Being one of the most broody people in the world, I spend a
lot of time thinking about the billion children I’m going to have and what it
might be like for them when they are growing up and how I am going to love them
so hard they won’t walk straight. And yes, I do think a lot about how cool it
would be to have a baby bump and be a grumpy pregnant lady, which I personally
think I am going to nail. I really feel sorry for boys not getting to
experience this; I reckon it’s worth all of the periods. Whilst this first
requires me to meet a man with keen swimmers (hence why I like beards, sign of
some good testosterone right there), I genuinely believe that people are what
life is all about which makes having kids the most logical and important life
ambition, to me at least. And plus kids are just ridiculously cool. They are
cute and excitable and curious and not half as scared of the world as I am
(hopefully).
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| Cute photo of my granddad and sister, painfully cute. Little kid hands are so small... |
But that’s a total aside; this post is about reasons why I worry
for my children (ignoring how I have not in fact been impregnated as of yet). I
know that are an infinite number of reasons why people worry about having
children, which are often to do with financial stability, readiness – whatever that
is – and fear of screwing kids up. And while I don’t deny that I really want to
give my children everything they want in life (whilst simultaneously not
spoiling them), that’s really one of my last concerns when I really think about
it. You can be poor and happy, even if it’s not the most preferable
circumstance to be in. What I worry about is, given the world that we live in,
how my children can grow up happy and good and not hurt themselves and other
people because of things they are told are right or wrong. I know that this
sounds kind of vague, but just keep reading to see what I mean. It might sound
kind of hypocritical because some of the things that worry me I am totally
complicit in, but maybe that’s why I am actually aware of them.
So I was pre-ing (vortrinken) last night and found it amusing
to play with a cardboard biscuit box (it’s a good life being as easily pleased
as I am) and it got me to thinking about how when I was little I would sit in
the plastic laundry basket once my mum had hung the washing out and how she
would drag me around the garden in it which I found absolutely hilarious.
Apparently box-shaped items are my thing. I used to have so much fun playing
with essentially nothing, just running around and picking stuff up in the
garden or making dens. I really was one of the most well-tanned children ever.
But I think it’s kind of sad that often children now don’t do this. Every time
I see a mum give her kid an iPhone to play with whilst on a bus a little piece
of me dies on the inside. While I know it’s personal choice about how to bring
children up, and while I am not trying to generalise how all parents behave and
the morality of this, I can’t help but worry that when I don’t bring my kids up
to sit in front of the TV for hours and play on an X-Box that this will set
them apart from other kids. I have recently realised how important being
healthy is, and I want to teach my kids that early on and make them be active. But
not in a cruel-forced-exercise kind of way, but in a showing-them-the-fun-side-of-playing-outdoors
kind of way. But at the same time I don’t want to deny them what other children
have and mark them as the weird backwards kids who are stuck living in a
different generation. But at the same time I do really want them to be wild
kids and be stuck in a different time. I want them to know it’s okay to do what
they want, but then make them do what I want too. It seems unlikely that in all
cases these will be the same things, which might be problematic.
I also really worry about how I don’t think that people are
taught that they are beautiful anymore, or how to appreciate that others are
either. I have a ridiculously wide spectrum of what I find attractive, where by
wide spectrum I essentially mean all-encompassing. I think this is probably
because my mum is the loveliest women ever and thinks the world of pretty much
everyone (until given a reason not to) and I adopted this from her. And whilst
this means that I am often very naïve to situations in which people treat me
badly, or perhaps that I am more accepting of being treated this way, I wouldn’t
want to change this. I try not to be judgemental and to stay open to how other
people might behave, as I feel this is the only real way to be ethical. It’s
really important to me that people stop being evaluated on how they look, or
for people to not feel defined by how good other people think they look. In my
opinion it’s actually someone’s personality that makes them ugly, not how fat
or thin they are for example. And I want my kids to know this, but given the photo
shopped world we live in I can’t help but imagine they will get to a stage
where they don’t think they look good enough, or that others look good enough,
and that this will be really damaging. I know so many people that feel like
this and I just want to shake them so hard until they stop being so ridiculous.
But I know it’s not easy to get a thought out of someone’s that’s been so
deeply ingrained. I somehow feel like capitalism is also a lot to blame for
this in trying to sell us the life that we are told we should want – a bit on
Benjamin wouldn’t go amiss here – but I feel like if I start talking about this
I won’t actually stop. So I’ll just leave it as I worry my children won’t know
be made to feel they are good enough and won’t appreciate the beauty of other
people. This goes for many different levels.
‘Manly’ and ‘feminine’ behaviour also gets to me. I really
can’t stand the way that children are taught that they should or shouldn’t do
things on the basis of their gender. This by the way is a bullshit concept.
While a man’s body is physically different from a woman’s, there is no such
thing as ‘manly’ or otherwise. I really worry that my children will not be
aware of the constraints of such concepts, and that they might let them dictate
how they behave. One of the biggest issues I have with this is the way that
boys are often taught to objectify women and be insensitive. To put these two
things into context, I’ll take the examples of cat-calling and crying. As a
girl I am distinctly aware that when I walk past builders, I am in some way
going to be objectified for having a vagina. I literally cringe in this
situation and I don’t really see why some men think it is okay to do this. I
would never walk up to a guy and be like ‘mate, nice penis’ whilst staring at
his crotch. It’s not okay for anyone to be on the receiving end of this. If I
have a son and he cat-calls, there will definitely be an incidence of at least
verbal castration. It isn’t okay. And on the other side of this, I think that
men get stick for being too sensitive if they show any level of emotion like
crying for example. Apparently it’s too ‘feminine’ to actually show that you
care about something. And I hate this. I want to live in a world where it’s
okay for boys to cry or to say what they are feeling and not feel ridiculed for
it. And again, I know that in teaching my children the values I think are
right, they might get stick for it. And I don’t want that either. Just in
general I want my children to know that it’s okay to not always be okay, or to say what you really think, because I never knew this. And in trying to hide what you feel you get a bit
twisted on the inside. And it’s like when you knot something up, doing it is
really easy. Untying it is a bitch. And I want my kids to just be themselves
and not constrained by stereotypes of what they should be.
Essentially, I don’t want my children to ever suffer because
of the choices I make on their behalf, or because of what other people tell
them they should be. But at the same time I want them to adopt the morals that
I feel are right. It’s difficult to simultaneously have to live in a system and
disagree with it, which for my children means I worry that I can’t resolve the
problem of them living the life I want and simultaneously letting them be autonomous
in their life choices and not be excluded from their peers as a result of my
parenting. And this is not even to mention how I know that the world they come
into is likely to not be that nice because of social, political and
environmental problems that are ever-worsening (which again I could talk about
at length). But despite all this, I still seriously can’t wait to have kids. A lot of
people find this kind of scary, especially a lot of guys I know. But just as an
FYI type thing, broody guys/men who are good with kids are so attractive. Though coming from me that probably doesn’t
mean much!
True to form, here’s a link to a little piece of happiness…
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