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Is a Childless future is now an acceptable future?
Like most girls my age, coming up to their twenties but still a student, children are not top of my priority, with it being a struggle to take care of myself let alone anyone else and the dream of having that wonderful career before anyone even mentions the word family. Unlike most of my friends and no doubt a large number of young girls, children do not really factor into my life plan at all. This is not to say I would never ever in a million years see myself as a mother, it’s just that what is apparently meant to be a natural feeling is not that natural for me. Obviously being a mother and wanting to be a mother is an extremely natural thing, however I would prefer it not to seem unnatural at my lack of desire to join the club of motherhood. It seems from my point of view, just under a year shy of turning twenty, that I’m expected to fit a lot into what realistically will be a very quick ten years. I have to finish university and try and leave with a degree that has not meant three years of wasted loans, I have to hunt for a job in this increasingly tricky economical climate, I have to find the love of my life and get pregnant before, shock horror I reach thirty and suddenly I’m getting sympathetic looks and comments about my biological clock.
At least, this is what I can only assume it will be like, from magazine articles and programmes I have seen, being far too young and too short on experience to really make a valid comment on what it must be like to be 30 and not married with no children. I am on the other hand welcoming the phase of women having children later – of course not refereeing to grandmothers as mothers but as 30 being more of an age to start thinking about what your child situation is going to be like rather than, the label of ‘older mum’ being slapped on you.
Another qualm I have with the topic of children is adoption. For as long as I can remember or for as long as the topic of having my own children would have interested me, adoption seemed to be the way I would go. This wasn’t because I couldn’t have children of my own or because it was a last resort, but because to me there are enough children out there in need of a mother and a home and I have always welcomed the idea of being able to give them that home. When I tell people of my plans I inevitably get replies such as ‘you’ll change your mind’ – which I cannot argue with, possibly I will change my mind, but why is when someone says that they would never adopt, are they not told they would change their mind? – And ‘but it’s not the same’. Now the latter is a very tricky one, as I have already mentioned I have no experience in which to fall back on and my opinion comes only from how I feel now, at 19 and heaven knows this may be a world away from how I feel at 29, but, at the moment I can’t take ‘but it’s not the same’ as a reason. Maybe to some women it isn’t, but for me who is not even sure if she wants children at all I think it is. Giving birth doesn’t make you a mother and just because you didn’t give birth to the child you look after and love doesn’t make you any less of one. My parents, who to the best of my knowledge are my biological parents, are my parents, finding out tomorrow that my dad is not my ‘real’ dad is not going to take away from the 19 years of him supporting and looking after me, but I seem to have sidetracked a bit.
To me adoption is a real possibility, as a first resort, as something I would like to do because I know that being a mother comes from more than giving birth. It may not be the same as carrying the child for 9 months and bringing it into this world, as you always hear that there is no experience like it. Though I am aware that there is more that come after and maybe to me the raising of a child, being with them every day going through everything with them, is more important.
But show me this article in ten years time when I have my four biological children around me and I may just think how much I have changed.
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