College Girl versus Maternal Instinct
Dear reader, I have a confession to make. Do not judge, for we all have sinned. With a heavy heart I’m here to express that . . . I am 20, and I want a baby. I can almost feel the anticipatory widening of my pelvic canal as I write this, and I can’t hide it anymore.
For the past several months I have been following @megan_rose_lane, she showcases her journey through motherhood. I’ve been watching her daily stories featuring her baby, sending them to friends and family members, awwing at every drool and baby monitor screen she posts – so much so that you might start to think the baby’s mine. This is unlike me. I’ve never been the type to swoon over little feet, and would smile at babies only if their parents looked my way; an attempt at dissuading them from thinking I’m a sociopath.
This change of heart came about one year ago when something inexplicable happened. I was in bed, clutching the sides of my belly in menstrual agony, when a wave of serenity washed over me: I daydreamed about holding my first child in my arms. Actual tears were trickling down my face as I looked down into my empty arms, cradling a non-existent baby. This episode has repeated itself four times since then; each time I was shedding both tears and my uterus lining. I’m sure there’s a hormonal synchronization of the two events; perhaps it’s my lonely egg cells’ crying for help.
My baby fever is a force, but I’m not ready to be a mother; I don’t have the resources nor the knowledge to take care of a baby. While I can put off my uterus’ demands for an offspring, I seem to slowly be moulding my future to accommodate my potential baby. I find myself looking into what the well-paid remote jobs are to see the trajectory of my prospective momtrepreneur lifestyle. This got me thinking about the future, and now I’m stuck in an introspective rut.
How will I be able to balance motherhood and a prosperous career? I want to invest energy into a fulfilling profession that would allow me to provide for my child. I wouldn’t want to solely be relying on the father of my child for financial support. I want family cohesion, the time available to watch my children reach their milestones, the energy to be physically present, and emotionally reassuring. I want the perfect balance between motherhood and self-fulfillment. Which one should I place more value on?
The truth is that men and women are biologically different. While men can still inseminate a woman well into their 70’s, women’s fertility declines after their mid-twenties, and continues to fall rapidly after the age of 35. We are impelled into a deadline to decide whether to give our career a break and have a child, or fully embed ourselves into our careers, thus delaying the prospect of having children. If we do decide to take a break from our career, it would reportedly cost us 35% of our total earnings.
It feels as though a definite choice has to be made between a family and a career – especially as a woman. As the #BossWoman narrative is being pushed onto young women, it feels shameful to want to focus on raising children instead of your career – a sort of betrayer’s guilt. It feels like we have to parade the careers women before us have fought so hard to prove we’re capable of through decades of boycotting gender norms. To conform to gender norms these days comes with disdain – never verbalized, of course; always veiled in plastic support. The mothers truly idolized are those with a side hustle or the momtrepreneurs.
If we do somehow manage to balance our desired career and motherhood, we risk being able to fulfill our fertile intentions. According to research conducted in 2000, employed women in Mediterranian countries, the US, and Northern Europe, give birth to one fewer child than they originally intended to. Additionally, research of the impact of children on careers says that women who are likely to remain childless are more inclined to work with abstract tasks (i.e. tasks that require constant updating of skills). Women with children are more likely to do routine jobs (i.e. jobs requiring skills that are unlikely to change over time).
In a situation such as mine, where your long term career plan’s feasibility starts to blur out and mesh into visions of motherhood, the only way to avoid disappointing yourself is to take it one day at a time. Think one year ahead instead of five. Be open to the possibility that drastic changes may occur; allow yourself to accept them as part of the journey. Give your dreams leeway, and be content with the possibility that not everything will turn out as planned. While I struggle with ambiguity, and feel the need to label my future in order to visualize my goal, I am learning to accept that I can’t fully control the course of life. My path won’t be the straight line I thought it would be – and that’s okay. As Doris Day would say, “que sera, sera“: whatever will be, will be.