I never wanted children. Not the way so many people do. I did not grow up wanting or expecting to have children, I never dreamed of the family I would create and I never pictured myself as a parent. I was not only a burden (as all children are) but the disaster that permanently derailed my mother’s life from each and every could-have-been (as no child should ever be). A friend at the age of … 12?… once told me that she couldn’t wait to have a baby because it would be something that loved her unconditionally. This was not an unusual sentiment in the poor, at best beningly neglectful and at worst something much less benign, world of single parents, accidental children, and general poverty, in which I grew up. My friend’s sentiment was purely crazy to me. I knew perfectly well that children resent their parents and that growing up to emancipation from the family home is 50% a battle for freedom by the child and the rest rejection and abandonment by the parent. Plus, having a child basically ruins your life – there is literally no more to life except that child. I always, always, wanted more.
My teenage years were spent with the sure knowledge that pregnancy was the end of the world – and a sure thing if you ever had unsafe sex. My mother became pregnant in a one and done scenario. In my mother’s family of 7 siblings (3 female and 4 male), all raised in a (thoroughly abusive) catholic household, none of the women made it out of high school without producing a child. No guarantee all four boys did either – but it’s a lot easier to hide those secrets if you are male. Graduating from high school without a child were steps 1 and 2 on the “survive and get to something more” road.
My mom had a second child when I was 11; we were never close. I didn’t like sharing my mother’s already unpredictable attention, sharing my room with an infant, or taking care of a baby. My mom was excellent at encouraging that separation and reminding me I was too selfish to love. She has spent my youngest biological brother’s entire life explaining to him that I do not love him or her – regardless of any light I may have to shed on the subject.
I was decently employed in my 20s, leaving me with the confidence-inspiring knowledge that any pregnancy could be met with an immediate (unfortunately expensive but doable) trip to the nearest location to obtain an abortion. Despite the usual recklessness and scares, this eventuality never came for me the way it did for so many of my friends. I finished college. I travelled. I got married and divorced. I went back to school. And although I flirted briefly with the idea of reproduction during a time of severe depression and lack of focus while (also briefly) married – the truth was, I did not want a baby. And when my husband moved out and I took the LSAT six days later, I was so, so, relieved to be moving forward with my life without that ultimate accessory.