Children playing with Barbies in media:“This is Sally. She’s the mommy. She loves fashion, swimming, and she drives a convertible! She has a baby with Ken and sometimes they kiss.” OR “Look, I ripped Barbie’s head off! Ha ha ha! I’m a boy.”
Children playing with Barbies in real life: “This is Aurora, the fallen goddess of the sky. She has been banished from her kingdom and bound to a mortal body by her sister, who rose to power by human sacrifices. She now leads an army of cannibal water spirits who eat men. Sometimes they have orgies. They dismembered a traitor and keep her head on a Popsicle stick as a warning to others. Aurora can turn into a wolf and uses battle magic to paralyze her enemies. The king of the stuffed animals developed rabies and she had to slay him to save his people, but they do not understand that it was an act of mercy and kindness and are sending assassins after her for regicide. This is Aurora’s soulmate, Crystal, but her soul is trapped in a gemstone while an evil spirit pilots her body and attempts to murder her friends.”
I’m in my mid-twenties, and honestly get so much hate over being childfree that I’ve started telling people I have an adopted daughter when they ask about my kids. I just conveniently leave out the fact that my adopted daughter is, in fact, a 40-pound sheep, one of roughly two dozen that live in my back yard.
It isn’t even a lie, I raised that lamb on a bottle from the day she was born, as far as she’s concerned I’m her mom. And as long as I’m vague enough, the problems of dealing with sheep sound totally believable as human toddler parenting problems. “Oh yeah, my daughter’s two, she always puts everything in her mouth.” “Ugh, my daughter is always climbing on stuff, I swear she’s part mountain goat!”
I live for seeing how long I can keep it up before someone asks to see a picture of my little darling. “Sure!” I say, “Here she is! Isn’t she adorable?” then relish the horrified confusion when they see this tiny little brown sheep like:
It’s the best thing. It’s my favorite thing I’ve ever done, next to raising sheep in the first place.
I find it fascinating that people who choose not to have children are generally assumed to feel really strongly about not having children (or even to feel really strongly against children, anyone’s children, in general). I am probably not going to have children, not because I REALLY REALLY HATE the idea of having children, but because I don’t really really love it. Out of all the major decisions I will make in my life, this one is the only irreversible one. I can sell a house, quit a job, divorce a spouse, whatever. I cannot unhave a child. I cannot opt out of being a parent once I become a parent. I can’t even take a step back for the sake of self-care or whatever, or else my child will suffer.
So for me, having children is fuck yes or not at all. The default will be to remain childfree. Having children should be an opt-in decision, not an opt-out one. Until/unless I develop really strong feelings about wanting to have children, I won’t have them, even if that means I never end up having them at all.
As a mother, I really wish more people gave having children this kind of clear contemplation and thought. It’s an irreversible decision. Too many people don’t understand that.
Steel Phoenix Studios 