(no subject)

[smokingboot]

This has been swimming around in my head since yesterday, when the immensely courteous november_girl asked chums to let her know the limits of their baby-friendliness. It got me thinking about babies and how I feel towards them.



I'm very unlikely to have a child, ever. Seriously, there's nothing in me that wants them. Kittens, puppies, my heart has room for all the beasties of the earth, but babies? No.

It was always this way. Throughout my infancy, I ignored dolls. They bored me, and babies exasperated me. Someone crying because they were tired? Why didn't they just go to sleep then? How stupid was that?

There was also the physical pain of hearing baby shriek. It never was just a scream, babies could hit a point that hurt so badly I just needed to get away. And parents were ghastly selfish too; I recall a nightmare flight home on a plane full of babies and parents. Of course the pressure in the plane was too much for the ears of the little ones, and they hollered and shat and hollered some more. This at least I could understand, they were in pain and no-one could explain why or get rid of it. The parents changed the babies' nappies and the whole plane stank of excrement accompanied by high pitched screams, I was in tears. All I wanted to do was stand in front of each baby and SCREAM incoherently in rage at the pain in my head and the stench all around me, to grab a filthy nappy and rub the faeces all over the faces of the breeding demichimps. It took days for the headache to go away.

This was one of the nastiest physical situations I have ever suffered, and I speak as a woman who has had a naked flame applied to her nipple (Oh NHS, how you have fallen, Daystar!) The two experiences were easily on a par.

So often a happy mum has put her baby in my arms and waited for my melting moment, when I mist over and my eyes soften as I surrender finally saying 'Ooooh. I want one tooooo!' It's never happened, to their mortification. What about sides of the brain and instinctual nurturing, what about chemicals and hormones and oooh Being a Woman? I should care for babies, something deep within should be moving in tenderness cos I'm made that way. It's natural innit?

Afraid not. Nope, no chemicals, no flare ups in the brain, no hormones, no need, no biological clock ticking, no broodiness, no imperative, no interest. I'm a straight white European female human. I'm not an estrogen nexus needing motherhood to provide me with purpose. I'm not saying that this is always the case (having so many brilliant chums who are also great mothers, I would be foolish to make such a claim) but justification is something often refused women except in the great default of motherhood, beloved and approved, society's favoured place for the unfavoured gender. I suspect its potential as a path to false power and pressurised love.

As for babies, well, I am ready to try, as I am with any new acquaintance, but nothing is guaranteed. To me, that being is a person, and they may not like me or vice versa. New in the world, they deserve all the chances they can get. I'll always give what I can, because life is too tough for us not to be kind to one another. But that's as far as it goes.

And incredibly, my breasts are still here, my chin comparatively hairless, my gynie bits all present and correct. XX I am, XX I remain. It gives me possibilities, it doesn't make me goo.

Comments

[sixtine.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, it's one of the few topics I don't have a strong opinion about. I think the creation of life is just an incredible amazing miracle of science. That runs from amoebae up really. The creation of consciousness is even more incredible and the creation of self-awareness, individuality and personality blows my mind. It's simply amazing that your body can put a bunch of elements together in such a way that the end result is a person. How cool is that!

This has been confused by others in the past to think that I believe that we should all reproduce but quite simply, I couldn't care less.

I don't think it's selfish to have more than one, two, three, four, forty children. That's a very logical, clinical approach. I have to say, it's the way I felt throughout my twenties, before I had kids. You know, the drain on society blah, blah, blah. Those kids are the ones who are going to be looking after you in your dotage, paying taxes so that you can draw a pension or languish in some nursing home when you're too frail to wipe your own bum and everyone else you knew is dead. One of those kids will develop a cure for AIDS or cancer or MS, they'll populate Mars, they'll unite the world (yes, I know, they might also annihilate it).

Neither do I think it's selfish to not want children. I got a cat in my early twenties on a whim and spent the next month thinking 'oh, god, I can never go on holiday again' - the commitment mortified me. Kids are a somewhat bigger deal. Why should you want to make that commitment to another person if you don't feel the urge? I still have the cat 14 years later btw - he's my icon.

Quite frankly, what has either got to do with anyone other than the people who make the choice. I find it pretty distasteful that one person would judge another's choice to have or not to have kids. A society relies on all manner of people to survive.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who thinks it's a duty to reproduce but I've met many people who get angry about the expectation they believe society puts on them to do so.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Very interesting thoughts, thanks for this!

No-one's ever told me I 'ought' to reproduce. They just think I should want to. Funnily enough, on blackcurrants has provided a link on her lj to an article in the Daily Mail about the inherent strangeness/wrongness/dodginess of women who don't want babies. I don't read the Mail, but have often been the brunt of that same bafflement bordering on hostility shown towards women who aren't interested. One day I may write a post expressing my thoughts as to why such feeling exists.

I agree with what you say regarding individual choice as the core of a healthy society.

[load-of-flannel.livejournal.com]

"Quite frankly, what has either got to do with anyone other than the people who make the choice."

*thinks*

I'd say the world is a shared resource, it cannot support the Human population properly as it is. So its everything to do with everyone actually. So deciding to have more than a replacment nummber of children does affect me actually.

Nor do I understand why a Single person should pay more tax than someone who reproduces. Am I expected to pay for thefuture doctors and Aids curersw and so forth but the parents are not?

[sixtine.livejournal.com]

I'm not understanding why you think you pay more tax than someone who has children. I'm of the opinion that I pay as much tax as you. Basic rate at 20% and anything over £37,400 at 40%. My personal tax free allowance is the same as yours at £6,475 - you don't get freebies on income tax because you have children. Looking at my P60, I paid the hefty sum of £10,836 in PAYE last tax year. The father of my children paid his PAYE too, independently and calculated in the same way.

Enlighten me (genuine interest, no sarcasm).

I do expect you to pay for the AIDS curers etc but I don't believe you should pay more than parents.

The world is a shared resource in a utopian ideal but in reality it isn't at all. We operate in an inherently selfish world where countries rarely help each other in an altruistic way. The number of children required to sustain a population must vary wildy from country to country. Ironically, and very sadly, in 3rd world countries, they have higher mortality rates so have to have more children to sustain a living. Perhaps they should have fewer children and humanity would then die out in the areas with a hostile environment? That would be natural selection at work. On the flip side, here we can more than look after our population and child mortality is low. Should people in the UK have only the requisite number of children because people on the other side of the world don't have enough resources?

I can see where you're coming from, and I used to believe what you're saying, but I was more idealistic then and I believed in a global resource. In reality, I don't believe the argument hangs together at all.

[larians.livejournal.com]

re taxes and a quick scan of the HR Revenue and customs Website - please note I have no idea of what your personal circumstances are (nor do I wish to) and this is simply what is advertised as being on offer to all parents.

Firstly we ahve the Child Tax credit system that allows parent/s with an income of less than £58000 to claim a tax rebate, on a sliding scale dependent upon income.

Of course there is also child benefit which isn't a tax issue, just cash in hand of £1080 per year for the oldest child and £686 per year for each child there after. From what I have read this isn't means tested in any way and is available to all parents.

Then there is the child trust fund which involes every child being given £250 when born and another £250 when it reaches 7 years old (both amounts doubled if from a low income household) which are basically gifts from the state which the individual can not touch until they are 18, but at which point they can spend on what ever they like.

Personally speaking it is the final one that gets right up my nose (although tax credits for people earning over £50k per year seems questionable). I would fully support it were the money targetted at some sort of training or adult education, but it isn't, it is literally free cash.

[sixtine.livejournal.com]

I forgot the other bit....

What is a replacement number of children?

The obvious answer is 2 of course: 2 parents, 2 offspring. However, there are plenty of people who choose not to have kids, and there are plenty of children who die before they reproduce. That means the number must be more than 2.

I don't know what the average number of children a couple has is now, but I do recall that in the UK by the early 2000s it had dropped to about 1.6 - so definitely space in there for some people to have a generous spattering of offspring. No doubt the current stats are somewhere to be found on ONS. Our population continues to grow not because we are breeding too much but because we live too long.