy to answer all of your questions and somehow satisfy all of your needs.  Of course.

So since this blog is actually supposed to be me commenting on my journey hood to possible parenthood, I should probably say something about that, since I've only mentioned it, what, three times?  It's not that I haven't been thinking about it.  It's just that I'm a lazy ass.

I am obsessed with my articles and studies and anything related.  I'll loosely be referring to the following, so read them if you'd like, don't if you don't.  Does Having Children Make You Happier and I Don't Want to Have Children.

I don't know why I want to have a child (and still deciding whether it's better to have two.)  I'm a dead-pan, logical person to the point of being crass.  So I feel like I need to have a reason to have one.  I can't quite explain the logic behind the need-to-have-this, but there it is.  I feel like if you don't have a reason to have a kid, don't have one.  If it's because you "want one", what kind of reason is that?  Why do you want one?  Is it to make yourself happy or to add to your life in some way or to join this exclusive "parent club"?  Really though, why?  I don't think it's a topic a lot of people/women talk about.  I'm not saying it should necessarily be talked about, but it might be nice.

The first article/study says "There is a widespread belief in every human culture that children bring happiness. When people are asked to think about parenthood — either imagining future offspring or thinking about their current ones — they tend to conjure up pictures of healthy babies, handsome boys or gorgeous-looking girls who are flawless in every way. This is the case even when the prospective parents know that raising a child will be painstakingly difficult; they tend to think quite happily about parenthood, which is why most of them eventually leap into it. Why do we have such a rosy view about parenthood? One possible explanation for this, according to Daniel Gilbert (2006), is that the belief that “children bring happiness” transmits itself much more successfully from generation to generation than the belief that 'children bring misery.'"

And the second: "I don’t know what it’s like to know you want kids, but I can imagine it’s beyond reason, which is all there is when you’re not sure you want one. In my case the reasoning usually takes the form of largely unanswerable rhetorical questions: What if I’m a bad parent? What if my baby's a sociopath? What if I can’t pay for some school I want junior to go to? What if our bundle of joy looks like the worst parts of both me and my boyfriend and then it’s our fault that the kid gets bullied?

What probably won’t change is the fact that I don’t consider babies a miracle any more than I consider a seed growing into a tree particularly miraculous. So how are you a real woman if you don’t give birth? All I can say is that I’ve never particularly defined myself by my gender, nor did I feel the urge to do so once I turned 30. What did happen to me at 30 was that I gradually started to settle down, though not in the traditional sense of the term—by becoming pregnant or putting a down payment on a mortgage or even getting married.

For me, settling down is located in my head (for the Buddhists among you, this is called mindfulness). It meant realizing that I wanted to share my days with my long-distance boyfriend without Skype as an intermediary; that I wanted to stop responding so impulsively to everything; that I didn’t want to keep working on a website in New York despite how much it helped my career, because I actually wanted to write, not rewrite.

“Some people are just fecund with their minds,” my mom said.

And, lucky for us, there is no ticking clock on that."

I used to swear up and down I never wanted kids.  For years.  I never played with dolls, I never tried to mother anyone or anything, I don't believe much in my mothering instinct.  (Again, crass.)  And even now, I'm still not sure I want one.  I asked the Husband last week what he'd say if I said I didn't want to have kids and he answered without a pause "I don't care, I married you for you, not to have kids with you."  (I know, say it with me, "what a guy!")  So I don't have that pressure, which I do appreciate.  

I relate to the second article when she asks her unanswerable rhetorical questions.  It's true, what if I'm a bad parent?  What if my kid turns out to be a serial killer?  What if my kid turns out to be a child molester?  What if he gets leukemia and dies when he's 5?  What if I just simply don't like him?  What if he sucks at life and I'm disappointed?  How do the parents of all the disappointing people out there deal with that?  What if I do the best job that I possibly can, and in one way or another, it's an overall a failure?  I don't know if I'd be strong enough to deal with that.  

And on the other hand, I think, you do the best you can and you don't invest all of yourself in your child so that if it does turn into a failure, you have other parts of your life to hold you up.  I don't think being a mother means that that's the only thing/person you are.  And I really think our society is still trying to push that motherhood is the greatest achievement a woman can reach and that's the only hat she should wear.  

So if I were pushed to answer "why do you want to have a child?", I think I'd answer "multiple reasons", but mainly, I would want to raise an outstanding person who makes a difference in the world.  I would want to raise someone who turns out to be similar to my husband, who, simply by existing, makes the world a much better place.  

Still, it's not necessary to produce yet another human being, so it's still up in the air, and that's ok.  It does not need to be a race to follow a schedule that society deems mandatory.