Gianna and Madeleine were building sand castles with their shovels and buckets, and as is typical of my little ones they made their fun known to all around them with loud shouts of exaltation, running in circles around me and dancing. Enjoying the sunshine, sipping on lemonade and being spectator to the happy, living miracles before me, I had not a care in the world. Not, that is, until I was approached by a beautiful thirty-something woman who had been enjoying her day on a lounge chair in front of us.
This pretty lady kindly commented, "Your daughters are darling. You have your hands full over here, don't you?" to which I responded the way I always do when I receive this compliment, "Not as full as I'd like." Most of the time people smile at me and go on about their business. But this woman seemed to want more.
In her own words she expressed her astonishment at my wanting more children, and proceeded to explain that she and her husband had a two year old girl at home, and they were "done" having children. I was even more saddened to learn that her daughter was home with a nanny while she took a day off her job to spend alone at the beach. She explained that one was enough because she had given up her freedom already, and the demands of young children seemed enslaving to her. I held back my tears tightly enough that she wouldn't be alarmed by my reaction.
I've experienced the same kind of attitude. Recently, I sat at a meeting at my part-time job with the other women - all mothers - who all expressed that they could not wait until summer camps started once school let out. "School lets out on June 6; I'll be dying for summer camp to begin by the 8th!"
"Oh, God, I'll be dying by the second!"
Lots of laughter from the other moms, but I couldn't believe what I was hearing. No one has more than two children. No one WANTS more than their two. "My hands are full already - I couldn't possibly handle having more than what I've already got!"
At least their children weren't there to hear it, as was the child of a woman who had come in for a class at the center. She lamented about how hard it was just with the ones she had and she definitely wouldn't want any more. This was said in front of her preschool daughter.
I'm constantly amazed by this attitude, and some of it even seems competitive. It's like they all need to one-up each other in how much they detest having to spend any more than the minimum required amount of time with their own children. Between that and the constant materialism, I've come to appreciate my homeschool group even more. There, children are all blessings (even if some of the moms were jealous when my girls went away for a week with my parents at the same time as Hubby went away on a business trip). No one complains, though, that they "have to" spend time with their kids. Every one of them gets to spend all day with them as they educate their families. The biggest problem I have around them is that I get the baby blues sometimes because I can't have more children.
But at this part-time job I've had, I constantly find myself biting my tongue about how they view their kids.
From now on, I'm using Kristen's line when people comment that my hands are full:
"Not as full as I'd like them to be."
And that's the truth.
3 comments:
I think you're taking things a little too seriously. Kids are a handful, you know that, and sometimes moms make jokes to that effect. And sometimes, women just aren't made to be moms, but have them because of the status quo. Would you react similarly to women who said they didn't want children and didn't have them?
I wish more than anything that I could be sure I was done having kids. If Drew didn't want more, I'd have gotten my tubes tied already. That doesn't mean I love Ace any less than someone who wants tons of kids does - it does, however, mean that I don't want to go through anything that I've gone through again. Don't judge someone's motives before hearing them.
What I sense, though, is a general sense that children are a burden, not a gift, and that more children means less for "me." I admit freely that I felt like I should definitely have fewer children just so that I could be sure I was "done" and be able to do more for me. But through a lot of reading, I've come to realize that to do this, to completely shut out all possibility, is to keep something completely out of God's hands. (Mind you, I cannot explain well the Theology of the Body, being that I am still learning more and more about it. Christopher West is much better at it than I am.) To keep my fertility at bay, to treat it as a disease to control rather than the gift that it is, means that I am not giving myself completely to my husband.
This naturally does not mean that there are never reasons to avoid pregnancy. Nor does it mean that we need to have dozens of children with no regard for our physical health (or ability to care for the family we already have!). But it does mean that we ought to be open.
And I have known people (and still do, and am friends with some of them) who really do act as though their children are burdens. "The two we have are more than enough! We just flat out don't want more kids." Or complaints when a working mom spends one day alone with the kids because it's just a really tough thing to have a day alone with your two kids.
I really am saddened by this kind of thing. It makes me sad that I know so many people who spend more time complaining about their children than anything else. Joking or not, I don't really get the put-downs that some women seem to reserve for their children (and husbands, for that matter).
I think it all boils down to the loss of respect for life in general. And I'm not saying that every person who doesn't have a dozen kids doesn't respect life, either. What I'm trying to say is that our society as a whole has a lack of respect for life, and for children. And one of the results is this attitude.
I'll stop rambling now, because I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to explain this properly or even (if I say it properly) in a way that you'd appreciate anyway. ;)
I hope I can have the same attitude as you have when I'm a mom! I am sure I was in the "children as burdens" camp until I met my husband, converted to Catholicism, and started using NFP after we married. What a difference! I look forward to having kids (perhaps after we both get jobs and insurance) and am a bit mystified why some women who have been married for five or six years and only focus on the "horrors" of pregnancy. If I hear any more about how pregnancy "deforms" you or "mutilates" your body, I'll scream. Yes, your body will change--it is supposed to. And hopefully the reward you gain--a beautiful baby--is worth any "bother". Babies, for my professional friends, are the death-knell of their lives and careers. This seems to follow my students' idea that life ends at marriage--anything that infringes on "me time" or "me focus" or in any way makes us share or compromise our desires has to be bad. Maybe I'm finally starting to wake up to the idea that selflessness makes you a saint, not a chump.
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