Are you ready for me to blow my (limited, laughable) street cred to bits? Here we go.
I've just decided that I need to embrace it. I don't think I'm interested in a Capital C Career. I don't mind being given a task to accomplish and accomplishing it and getting paid for it. More and more, it's turning out that my master skill set includes general problem solving and Providing Care. Frankly, I'm getting sick of being paid to care. You know that old catch phrase "They don't pay me enough to care"? They can't fucking afford the quality of care I can give. I'm spitting it out for next to nothing.
When I thought abnormal cell growth was going to deprive me of my birthing bits, I got a sharp slap upside the head and the words 'What is it that you want, exactly?' spelled out in fireworks across the sky.
I can tell you what I don't want.
I don't want to spend my life cultivating expertise in something I think is worthless.
I don't know if it's feasible in today's economy to expect to be able to be a stay at home parent. I can barely support myself, let alone 2 other people. Wasn't that the deal before? That at around age 23 you could get a job with a limited skill set that would afford you a family and all the crap that comes with it?
What do I want?
I want a life centered around family and friends, not around money. I want to have kids while I'm still fairly young, and I want my partner and I to be able to structure our home in such a way that one or the other of us is there to care for those kids.
Most of my friends don't seem to establish themselves in long term relationships until they're well into their 30's, so I feel pretty strange wanting to start my domestic life so young. (not that it's even feasible for 2-4 years.) I feel like whenever I mention wanting to have kids eventually, people look at me like I've got an alien head talking for me from inside my mouth. What the fuck is the big deal? I don't want to give everything I've got to become The Man, and if I don't, I have to get paid less to do something I don't care about for someone I don't care about, forever. I'd rather be working to get paid to buy food for someone I love, or provding care with no pay to someone I love, any day.
I guess this is one of the first things that I've very definitively wanted, in earnest, and I don't know why I should be made to be ashamed of that.
(It should probably also be noted that the winter monster is making me feel like my life is worthless and that nothing I'm doing is what I actually want to be doing. Check back with me in May. I'm betting I'll still want some kids, but I won't be feeling so crappy in the meantime.)
Can't imagine any of this being shameful. Good work and good luck and good times :-)
Posted by: jtothep at November 22, 2004 02:52 PMI guess I don't understand "street cred." Maybe that's a good thing.
My mom was a full-time homemaker when I was a kid. I couldn't imagine what my childhood would have been like without that. Something went terribly wrong with society when we started turning our noses up at the women who choose to stay home and give the gift of caring to their children. Somewhere along the line a noble calling got twisted into the poster-child for all that's backward and oppressed.
I'll admit that I don't know you all that well, but I do know that you have a lot of heart. And that's exactly what kids need. Someone who loves them watching their back... and keeping them from using bedsheets as parachutes.
So Sonya, you are going to do the school thing, right? I'm back in school (almost) because cooking and landscaping don't pay enough, and because my heart wasn't in the cooking (to my amazement some people's are). My prior schooling left me with absolutely no idea about career or job (and I have a BA). I knew that I didn't want to follow the money thing exclusively. Where am I going with this? Back to school because radiation patients need care and because my real talent of backrubs and massage is reserved for non-payers. I see what you're saying. ...Just keep writing.
Posted by: nathaniel at November 22, 2004 07:58 PMYou don't have to feel embarrassed about knowing what you want and deciding what you'd like to do. Most of us who aren't interested in having kids want to preserve our freedom to make other choices, and people who wait until they're in their 30's are usually making sure they've found life arrangements they like before those decisions get made out of Responsibility. But if you know that's what you want now, and you know that's what'll make you happy, that Freedom means being able to go ahead and do it. I think the problems with the Old School domestic arrangement involved having the roles defined before you were born, and that kind of led to the deal being less of a partnership that it really ought to be. But that doesn't have a lot to do with the way you and a future spouse sit down and decide to divvy up the work in your home. Take the loving jobs you want to take, and find a partner who will love doing the other things that need to be done. That sounds like Bliss to me.
Posted by: The Green Man at November 22, 2004 09:49 PMif you figure out how to do this without starvation or living in a box being involved, please tell me your secret.
Posted by: Amy at November 23, 2004 08:21 AMi've had so many daydreams about it. if i can't make a living doing what i want, i'd way rather stay home and hang out with the kid i hope i eventually get to have. i bet it would beat the pants off sending other people's faxes.
Posted by: louella at November 23, 2004 10:43 AMok so i "eavesdrop" by reading your blog regularly - but i just wanted to say huzzah! to your thoughts here. i have had a lot of conversations along these same lines with my friends lately -- maybe it's something about the weather?!
Posted by: vanessa at November 23, 2004 12:52 PMHey, I'm 29. Almost-three year old little girl and a partner who's a stay at home Mum. We tick along fine, and I think that whilst we certainly are limited a little in what we can and can't do... we're experiencing new things and it's kind of nice to be a parent.
So parenting young can be a fun thing... and you've seen how she looks in a sun hat!
/ic
Posted by: Ian Cleary at November 23, 2004 03:43 PMOhmygodSonyaIloveyou. When I plan for the greatest day ever, sometime in the 11:00 hour you and I are doing shots and laughing like banshees.
Heck yes to maternal instincts, too.
Posted by: Lori at November 24, 2004 10:18 AM
i admit that when my own friends - who are now 28-29-30 - are talking about kids and buying property and mortages i get mortified. "there's so much more out there to do!" i say, "that you just can't do with kids!" their reply is always: "i don't care. i want kids. i want a house and a family and a yard and a dog. i'd rather have kids than travel the world."
to me, that's insane, but i don't think it's anything to be ashamed of. i do think it's awful that domestication, at least in urban areas, is now totally uncool, and the two-working-parent family scenario is doing tons of harm to our kids. you do what makes your heart warm, and do it whenever you want. bless you!
Posted by: leblanc at November 24, 2004 12:34 PM