Today, most girls in their late teens and early twenties are geared towards careers and education; furthering the self is purportedly essential to the modern woman, and it is the rare girl who chooses motherhood at a young age over the experience of a full and hedonistic youth. However, only twenty-five years ago, it was not at all unusual for the average 20-year old to be married, mortgaged, and mothering. So, what has changed?
A few of my friends have always disliked children, but I feel differently. Possibly through not having had any younger siblings, I have always sought to play with, and look after, any children in my family and friend network. I find babies adorable, toddlers charming, and kids invigorating; however, I still can’t quite imagine myself ever being mature enough to mother one of my own. As a young woman of 21, I do suffer involuntary pangs of jealousy when I see another woman my age pick up her smiling, rosy-cheeked youngster. I have harboured idealised fantasies about painting a child’s nursery, and singing my favourite songs to a round-faced baby who lies adoringly in my arms, but this fantasy is often displaced when I remember that cheeks are only rosy because of teething, and that smiling faces only lessen the impact of dirty nappies to a certain degree. I realise that these seemingly horrifying elements of childcare become the daily norm when motherhood becomes an actuality, but if I am put off by them to such an extent at this stage, does that mean I am too young to become responsible for another human being?
My mother was only three years older than me when she had her first baby and she herself concedes that, despite being an exemplary mother, she didn’t find it an altogether natural process; she vividly remembers picking up a minute baby jumper, aged 3-6 months and priced at £45. She was aghast – for that price, she could buy a whole outfit, whereas her tiny infant would hardly get any wear from such an article before growing out of it. She admits physically resenting ‘wasting’ her hard-earned money, but to prove to herself she was a good mother, she bought it. So what would have made my mother have children before her selfish youth had really run its course? Was it societal expectation? She believes she just became naturally broody, despite children never being part of her original life plan. Now, as someone who gets broody on an almost daily basis, what deters me from simply neglecting birth control and giving in to the urge to procreate?
I am in a stable, six-year strong relationship with someone who considers the concept of children as being part of our more immediate future; being a younger parent holds more of an attraction for him than being an older one. Short-sightedly, this means he wants to be a father before he hits thirty, which means I would become a mother before I was 27. The problem here lies in the fact that I am inherently and unashamedly selfish. Does this mean that the women of my mother’s and grandmother’s eras were simply better adjusted to the concept of sacrifice? I feel as though this makes them better people than me and others of my ilk who consider the concept of motherhood as an abstract idea of bottled milk and bonding.
I have a friend who became a mother at the not entirely premature age of twenty; while not planned, the baby was also in no way unwanted. She and her boyfriend made the unselfish decision to move out of their city centre flat and back into her mum’s house, where she would have ample family around her to help and support, and less financial pressure. She also took a year’s sabbatical from work and university. Most people couldn’t stand the idea of placing their lives on hold to care for a baby, and while she never had any definite plans to become a mother so early, the option of abortion never entered her mind; she instead sacrificed her immediate lifestyle for the sake of her child. Now as her her son nears his first year, her plans to return to her education and career are beginning to materialise altogether more perceptibly than I could have foreseen.
I have another (extremely maternal) friend who, after only a one-night stand, found herself in a similarly sticky situation; three hospital trips later and she was childless and struggling to cope in a way she never anticipated. Whilst becoming a mother can (if you have a supportive and loving family) means that people become more actively involved in your life, an abortion can alienate a woman because of the individual nature of the experience; each story is different, and it is difficult to understand and appreciate how women feel, experience, and respond to the pain. This is, in no way, meant to be a comment on the ever-so-hackneyed argument of ‘a woman’s right to choose’; it is instead a comment on how, whereas in previous years, women may have been urged to stifle their personal desires to flee the familial nest and strike out alone, women who now choose to have a child at a young age can be considered ill-educated and unwise. Society thinks it has moved on from putting pressure on women to mother children before their time, but it has instead created new opposing pressures; how are we ever to know what we really want when our thoughts take precedence over our instincts? My body is telling me it is time to be a mum, but my mind is telling me, secretly, that for at least another ten years I want to be number one.
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