Children

Having children is something that creates a lot of guilt for women, and whether we have children or not, we end up feeling guilty. Procreation is a very strong instinct, but often family and society pressure women. Women are made to feel like they are letting people down if they don't provide their parents with grandchildren. The need is often impressed on them by inlaws to keep the family line going. And if they have only girls, the pressure is there to have a boy in order to carry on the family name. Society paits a picture of motherhood as something every woman must experience in order to be truly fulfilled, and childless women are often looked upon with pity by mothers, and society in general.

There are women out there who have chosen to pursue careers instead of having a family. I think they are very strong, because they have been able to shrug off all the guilt cast their way in order to do what they wanted.

Of course, there are those women who are hard wired to be moms, and I give them their props too, because motherhood is not as easy as television makes it look, and all the babysitting in the world can not prepare it for you either.

I am not worried about discouraging someone from having a baby by what I am about to say, because if you want to have a baby, nothing anybody says will deter you from it. But for those of you who are not sure whether you want to be mommies, or you are feeling pressured by your husband or your family, please take all the facts into consideration.

If you are not married yet, make sure that you and your boyfriend or fiancee are on the same page as far as children go. I know someone who never had a big desire to be a mother, but had two children because her husband wanted them. Now, she is a wonderful mother, but she feels that personally she was happier before the children came along.

Being a mother means that you are can't put yourself first anymore. That baby comes first, even when it comes to going to the bathroom. I can remember breastfeeding my oldest son while I was going to the bathroom so that he would not wake his father up (his father was working the night shift back then.) If you think it is easy to hold a 9 month old baby to your breast while you wipe yourself, think again.

I also have a friend who had a baby when her first daughter was 15 years old. Before the baby was even a year old, her oldest daughter announced that she would never have any children, that the baby grossed her out on a daily basis, and that she would get her tubes tied as soon as she possibly could. I did not know what to say at the time, but if I'd had time to think about it, I would have told her not to take such a permenant step too soon, because they are only infants for a short period of time, and once they are a little older, they can be really awesome little people.

But I was talking about not having children, wasn't I? Okay, I was in no way prepared for the amount of myself I lost when Tate was born. I also could not take the lack of sleep, since he screamed to be nursed every single hour. I felt like I was in a hole, and I did not see any light. My novel, Morning Star goes into great detail about the postpartum depression, so I won't get into that so much here. Once kids get bigger though, be prepared to have everything you ever loved broken or spilled on or scratched. If you have any things that you don't want ruined, I say put them in storage until your kids are grown and on their own. My boys were like a demolition team. It makes me sick when I think of the things they broke and photographs they ruined. And of course, I bought them clothes before I bought anything for myself, so I would end up running around in grungy sweat pants in order to keep up with their growth spurts. For a while, Tate went up a size in shoes every two or three months.

Kids will also cause you a ton of embarrassment. One time, when Tate was a year old, I was in line at the grocery store, and Tate got into my purse, pulled out an Always pad, and threw it so that it landed at the feet of the man behind me in line. I could have died. They will also blurt out things at the most inappropriate times.

I guess the bottom line is, kids are expensive, they are dirty, they often don't smell very good, they break all your stuff, they keep you up at night and they get you up early in the mornings. Children will have tantrums and talk back. They will create tons of work for you, from changing diapers to sweeping up broken dishes. They will embarrass you, they will drive you up a wall, and they will cost you a ton of guilt, worrying if you are raising them right, or sure you have done everything wrong.

There are so many things that people owe to themselves before they start having children. Go to college. With the Pell Grants available, even those of us who have very low incomes can go to college. If you don't think it is within your means, just look into it. Also, do some travelling, go to some concerts, see some Broadway shows, audition for some Broadway shows, whatever your dreams are, explore them before you have children so that you don't end up resenting your children for keeping you from your dreams.

So I just want to say to women out there that it is okay not to have children. It really is okay not to have children. If you don't want to procreate, don't let anybody pressure you into it. If you are really sure about it, then make sure your partner knows about it before the wedding vows are said. If you are not 100% sure whether you want children or not, then just leave your options open, and be at least 90% sure before you get pregnant. I say 90% because I think that there are always going to be small reservations for some people.

Guilty all the Time

I am trying to become more aware of when I am feeling guilty and what it is that triggers feelings of guilt for me. It is not easy, because I feel guilty almost all the time for almost everything. I feel guilty if I stay up too late, I feel guilty if I sleep too long, I feel guilty if I eat junk food or too much food, I feel guilty if my house isn't spotless, or if I ask my kids to do something they don't want to do. I feel guilty when I run out of money and my children ask me for some. I feel guilty about my weight, because it has impacted the things I can do with my children. I feel guilty for not being a better provider for my family. I feel guilty about spending too much time at the computer, or of I spend money on myself instead of using it for the children. I have this nagging feeling, I can't call it a thought because it has no words, it is just a feeling that loiters in my brain, and it makes me feel like I have done something wrong. You know how you felt when you were a child and you got into the cookie jar before dinner, or you broke your grandma's favorite plate, and you were too afraid to tell her, so you tried to hide the broken pieces? I feel that way almost all the time. Oh, I feel guilty so much, it has come to feel normal to me, so I decided to think of the times that I don't feel guilty.

One of the more recent times I remember not feeling guilty was when I was working as a truck driver. I quit driving in September of 1995, so it is not really that recent, but anyway, I was driving long haul and I was only home for a couple of days every two weeks. I had tremendous guilt about not being there with my two year old son, Tate, about the postpartum depression I had gone through that sent me out on the road in the first place, and about my husband who was working full time and taking care of Tate while I was away all the time. Add to that the fact that we were trying to get our bills paid off, so I tried not to spend money on anything unless it was vital. Well, the bag I kept all of my clothes and toiletries in was falling apart, and I needed to get a new one, but guilt about spending money kept me from getting one. Finally my co-driver said to me that I was making the money, I should at least be able to spend a little bit of it on myself. Because I had been given "permission," I was able to buy the bag without feeling bad about it. And that is one of the rare times I remember not feeling guilt.

A Study of Guilt

I have heard it said that guilt is a woman's affliction. That thought has been weighing on my mind recently because I have become more and more aware that I feel guilty most of the time, and often for no reason at all.

I remember when I was a teenager and my mother would never want to go anywhere recreational, and when she did, she did not have any fun. When I asked her why she would say that she could not enjoy herself when she had things at home (housework) that needed to be done. At that time, I realized that there is always housework to be done and if you let it bother you all the time, you will never have any fun, but now I find myself feeling guilty if I participate in something recreational when there is housework to be done. Does anybody else have this problem?

Another problem my mother had was magical thinking. The best example of it that I can think of is one rare day my mom, sister, friend Therese and I managed to drag Mom to an amusement park called Darien Lake (before it became a Six Flags). Mom was there because none of us girls had our drivers licenses yet. If we could have driven ourselves, I don't think Mom would have gone with us, but I digress.... We had a great time at Darien Lake, but there was a band playing there that night called Echo and the Bunnymen. This band attracted a bunch of people dressed in punk style with their hair spiked or shaved into Mohawks, etc... and my mom believed these people were, for lack of a better word, "evil." The problem is that we lived in a small community and were Jehovah's Witnesses, we had never seen the likes of these concert goers before. Well, that day, my mother found a dollar on the ground, and since there was way to find the person it belonged to, and she did not believe anybody would ask loss and found about a single dollar, she kept it. That night the house of one of our close friends' caught fire, and two people died in it. My mother actually thought that it happend because she had picked up that dollar at the amusement park, and it must have been dropped by one of the concert goers, whome she equated with Devil worshippers.

Now, I know that does not make any sense at all, after all, why would God burn down someone else's home instead of ours if he were going to punish us for taking a dollar that belonged to a Devil worshipper? But that is the kind of example I had while I was growing up. There are so many more examples I could relay, but I think you get the picture.

My goal with this blog is to give women a place where they can talk about the feelings of guilt they are experiencing, explore whether it is something they should feel guilty about, and hopefully discover ways of coping with guilt. Please share your thoughts, feelings, ideas and stories.