On The Subject Of Children

The other day I was chased around a field for a while by a friend of mine who wanted me to hold her daughter, who was finding it thoroughly hilarious because I didn't want to. I'm not, as I explained to her later, scared of children, I just don't like them, and I'm fairly sure the feeling is mutual! Parents: don't take this personally. It's not just your child, it's ALL of them.
When you tell someone that you don't like children and don't plan on having any, there are a few reactions that I have come to expect. One is quiet judgement, that somehow there is something wrong with me or that I am a bad person for my views. Another is disbelief-people just can't understand why I wouldn't like children because apparently everyone just does. The third is that 'it's just a phase' that I am expected to grow out of when my hormones kick in and I just become all broody like everyone else. When I told my mum (aged 20) that I had decided that I wasn't having children, her response was "tell me in five years time and I might believe you" as if it was something that would just change as I got older.
I find it somewhat interesting that the general response is that this is an abnormal trait-like I am betraying my species by not wishing to have a baby. As the brilliant Caitlin Moran says in her wonderful book 'How To Be A Woman', (Watch that video if you doubt the wonderfulness. She's faaaaab. Plus she militantly promotes BIG PANTS. Which is always a good thing) "Men and women alike have convinced themselves of a dragging belief: that somehow women are incomplete without children."* I totally agree-sometimes it seems as if women are only held up as having achieved something if they have squeezed a sprog out, although this attitude is finally taking a turn for the better.
For me, I think my reluctance in part stems from the fact that I don't appear to have that natural maternal instinct that every woman I have ever met seems to possess. I have never felt the apparently innate desire to coo at a baby in a pram, or gone all mushy at a baby grow**. I am, to be quite honest, somewhat baffled by the people that do these things-the noises that a small child can invoke from seemingly normal people are incredibly odd. If you removed the visual information from this scenario, and just heard people making those noises in public, I can't imagine you would choose to sit next to them on the bus. Yet with a baby in this picture everyone, for some unknown reason, just understands. It becomes perfectly OK for even a stranger to start squeaking and jabbering. I just don't get it.
Personally, there is no part of having children that appeals to me in any way. I don't want to be pregnant, I sure as hell don't want to give birth and in no way do I have any desire to become a mum. People say that it's different when it's your own child, but I don't really plan on trying it just in case! I have lived with small children since I was 17, and there has been nothing I have seen in that time that has come close to convincing me that they might not be all that bad.
Children are noisy, smelly, messy, annoying and expel far too many bodily fluids for me to want to go near them for any great length of time. I'm sure that people who want/have children could list as many merits as I could bad points, and say that the good things outweigh the bad. Again, that's a lot of a risk for me to take, just to see if they were right.
One of my main reasons against not having children is because I don't want to have someone that relies on me that much. There's no two ways about it, once you have a child your life is irreversibly changed-for at least 18 years, you will always have another person to consider over yourself for everything. You are entirely responsible for them, to the point where their very existence is dependent on your fulfilling their needs, and your life has to shift around in order to accommodate your children at the very centre of it. You cannot do anything without first considering the impacts it would have upon them, and so in some ways you are very restricted in life. Call me selfish if you will, but I am just not prepared to allow my life-ship to be steered by someone other than myself. I like it exactly as it is. Surely it is more selfish to have a child that you don't really want than to abstain and be happier? Because that child is never going to be as loved as well as it could have been if it stops you doing the things you love/dream about.
50 years ago, what I am saying would have practically been a punishable offence-it was unheard of for a woman not to want children, because women's worth was measured by how well their offspring turned out. Nowadays, the tide is starting to turn and women are beginning to be heralded for their own greatness, rather than their decision to procreate. And I say all credit to them, it's about time we were recognised as more than just walking baby makers.
So I proudly say 'I am not going to have children'. Next time someone says it to you, try to judge them a little less harshly, try a little more to accept that they are not betraying the female species and the point of life itself. Coz us Sisters are doing it for ourselves, and more and more women are ignoring their biology and going out and grabbing life by the balls. At the end of the day, that surely can't be a bad thing?

-Jenni-

P.S. All you mothers, and mothers-to-be, and mothers-to-be-at-some-point-in-the-future (+ fathers!), please don't take offence at my words. I have no problem with everyone else having children, I just have no desire to do it myself. Also, as long as you don't want me to look after/hold/interact with your children, or tell you how cute/amazing/wonderful they are then you and I have no quarrel***! Go forth and procreate to your heart's content!

*Chapter 13: Why You Shouldn't Have Children, Page 241, about half way down. Because I feel the need to reference these things.
**NB My mother has always referred to these as grow-bags. I only found out when I was about 17 that this was what you grew tomatoes in, not babies, and she was making a funny. It does explain LOTS of strange looks I had received up to this point in my life.
*** As long as I'm not stuck on some form of public transport with your child if it's having a BAD DAY!