Womanhood and Motherhood and the Possibility of Too Many Choices
It’s a cloudy, quiet Sunday in north Oakland. My husband slept in this morning after a long week of work and distance-cycling with his bicycle club. Our two cats woke me up early to feed them breakfast, but then went back to bed with my husband! So I had peace and quiet this morning, slowly chasing cups of coffee with cups of tea, browsing the New York Times and Facebook.
I pick up my mother’s old journal, and read this entry:
Tuesday, Sept. 8th, 1989
Camille & Lindsey are both ill.
Morning stuff — getting dressed, combed, etc. It’s wonderful that Camille’s arrival, dressed & brushed, gets my girls motivated to dress!
* → Dumbo video.
Mindy looked through some books & Lindsey got out pencil & paper during the video. Then both M & L ate some cereal & 2 pieces of cinnamon toast each. (This happened slowly, 1 item at a time — they are going to drive me crazy with all their eating / fixing / cleaning. I said KITCHEN IS CLOSED — I don’t know if this will work!
I like that mom wrote things like this, between the details of our imagination play, and quirky homemade projects. I can picture this long-past morning, maybe it was overcast like it is today. I like that there is a record of every-day-ness. Of the potential banality of family life, of motherhood.
Today is a welcome morning for reflection, after a busy week. Two separate friends were visiting San Francisco from New York this weekend. One friend, Amal, is an energetic, driven 10th-grade writing teacher at a charter school in the Bronx.
Seeing her was a thrilling opportunity for education-talk. Amal and I connected through mutual friends in New York, gradually gaining closeness over years of crossing paths. But, since most of the time we spent together was at bars, rooftop barbecues, and house parties, we hadn’t had a lot of biographical chats. When we saw each other at a wedding this spring, she was surprised to hear that I had homeschooled. (See? This is a theme!)
Amal is the kind of teacher who critiques the system, working to question the assumptions of the status quo, but she also believes deeply in public education. She’s pro engagement with social media and talking to kids about being digital citizens, teaching things with relevance, bringing her charter school into the cloud, and updating systems of sharing.
We discussed this blog and my family’s unschooling experience. We discussed education as paradigm. We discussed who our mothers were, and how they filled that role, and being mothers ourselves in the future.
When I parted ways with Amal on Friday, I took the train into San Francisco to meet my other friend in town. Kris is 10 years older than me; we worked together for a while in lower Manhattan. She is a ray of sunshine and the mother of a very magical and precocious 16 month old, let’s call him “R.” One of Kris’s oldest friends from New York moved to San Francisco about a year ago and had just had a baby as well. So the visit was me, two beautiful new mothers, barely 40 years old, and their two baby boys, 16 months and 4 months old respectively. We ate soft-serve ice cream at the Ferry Building, and we strolled through downtown to Kris’s friend’s condo. It was such a dreamy afternoon, crawling on the carpet, barefoot, between a toddler and a four month old, all blissed-out with their sweetness.
Kris and her friend are urban, savvy women; they’ve worked, and partied, and traveled, and they have tons of style. I befriended Kris before she got pregnant with R, and it was a joy to watch her move through the pregnancy and the birth, watching her, her husband and son grow together as a family over the past year and a half. R is the kind of kid that makes your ovaries ache. He’s just magic! I don’t know how else to describe it. I have other friends with magical little ones, too. Twenty-nine is that age, apparently, where half your friends are still living free, fast, single lives, and the other half are breeding, and you’re split between worlds and mentalities.
I told Kris and her friend that being around babies was incredibly seductive! But Kris’s friend, finding out that I just turned 29, gave me the advice to wait as long as I can… That I have all the time in the world. That there’s so much else to do!
I went home, got dressed up, and went to pick up yet another friend, this time a local, for a ladies’ night out. Her toddler and husband were both in t-shirts and underwear when I came by, geared up for a lazy dude-night in front of the TV. We kissed them goodbye and went to an art opening with great cheeses and rosé. My friend, her cousin, and I followed the art show with a round of beers at a pub. And besides for talking about art, we talked about having kids, and not having kids, and when to take the leap…
My friend had started her family at age 27, and she has been waiting patiently for a couple of years for people like us to get going on the mama-program!
The conversation of timing got a little emotional as my friend made the case for getting on with it, while the advice I’d heard earlier that afternoon continued to ring in my ears: “Wait as long as you can, there’s so much else to do!”
And now, it’s Sunday, quiet and drizzling rain out the window. The whirlwind of women and voices and choices this weekend are settling in for reflection.
We are making choices with what we do, and what we don’t do. I shared Barry Schwartz’s TED talk on the Facebook page this weekend, in which he examines the tipping point between choice and happiness, and too much choice leading to regret, self-doubt, and unhappiness. He says, “There’s no question that some choice is better than none, but it doesn’t follow that more choice is better than some choice.”
I look around, as an artist, and a “blogger,” and a feminist, and a wife, and a friend, and a daughter, and consider everything it means to be a woman today! And to be a mother. And to be yourself, in an era of open paths, and change, and choice.
What a time to be.
Here is a reply from another blogger: http://thelogicaloutlook.blogspot.com/2013/06/you-dont-actually-have-all-time-in-world.html
Choices. There are too many for sure. Or so it seems sometimes. My sister just had a baby last Thursday and she is 39. From what I know there weren’t too many difficulties throughout the pregnancy and with the exception of lots of labor and having to have a Caesarean everything is going well. Ultimately, I think, you just have to trust yourself. You somewhere have a gut feeling and trusting that is going to be the most rewarding. As someone who doesn’t have children, and isn’t even in a relationship, BUT who very much feels that having children will be what I want with a serious partner, I know when that time comes it’s a total leap. As much as it is a total leap it’s also something that is progressive and as much as maybe there are opportunities that close up or become less likely with children, other opportunities sprout up as well. I shouldn’t seem like I know anything, but my gut tells me this. My gut also tells me that whatever happens, there will be a struggle, it’s probably going to be painful at times but also totally rewarding and amazing!!! As I hope it will be for you as well. I don’t think anyone knows what to do. It’s the first time around for most of us 🙂
(Hi, I found your blog through the Unschooling facebook group, nice to meet a fellow grown unschooler!)
As someone who had a baby at age 27, and would have had one a couple years earlier if it’d been only up to me, I strongly disagree with the idea that women have to do everything before having kids. I mean, yes, there are definitely some things I think people should do before having kids–getting a job with health care, finding a stable housing situation, extreme sports, traveling around the world without knowing where you’re going to sleep that night. But I think it’s really harmful to women and to children to act as if our lives stop when we have children. That we’ll never travel or party or build our careers again. There’s so much else to do? Yes, but I want children to be involved in most of it! Maybe that’s a luxury we have as unschoolers–the ability and inclination to involve children in all of life, in the parts of life we loved before having children and still love.
My daughter is 18 months now, and honestly I do feel like my life was on hold for about a year. I had a hard time focusing on work, traveling halfway across town or halfway across the country were both terrifying and difficult, doing anything solo felt out of the question. But it was a very quick year. Many things are still more difficult than they were before baby, but basically it boils down to needing to schedule the things I prioritize 90% of the time rather than being spontaneous 90% of the time.
Also, by having children early, I’m going to be an empty nester early. By the time I’m 45 I’ll be ready to travel or start that community theater I’ve always wanted to start or run a couple marathons, no problem. If I waited til I was 39 to have kids, I think that would be a lot more difficult, and it would feel a little more like my identity was irrevocably changed by having kids.
Marina, it’s great to hear from another grown unschooler!
So, you were unschooled, and you plan to unschool your children? I’m very interested to engage with other unschooled adults on this subject. I am interested in what field of work people are in, and how our generation of unschooling parents are sharing time between work and unschooling. There are a lot of creative approaches now, with combinations of telecommuting, co-ops, stay at home dads, etc, that allow homeschooling moms a lot of options in their careers.
Of the homeschooling families I knew growing up, many households had stay at home moms, including my own — this vison of parenting and homeschooling has, perhaps, slowed my partner and I to feel ready. We are concerned about balancing or sacrificing an income, or sacrificing the focus and love we have for our work!
Of the to-do list for having kids that you mention (stable housing, getting freewheeling-travel and extreme sports out of your system, and a job with health-care) Here’s how my husband and I line up: we are renting a lovely but very small home, it’s stable, but we would love to buy, esp if we’re having a baby; we are freelancers and currently buying private insurance, which is a big budget consideration that will increase with a baby; we LOVE to travel, but we’ve gotten a lot of it out of our systems early on, and plan to continue with kids, as you say… Oh, and my husband is pretty extreme about rock climbing and cycling. That might not change!
I met my husband when I was only 19, and I always thought I wanted to be a young mom, for all the reasons that you mention. The truth is, time flies when you’re having fun! And I think, now, finally, our clocks are really ticking!
The other thing is: “young mom” means something pretty different now. See below on this recent data from the Pew Research Center!
I wish I had had my children earlier (I had them at 31 and 34), but on the other hand, I knew I wanted them earlier too, I just hadn’t met the right person to have them with, yet. So in my case, I didn’t really have a choice. There is definitely not a single right answer to this. And I want to add something: you can do a lot of things with your children too 🙂 You can travel with them, I do, a lot! (yes, it is more expensive, and more stressful at times, but it is also a lot of fun!) You can take up new hobbies, you can have parties, … the list is endless!
Great blog!
Thanks Bea!
It’s great to hear peoples experiences. I met my partner when I was pretty young (19 years old) but we weren’t ready to consider kids until the last couple years… By then, we weren’t living and working in a situation where it felt right, and it’s taken us till now to get a little more logistically close to the aim “situation” to start our family. I’m now 29 years old, so having kids in the 30-34 range is right on target for me, too! Even though I’ve known my hubby for ten years….
You just never know, I guess, how the cards are going to play out.
I just saw this report last night from the Pew Research Center:
“Birth rates hit record low for those under 25, still on the rise for those 40+”
http://pewrsr.ch/1b7WXvk
Check it out! It’s pretty interesting.
When I wrote this original post, I wanted to share some of the different voices of women I know, and ideas about timing. I wanted to reflect on how different the conversation is about when to parent, as compared to previous generations… Delaying is relatively new. And it has a lot to do with the cost of living, changing economies, changing life span, and changing cultural expectations about dating and partnering.
I am surprised how many women have responded with the feedback that earlier is a little better than later, but it looks like what “earlier” means today is still later than it used to be!
So, is 30 the new 20? Is 40 the new 30!?
Thanks again for all the feedback!