Kiwi... Unleashed!

I have never had, at any moment in my life, any shred of desire to have children. I could, in a way, say that I do have children already, because I have pets that I consider my kids. My cat probably thinks his name is �Son� or �Child� because that is what I most often call him. I should rather say that I have never had any longing to bring a human infant into the world. All craving and maternal instinct aside, there is an enormous, lifelong commitment of which I want no part. I do have many friends are pregnant or who have children, and I do get excited and happy for them, and I like their kids, so I figure I will live out that part of my existence through them, from a distance, which suits me just fine.

I am not alone in my lack of interest in procreating, as I have friends who feel as I do, although we are the minority of the population. Most people do reach a point in their lives when they decide they want to have children. This happens for many reasons, about which I can only speculate. Some say they hear their biological clocks ticking or feel their parental instincts kick in. Others want to raise families with their significant others, carry on their family names, or just plain love children and everything about them. I have yet to feel any parental instincts kick in, and I suspect my biological clock is either broken or somehow nonfunctional because I have never had such yearnings, although part of me suspects that these things aren�t as much caused by internally driven desires as they are the result of the influences and expectations of families and society.

I have more recently decided that my father kept back my biological clock from the X-chromosome he gave me, as he has expressed more interest in me having children in any given visit than I will feel in my lifetime. Through the years I was growing up, he always said, �Do not touch boys! They are all bad- they only want one thing.� Then one day when he was asking me what I wanted for my birthday and realized I was turning 29, he looked me in the eye and said, �When are you gonna get knocked up and give me grandchildren?� Now there�s an endearing expression of wanting to carry on the family name. Not the words you want to hear out of a parent�s mouth. I truly believe that if I picked up a hitchhiker, got pregnant and never saw the man again, my father would be thrilled just to know I was going to have a child.

I understand parents wanting grandchildren to play with and love, however, most of the motivation in my opinion comes from a sadistic craving to enjoy the moments in children�s lives when they do the same things to you that you did to your parents as a child. It�s as if they believe that the behavior children sometimes exhibit that springs forth many a gray hair and flushed face in the young parent lends an enormous amount of satisfaction which reverses the effects of aging in the older grandparents. They tell you that they want to enjoy the company of a child again and that they miss having little ones in the family. This is a lie. They want to see the day in which you experience what they experienced with you as a child, and point out to you exactly how you should do things and that they did it with less resources and conveniences.

Aside from lacking the drive to raise a family, I don�t think that I would be a good parent. I say this for many reasons, primarily because I lack the patience I see other people exhibit with their children. How they control their verbal outbursts I�ll never know. My child�s first word would most likely be a foul one, of which I would be proud. I am also extremely absent-minded. Some people forget and leave their wallets, keys, etc. in various places. I can see myself arriving home from a shopping trip and realizing that my baby was not in the car, and probably sitting somewhere in the grocery store wondering where I was. Some people put their coffee mugs on top of the car, forget and drive away. I shudder to think what I would do, that is, if I even made it that far. I�d most likely never make it past the multiple excretions that spew forth from children at any given time.

Although I have historically been quite adamant about not having children, I do realize that very few things in life are certain. Maybe someday I�ll meet someone with whom I want to get married and have a family. I have yet to meet such a man, and I don�t quite see this as an event I�m ever going to experience for multiple reasons, but stranger things have happened, and one can never say never. So, for now, I think I�ll stick to visiting my friends who are parents, compiling a photo album of their children and being content as an aunt. And maybe I�ll even take the photographs home to my family so they can pretend that somewhere inside me there might be a faint glimmer of procreation motivation.

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