Amanda Takes Off...

Children are a blessing! But only for people who actually want to be blessed in that way. Nobody should feel like they have to have children. Plenty of people would probably adjust and love their unplanned children but there are those who won't. Someone who is sure they don't want a child really shouldn't have one. They are definitely more than a full time job! Besides, great aunts are a blessing too!

I read the same article today! I felt so sad for the children and for the parents. What happens that you end up like these Nebraskans that are desperate enough to give your teenage children away?

I know that I made the right choice for me in deciding not to have kids.

Until popular culture in Hollywood produces MAINSTREAM films using beautiful women in their 20s and 30s openly rejecting motherhood as something that is NOT a DEFINING milestone in the developmental model of womanhood (with biological determinism so entrenched in its narratives) this is not going to change. Consider the fact that from the moment young girls begin learning to read (and before that with movies and TV) they are bombarded with images of 'good womanhood' and 'bad womanhood' that indoctrinate them into this mindset . . . children's story books, songs, games, role-playing skits, TV shows, and movies all need to have their ideological content revisited in order to combat this . . . I guess the only place that we can start is with our own children--lol--unless you don't want to have them!

I guess that leaves it then to educators, curriculum and education policy writers, and popular culture artists to get it done then . . . though I'm not going to hold my breath and wait for the public ed systems around the world to do anything like this before there is a paradigm shift of ginormous proportions within popular culture and society first . . .

Amanda--you rock! Keep up the resistance against being assimilated by the 'mommy borg collective'!

J

I hate when people pressure others to have children like it's some kind of law that after you get married it's the first thing you have to do. I'm so lucky that my parents have never pressured me.
Do I want children? Maybe. As far as I know, I still have that choice.
Be strong Amanda, you and Good Man, know what's best for you as a couple. But I'm sure you'll always have to avoid the judgmental eyes and opinions. Sad, isn't it?

And as for parents who realize too late that they don't want to be parents....well, what can I say?? My 19 year old cousin is pregnant, unmarried, without a college degree, and is tickled pink about the baby. Good for her, until she realizes how difficult her life will be from now on.


S.