All of our friends and family constantly try to get us married. The kids thing comes up but is shut down by both of us in unison so fast it usually goes away. Until, that is, i blog about stopping Depo Provera to try to lose weight, apparantly. THEN, oh then, the emails come pouring in. A veritable deluge of baby-making wishes, cries, curses and pleas. Back off my uterus, people!

sheesh!

For example, I didn’t change my last name … this is apparently STILL a big fucking deal for some people. I am perfectly happy with my decision to not change my name, but after the zillionth time hearing I’m a bad wife and will likely be a bad mother for not changing it, I start to get a little touchy. As another example, I’m from New Jersey, I loved New Jersey (moved to CA though, for loooooove), and I get really flippin’ tired of people harping on what a shithole a state they’ve never been to is (I can’t imagine some Texans don’t start to at least get a LITTLE tweaked about the same thing).

So while I don’t think childless feminist writers are nearly obnoxious when discussing their decision to remain childless, but it’s possible that some of the feminist moms are tired of hearing about how much awesomer their life might be without babies. Or married feminists get tired of hearing how they’re helping uphold the Patriarchy by being married. And so on.

There’s no doubt that out and about in the world, it’s the women who choose to not get married or have babies that have to do the defending of their lifestyle, and I fully expect them to get pissed about it the zillionth time they’re tutted at for it, and to have it come out in their blog posts when there’s such a flood of crap about how they’re Denying Their Womanhood, but the side effect of this can sometimes be that the readers and commenters who ARE married or have kids feel that now THEY have to defend their choices, and I think it’s kinda understandable to get irritated about it after a while.

I guess what I’m saying is that because this shit is still a debate, people who otherwise agree in principle (that getting married or having kids is not the Main Goal of Womanhood and should be choices) are occassionally going to growl at each other because they think their own choice is being questioned AGAIN.

“My mommy says your car is bigger than our car because yoy have a small peenee.”

Isn’t that worth a lifetime of obligation to your little genebag? No? Well, OK then.

Of course, the assumption is that you’d give up your dangerous urban lifestyle for the whitebread suburbs if you had kids, and then of course lonliness alone would force you to mindmeld with the locals.

I know for a fact that I would be the worst mother possible-if I had kids right now, they’d be getting hit way too often. Now say that outloud to someone if you want to see whole new levels of shocked and offended.

My feelings about having kids ever have changed in the last year or two, but only because I got involved with a guy who knows me well enough to know that in the event of children, he’s going to have to be the primary caretaker. (I know, yeah, right, don’t bet on it. Hey, I wouldn’t have gotten engaged to him if I didn’t trust him) Still, my feelings about gestation haven’t changed, and I would find the expense of an adoption well worth it to avoid such a nightmare.

Why is it considered such a horrible thing to admit to such thoughts? I say this to some people and you’d think I’d admitted that on weekends, for fun, I torture and kill kittens.