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Post by happy2bchildfree on Jul 21, 2008 12:17:35 GMT -5
It wasn't until I entered my 40's that I started to wonder what it would have been like. Throughout my adult life, I've often wondered what it would have been like to have had a child, but not in the sense of having any regret that I didn't--just curiousity about "the road not taken". I've wondered about lots of other "roads not taken" as well--sometimes with regret, sometimes not. |
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Post by juliepoo15 on Jul 21, 2008 17:24:59 GMT -5
I'm with you native, I've always been terrified of getting pregnant. The minute I started having sex I got on birth control. That was one of the worries I did not want to have to deal with.
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Post by happy2bchildfree on Jul 21, 2008 17:46:15 GMT -5
I've always been terrified of getting pregnant. Once legal abortion became an option (shortly after my 19th birthday), I didn't worry about it that much because I knew I had an option if it happened. I always used birth control until I had the tubal, but I was never so paranoid as to feel that I needed to use more than one birth control method at a time. |
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Post by cnu5000 on Jul 22, 2008 6:22:34 GMT -5
nativenewyorker-I was like you in my twenties and thirties-I was terrified of getting pregnant and was careful in both using birth control and careful sexual behavior(I was using barrier methods of BC).
In my early forties, I started to feel a slight something. Where I am there are a lot of late in life first time parents-some of these first time over forty parents said they wanted children for years. I think over forty is a little old(especially for the woman - I still think a lot of men feel the woman is going to do most of the work with small children and I know a lot of over forty women who breast feed. I feel breast feeding does but small child care on the woman).
Sometimes I think siblings having children arouses some feelings. My husband says he does not care that his brother and sister have children but I admit I sometimes feel competitive
feelings about the matters. However both my sisters-in-law are EXTEMEMLY busy-I could not stand to be that busy.
FYI-I think women who often take to motherhood don't have strong work and intellectual interests-I think in these cases having children gives women something to do.
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Post by happy2bchildfree on Jul 22, 2008 13:31:56 GMT -5
Sometimes I think siblings having children arouses some feelings. My husband says he does not care that his brother and sister have children but I admit I sometimes feel competitive feelings about the matters. FYI-I think women who often take to motherhood don't have strong work and intellectual interests-I think in these cases having children gives women something to do. I have a childed brother. What was really annoying to me after he had his kids was that in the eyes of my parents--especially my mother--he could do no wrong, and in their eyes there was nothing I could do to compete with his having kids. It never stirred any feelings whatsoever of me wanting my own kids--quite the opposite. It made me all the more grateful not to have any. I agree that the women who are really into motherhood seem for the most part to be those without strong work or intellectual interests, but not all of those without strong interests are geared to motherhood. I know I sure wasn't. |
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Post by kentuckykimmie on Jul 23, 2008 5:39:19 GMT -5
Like happy2bchildfree, I have a childed sibling who can do no wrong in the eyes of my parents, especially my mother. My husband's sister also has two kids about the same ages as my sister's kids. While we know that we are loved, it is crystal clear that our sisters are more loved, are given more monetary and other material gifts than we are, are given more consideration as to their needs and wants when it comes to travel to family events like Christmas, and are just plain more important, in general, than we are to them simply because they gave them grandkids.
I have no desire to live my childed sister's life, nor am I jealous of her because I know she feels like pulling her hair out most of the time. I think I am more resentful of the lack of consideration we get from our parents in comparison to the grandpups and their parents. My sister often gets ignored when she first walks in the house for quite some time while the grandkids are being hugged and fawned over. So, I think they are more openly affectionate and giving to our sisters out of some deep rooted fear they could potentially, although highly unlikely, lose contact with those precious grandkids.
It literally makes me sick to my stomach how they can do something like spill strawberry milk all over one of my mom's Persian rugs, which would have gotten me yelled at and spurned for days, but mother just says with this sickening baby talk, "It's ok daaaarlin', Mana can fix it". I do not understand the pride of grand parenting and quite frankly, it's more annoying than the parenting and hearing about and seeing that.. Being around a proud grandparent, which is most of them, is a stressful, boring, annoying, beat your head against the wall experience. I hate being around my parents when the kids are around. Come to think of it, since the first one's birth in 1999, no conversation with my mother in person or on the phone, has ever been the same.
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Post by cnu5000 on Jul 23, 2008 6:22:03 GMT -5
One of my sister-in-laws had her first baby at 44 after getting married at forty-one. She is a business woman who travels alot for her job and she still works full-time with a two year old at stressful job. IMO, women who like to travel for jopbs sometimes aren't a good fit for motherhood. I always thought her wanting to be a mother had something to do with her younger sister who very maternal and has two children.
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sage
Full Member
Posts: 185
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Post by sage on Aug 21, 2008 21:00:51 GMT -5
I've had the same thing, or at least something very similar. Basically, I'm not the marrying kind. I'm a loner. I enjoy my friends....as long as they don't live with me.
And I've thought, "Suppose I get a professorship, for $90,000 a year. I'd be able to afford a $180,000 house. That's if things are good. What if I can't get a bigger house? Do I need to get married and get a second income involved in order to afford a big house?" Especially being a woman. I'm not sure how it is right now in the Netherlands, but here women still only earn a little over two-thirds of what a man does for equal work. We have laws that state that that's illegal, but it's also illegal to know anything about other people's salaries, so there's little we can do about it.
Then, I thought:
1. Do I need a huge house to be comfortable? I'm not suggesting you must have an apartment, but seriously, unless I live in a mansion, in which case I'd be able to afford "help", do I want to clean 14 rooms every week?
2. Do I enjoy a challenge? Hell yes! Set a goal to earn a shitload of money and MAKE IT.
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