Hell, I am actively trying to have kids, and still sometimes I don't know why people want them. Depending on the day, the idea of having kids is either tremendously exciting or completely terrifying. I really like my life with M now, and I'm scared that having kids is going to pretty much torpedo our peace and comfort together.

Yeah, I do know intellectually that it's okay, that it's my life and my choice and a fine choice for me. But existing in a society where the vast majority has kids (and in general wants them) can still be very very hard.

I can understand that. Does it help at all to know that there are lots of really spectacular people who feel the same way and have made the same decision?

Two of my good friends, a couple, recently told me that they just aren't interested in having kids. It surprised me a bit, because they both really love being around their friends' kids and are totally great with them. But it's just not what they want in their lives. They're happy to be Aunt C and Uncle T to everyone else's kids, and then go home to their cats and their dog and their happy life together. And I have to say I really respect them for knowing how they feel and making that choice. Like Jesse said last night, I am 100% in favor of people who don't want kids not having them.

Is this one of y'all? [link]

still sometimes I don't know why people want them.

Minions! Little sticky minions!

I assume.

HAHAHAHAHA!

That would mean the follow directions, yes?

That would mean they follow directions, yes?

Ah shit, then I'm doing it wrong.

This is actually related to not having kids -- this Girls With Slingshots comic is the last one in a series where Maureen and Jameson are talking about how they're not ready to have kids. And when I read this one, I laughed for about 5 minutes, because if Tim wore a bandana on his head, the comic could be lifted directly from our living room, right down to the Apple laptop and the kitty: [link]

t edit Okay, he also doesn't have a soul patch or that chin scruff. And our couch is brown.

I HAVE kids and I still don't know if I want them sometimes. Being responsible for other humans' lives? HUGE. But I think for all the pulling-out-your-hair moments and abject terror, there are a lot of wonderful things about raising kids that outweighs it. I'm pretty sure someone or something set it up that way, too, or a lot of parents wouldn't make it through the first year.

But I did learn my limits pretty quickly. Two kids in diapers? Not happening. More than the three I have, widely spaced? A really bad idea.

There is pressure -- there's still a huge expectation that you date (the opposite sex), you get married, you have children, you eventually move to the suburbs. And that has been changing for a long time. Society at large is just slow to catch on, as usual.

Take pleasure in your life, Steph, and do what you can to remind yourself of all the reasons your choice is absolutely right for you. In the end, what other people think is always their problem.

Oops. Left out a word.

I wouldn't call that compromise. Compromise necessarily requires that both sides give up something they prefer to maintain the relationship in the middle. It's not about one person conceding all their territory to make somebody else happy.

Well, yeah. That's why I put "compromise" in sarcasm quotes.

But I wish you had Gretchen back, too.

Thank you! I sort-of do. We got back in touch a few years ago, thanks to another mutual friend I lost and found again, and we talk a couple times a week and haunt each others' LJs. But it's not the same as being together. She can't leave where she is until her daughter is of age and her mother is, well, in a nursing home or dead. She won't ditch her responsibilities to her family, and I respect that. I could move there, but I would be miserable in that place, that is so terribly much like the place where I grew up and left as quickly as I could, and she knows this. So, this is our compromise: we talk often, I visit when I can, and in five years we'll be able to live where and as we please. (The Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.)

Wow, I am filled with the desire to talk about myself today. I must be under some unexamined stress.

Wow, I still can't get over how crappily they dressed Tara. That corset dress is gorgeous, but man? A-line long skirts and layered shirts that cut her off at the hips? PEE-ople!

OK, Buffy deals with getting pulled out of heaven, and I cleaned the cat box. Baby steps.

I can't even face the kiddo convo today, because it's too real. So I am skimming, but I get the not wanting kids thing. FWIW, I totally know the GWS strip you're talking about, Steph, and yeah, it made me laugh a not-irony-free laugh.

Zen, I am sorry that Gretchen isn't able to be a FT part of your life right now...but I am glad she is part of it.

Keep talking, hon. I've started and deleted about 6 reponses to the kid and partner convo (and I think it was wise) but I am taking it to the journal, and thinking a lot about it.

Going to eat cereal now. With another goddamned banana. And drink more water, and sit in the sunshine for 5 minutes.

Sounds like a vaca, righ...INVOKING PERSPECTIVE NOW, off ass, bitterness avert.

BANANA. Dammit.

Oh my. Have we seen the Monsters of Grok yet? Tesla/Edison will make me break, again, my "rule" of not wearing t-shirts with graphics on.

Erin, thank you, and um, why are you eating bananas if you hate them?