Girl who isn't thrilled to be pregnant

[Whistler]

eh, grad school isn't all that great anyway.

[Katya]

eh, grad school isn't all that great anyway.

Mmm, I enjoyed it (but not so much the student loans).

[krebscout]

I'm just going to spew some of the things that have been rolling around my head concerning this topic:

I've spent some time talking with my mom (six grown kids) and my sisters (cumulatively eleven kids between the ages of one and twelve) about happiness and childrearing. Because though having one kid really wasn't that difficult (in my experience), having two has just about killed me. I won't be having kids this close in age again. It's not that any one moment is all that difficult, it's just the unrelenting nature of the job. It can really wear you down.

By the way, to anybody who may be afraid to have babies because they haven't loved their experiences with other babies: in my opinion, babysitting (or even just playing with) somebody else's kid is a completely different thing. Your own kids are vastly easier. You know them. You made them. So communication, expectations... it's all much more natural and joyful with your own children.

Anyway, my mother and my sisters have been telling me that this stage, the baby/toddler stage, is the very hardest. Especially with multiple babies/toddlers. And that even having older kids AND a baby or toddler at the same time is easier than having only little ones. This stage is physically demanding twenty-four hours a day. Later, the focus shifts toward more mental challenges: teaching life lessons, balancing restriction with independence, balancing mercy and justice, and so on. And in some ways it's much easier, and definitely more intellectually stimulating.

I think there's a lot of baggage that our culture and ourselves have attached to motherhood. Half the things mentioned in this thread so far have nothing to do with being a good mother in the purest sense: love for baby games and baby talk, mad domestic skills, cooking and crafting and what have you, are completely peripheral. I read on a parenting website (it wasn't very scientific) that parents spend vastly more time with their kids these days than they did a few generations ago, but we now feel more guilt. And I am completely crushing myself under that very rock. I have very stringent ideals of motherhood to which I hold myself, and it's grinding me down. I'm slowly starting to realize that I'm actually doing a pretty dang good job, and all of the fretting I do about my insufficiencies is hurting my family far more than helping. My mother told me that all you need to do to raise good happy kids is read to them, hug them, feed them, and bring them to church. Mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs met.

I called my sister in frustrated tears a few weeks ago, and she imparted this helpful tidbit: "Sometimes if you tell yourself that it's okay not to love every second of it, it's easier to love it." Because this is a job. Work. Nobody anywhere loves their work 100% of the time, and releasing the guilt over that is liberating.

Now that my own family is grown and my older brothers and sisters treat me as an equal and a friend rather than a kid sister and a free babysitter, I am seeing this time in young-motherhood as an investment. I want to have grown kids. I want to have friends with whom I have so much shared, intimate history. I want to be sealed to them. I want them to be friends with each other. This stage is a little blip in my lifetime and theirs.

I'm also seeing that family is most certainly a classroom for eternal principles. I firmly believe that the mother-father-child model was intentionally designed as a tight parallel to our relationship with God. I have learned things about faith, humility and submission, and prayer that are so simple but were stumbling blocks for me before I had kids. And I'm not saying that in the sense that as a parent I have needed to pray/submit/exercise faith (though that is true); I mean that I, as the god figure to my children, have started to better understand Heavenly Father's perspective, and why certain things are the way they are. They're the kind of things that, when explained, would sound too simple and kind of silly. But because of my personal circumstances and experiences they were revelatory. Clearly, people can learn eternal principles and do just fine without having kids. But the hands-on experience is valuable to me.

Lastly, you just love your kids. Even though it's hard and tedious and often stagnant, you do what you have to do because you just love them, and you can't really help it. Even if you don't feel like you love them sometimes. It's not meant to be a stroll through the park, and nobody needs to feel cheated or inadequate because they're not excited about it. It's service and it's sacrifice. It's an act of love, and love is hard work.

[Marduk]

Well, in general Hispanic culture dictates very specific gender roles. The man is essentially out of the house from breakfast until dinner working, and breakfast is pretty close to sun up, with dinner being pretty close to sun down. For those two meals, the wife is expected to be there and wait on him and the rest of the family as they eat, not eating until after everyone else is done (mainly, tortillas are expected to be prepared as needed and eaten hot off the pan.) She is expected to do all child-rearing (except in extreme cases the father will discipline) and all house work. A woman would not ask the man to do any housework any more than the man would ask the wife to come out to work the fields with him (although, frequently children of both genders will be asked to do both.)

I have seen this extreme, and I've seen folks that weren't so extreme. In general, this cultural ideal is dying down with this generation; I think this has more to do with Latin American countries becoming more industrialized than it has to do with anything else. My grandpa (well, technically my step-grandpa, but the only one I've ever known) had these rigid standards, and conflicted with the rest of the family because of it. However, my biological grandpa, who died when my mom was 13, did not. He cleared his own dishes and asked his wife to sit down and eat with him. My mom and her sisters say that he never treated my grandma harshly or as anything but an equal. So that is the standard of man they remember.

Since that is what my mom obviously preferred, that is the standard I grew up with. I had chores both in and out of the house, and my dad is a way better cook than my mom. He also cooked much more frequently than she did.

Anyway, hope that answers your question Tao. Sorry for taking so long.

[Katya]

I read a discussion about divorce in the LDS Church a few weeks ago, and one divorced woman wisely suggested that, when it comes to divorced friends and acquaintances, we should follow their lead in talking about the situation instead of assuming they do or don't want to talk about it. Maybe this is a wise approach to take when talking about having kids, as well.

I think that's a very wise and tactful thing to do. In fact, I think most people already do this with uncomfortable topics.

True. So maybe the wisdom comes in realizing that the topic of having children could be uncomfortable or painful for many Mormon women.

[Wisteria]

Thanks, krebscout. I really like the idea of young motherhood as an investment.

[Tim the Monkey]

Like Wisteria, I also really like the idea krebscout presents of motherhood being an investment. I also loved her comment on motherhood being more intellectually stimulating as kids get older and as their personalities change and as your relationship with them changes. It makes me think about my relationships with my friends now...trying to understand our relationships, conversing with them, figuring out how I can provide service for them, etc. is definitely intellectually stimulating, and I certainly hope to be friends with my future kidlets, so I assume my relationships with them will follow a similar pattern. I think it's easy for us to get caught up in "motherhood" just being the toddler years, but really it's a life-long pursuit, and as such it's constantly changing.

Relationships built on pure emotion are usually pretty fleeting--think of infatuation vs. eternal love in a romantic relationship. A deeper, stronger relationship needs all the nurturing krebscout points out: mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs must be met for everyone involved. Everyone has different mental, emotional, physical and spiritual needs, though, and I think that's what makes worthwhile interpersonal relationships (especially parent-child, because there is so little social space between the two parties) so hard. I would even go so far as to hypothesize that the fact that worthwhile interpersonal relationships are so hard is why we have the commandment to love one another in the first place.

I believe it's already been mentioned in this thread, but essentially, kids are people too, and our relationships with them will flourish the most when we act accordingly.

...I feel like this was mostly just a really long-winded way of saying "ditto" to krebscout...sorry

[Dragon Lady]

Ok, Tim. Now I think you're a girl. So, uh… I'm going to go with I have no clue.

[ahem.]

Ok, Tim. Now I think you're a girl. So, uh… I'm going to go with I have no clue.

Yeah. I was totally wrong. I was curious enough to do some cyber-stalking, and now I am 95% certain you are a girl.

[Tim the Monkey]

haha, and here I thought I was totally in the clear with DL's comment...but...

Yeah. I was totally wrong. I was curious enough to do some cyber-stalking, and now I am 95% certain you are a girl.

...I guess I should be a little more careful with whatever cookie-crumbs I'm leaving around the Interwebs....

All joking aside, I can see how you could have figured it out. Good job, m'dear.

Yes, this is an admission on my part that I am a woman. So...um...huzzah?

[Dead Cat]

So we have another girl running around under a masculine 'nym. It almost makes me want to change mine to Daedalus the Cat...

[Tao]

Didn't the Relief Society comment make it clear about post #3?