I feel that I am speaking for the majority of the TSM community here when I say that someday, at some perfect point in time, we could see ourselves having babies. Hell, for some of my readers, that’s the end goal and I totally get that. As a Biology major who is headed to Veterinary school, I have learned time and time again about the powerful evolutionary forces at work that make just the smallest part of you melt just a little bit when you see a sweet little one dressed like the future legacy that she is. It’s just wired into us. Being of college age, your raging hormones are at their peak, but, as I so maturely put it “Sorry, I have shit to do.”
I have immense respect for the career women who do not care to reproduce. I think it’s sad that the people with the most to offer the gene pool are the first to opt out, but I completely get it. Hell, I was one of them. I could never imagine myself with a family, because my southern alcoholic mother made it clear she missed “the good life.” Whatever, no harm done here. Bitch. I see both sides of the coin.
However, I also see the flip side. Holding a baby who isn’t my own is powerful enough; I cannot imagine if he or she were mine. And, frankly, it’s traditionally been our role in society to provide a vehicle for the man to carry on the family lineage and work full time making a home for our husband and caring for his babies. (Obviously with staff. I don’t know how it works otherwise.) There is a powerful biological force driving us to have and nurture babies, and it’s generally a very rewarding process.
The issue I see, in our modern society, is that the old values are still very much there. As ladies of breeding and class, we’re likely to date or marry men who grew up in a house where their mothers’ responsibilities included raising her children either herself or with the help of a full time nanny (God bless Audrey, I’d be in rehab by now if it weren’t for her.), being her husband’s personal assistant, entertaining regularly, and supervising the house staff. The men we eventually will marry will see all of these responsibilities as “women’s work.” Hell, my mother did not even work and still had a nanny, housekeeper, and groundskeeper. But today, society expects the same homemaking along with a full time job, totally bogus.
The more I date in this frightening post-grad world, the more afraid I become that I am not going to be able to provide for my children and my husband the way I always envisioned. I have dreams and ambitions of my own, of course, but to take on the role of the lady of the house is more than a full time job. To settle for frozen dinners, day care, and a poorly kept house seems a detriment to my future husband and, most importantly, my future children. The current economy; however, is such that a single income family that can provide for their children’s future is only a possibility for a select few men. And of those select few, well, the more I look at them, the more I have to wonder if giving up on my dream of the perfect family is worth avoiding a lifetime of being unappreciated or controlled, or frankly, just viewing my marriage as a career. At the end of the day, 20 years down the line, I still want to love having dinner on the table for the man I love rather than viewing it as another job requirement.
Now, I can’t help but wonder how my family life will play out. Does the world we grew up in no longer exist?
Nice Move256
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