It’s the issue that most single women in their mid-twenties deal with: seems like the rest of the world is having babies and I’m still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. It’s not the whole world, it’s not even a majority of my acquaintances, but it’s amazing how a measly 6.4% (literally, I did the math) can make you feel like shit just because you don’t have the desire, means, or will to have a baby. Why does this affect us so much? Is it the biological clock of legend, is it the social pressure, or jealousy? Maybe it varies from woman to woman. (Do men have these issues to deal with?) Perhaps it’s a combination for some people.
Personally, I don’t feel the drive to have children or get married anytime soon. Call it fear of commitment, selfishness or whatever, all those things are probably right, but for right now the marriage and kids package is the end. THE END. Even with those feelings I still have a cringe of painful regret when I hear that yet another person I know is pregnant. Speaking of which, last week a lone I heard of three newly pregnant women. So why does something that incites such massive joy for some strike up violent loneliness in others? I kind of feel like the kid whose family left them at the superstore, but instead of the superstore it’s life and instead of my family it’s my peers.
Let’s be honest, pregnant people are annoying. They are annoying for two main reasons. First, the ultrasounds. Unless people are related to you (or just one of those people who likes to see them) no one wants to see your baby that currently looks like a sack of goo in your uterus. I don’t mind oohing and ahhing over an baby that’s not in your uterus, but while it’s still there I don’t want to see it. Second, if people are not pregnant or have not been pregnant we do not want all the details of your pregnancy, it is a boring topic to which we have no space to comment. I do not care what you can eat and can’t eat. I don’t really care about your pre-natal vitamin regiment. There are exceptions, usually family members or close friends.
Besides the annoying conversation dominating aspect of pregnant woman, it’s clear that their pregnancies affect those who are not pregnant themselves. I fall in a pretty narrow category of women in their twenties who don’t actually want children. I’d imagine though if a woman who lacked the means or the ability to have a child but desperately wanted one the pain of constantly hearing about that measly 6.4% who were having a child would be unbearable. So while this influx in my larger social circle of pregnant women makes me think about myself and my own issues and road blocks, it also makes me think of women who find this a much more difficult situation to internalize and manage.
Becca Kello 