{"id":16186,"date":"2018-08-08T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16186"},"modified":"2018-08-07T09:46:37","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T16:46:37","slug":"open-space-on-whether-or-not-to-be-a-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/08\/08\/open-space-on-whether-or-not-to-be-a-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Space<\/em>: On whether or not to be a mother"},"content":{"rendered":"

My relationship with motherhood has always been complicated and uncertain. I\u2019ve had every opinion from \u201cI\u2019m never going to have kids\u201d (ages 20 to 26) to \u201cIf I\u2019m still single when I\u2019m 35, I\u2019m gonna hit up a sperm bank and do this independent-woman style\u201d (ages 26 to 30).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I was 30, I made the decision to go back to school part-time (when you\u2019re a mature student with an established career, taking out student loans to do a BA in creative writing feels unjustifiable). My five-year plan included a large chunk of my degree under my belt, maybe a published piece or two\u2026 my five-year plan did not include babies. It wasn\u2019t even a conscious decision\u2014kids simply weren\u2019t on my radar.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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This story originally appeared in our August 8, 2018 issue.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And, in all fairness, thanks to the societal and financial struggles of my generation, it wasn\u2019t really on a lot of my friends\u2019 radars either. My womb was not exactly housing tumbleweeds in a sea of loin fruits. We simply couldn\u2019t afford it; we had careers and dreams and, thanks to medical advances, weren\u2019t feeling the crunch like our parents\u2019 generation\u2014we were in our early 30s, so we had time\u2026 right?<\/p>\n

Fast-forward three years and, with my 34th birthday looming in the not-so-distant future, I\u2019m starting to feel my logic wane: because women in my age bracket are starting to pop gremlins out of their uteruses with more regularity (I still have a panicked \u201cAre we happy about this?\u201d moment when they announce it), because despite medical advancements, my biological clock is ticking (even if my emotional one is still dormant).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But I have so much I still want to do with my life before I even entertain the idea of children\u2014I want to publish a novel; I want to travel to Europe; I want to finish my useless degree.<\/p>\n

A few of my close girlfriends know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they do not want children\u2014they\u2019re the women who want to get their tubes tied and vent about how their doctors refuse to do it because \u201cthey might change their minds\u201d even though we all know they won\u2019t. There are a few desperate to procreate\u2014women who have dropped multiple crotch goblins, or have spent thousands of dollars in an attempt to create a life. And I have mad respect for both camps.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But what about us floaters\u2014the women who feel the pressure of biology and society to decide what we want but simply aren\u2019t ready; the ones who secretly fear we may never be ready; the ones who go from a resounding \u201cNope!\u201d after witnessing a child having a full-on Kanye-style tantrum in the middle of a grocery store to an ovary-quivering \u201cI want one\u201d when we hold a friend\u2019s baby and the tiny creature falls asleep on our shoulder?<\/p>\n

We are here, and we are on the fucking fence, terrified that we\u2019re going to make the wrong decision or that by the time we finally know what we want, it might be too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My relationship with motherhood has always been complicated and uncertain. I\u2019ve had every opinion from \u201cI\u2019m never going to have kids\u201d (ages 20 to 26) to \u201cIf I\u2019m still single when I\u2019m 35, I\u2019m gonna hit up a sperm bank and do this independent-woman style\u201d (ages 26 to 30).\u00a0 When I was 30, I made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views","category-august-8-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16188,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16186\/revisions\/16188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}