I am in Dorset at the moment, where I've come for a few days of calm and quiet in order to get some serious writing done on my book. In fact it hasn't turned out quite like that; I haven't written a huge amount more than I would in London (although not less, so the trip isn't a waste of time). Instead I have been walking, swimming, reading, eating and doing a lot of sleeping. I am slightly surprised by the amount of sleep I can get done; the total silence and darkness outside at night is probably helping with that.
Sleeping, inevitably, means dreams, and while I know it is odious and dull beyond measure to talk about one's dreams, bear with me on this one - I promise not to go into detail. Last night I had my most recent recurring dream, a dream I am having with alarming frequency. I have always been one for recurring dreams; I have lots involving various forms of transport going out of control (plane crash / boat sinking / I have forgotten how to drive); dreams about needing to pee but having nowhere to go, quite often combined with my other recurring dream that I have gone back to school and am being forced to do my A Levels again, so the dream takes place in a school toilet full of cubicles, none of which are suitable for some reason - this one I have so often that I got quite freaked out when I was in an actual school toilet recently; and my favourite recurring dream, that I am in New York and it's amazing. I've been having this one less recently, ever since I did go to New York and it really was amazing. It's like my subconscious can't be bothered with it any more.
My new recurring dream is that I'm pregnant. It's always slightly surprising, I never know who the father is, and my family are always there to offer support / interfere, depending on the tenor of the dream. It's not an anxiety dream, I am never particularly worried about being pregnant, nor is it an especially happy dream. It's just me with a massive bump, idly wondering what having a baby will be like. Last night I was mainly concerned about whether I should get my hair cut first.
I suppose the pregnancy dream is normal for a woman of 33. These are my worrying about having babies years. Thing is I am not remotely worried about having babies (posts about pain relief notwithstanding.) I know I am supposed to have strong feelings about having a baby, maybe be beginning to panic as my biological clock ticks increasingly loudly, or otherwise have a militant position that there will be no baby for me. In fact I feel about babies about the same way I feel about dogs. I like dogs. I play with other people's dogs. I feel no desire to have a dog of my own. However, if I were married to someone who desperately wanted a dog, I would probably get one.
Because I know that wanting to have a baby is a normal, natural thing, every so often I check in with myself to see if that wanting is there. No. Nothing. I guess I must be abnormal / unnatural. I wonder what wanting a baby is like. I wonder what people want about a baby. Is it the baby itself, is it having a child to play with, is it the anticipation of adult children? What? I once caused huge consternation by saying to a group of female friends that I supposed people wanted children to keep them company. I was shouted down. Apparently this would be an incredibly selfish reason to want a child. And anyway, your child might not want to spend time with you. Meanwhile I literally could not think of another reason to want to have a child except to spend time with it. But apparently there is something else. Something unselfish. You want the child, but the beneficiary of this wanting is the child, not you. This must be what is called the gift of life, and it's a gift I have never felt the urge to give. Generally I only give people things I'm pretty sure they will like. I am not confident enough to say that about life. I'm not even entirely sure that I like it yet. Sure, it has its moments, but it's really hard work. (The other theory, I suppose, is that your child is your gift to the world. But that is so unbelievably arrogant that I can't believe anybody thinks this way. Can they? Do they? Really?)
So I don't want to have a baby. Or rather, I don't *want* to have a baby; there doesn't seem to be the right vocabulary for saying that I don't actively want one but I don't not want one either. I've spoken to the not-wanters as well. They have such strong feelings about what it will do to them, to their lives. But I think if I were to have a baby I would probably like it. But I could say that about all kinds of things I'm unlikely ever to do - move to a new country, start a new career, cut my hair short. I might like any of them, I just don't want them badly enough to find out. So on the subject of babies, the biggest decision I am ever likely to make, I am neutral. (Although, in a way, neutral is the same as not wanting something, because if I am neutral on the subject of having an ice cream, I don't have an ice cream.) Neutral! It's pathetic. I sort of feel that I have failed the human race. Or run in it, not even come last, but just got indifferent halfway through over whether to bother crossing the finish line.
Of course, I am reproducing in book form, so maybe that has killed the desire in me. There are tens of thousands of my offspring crowding out bookshops and bookshelves all over the world, worming their way into the minds of readers, living their lives in your memories. I am reproducing as a meme; a parasite. Basically, I am bacteria. Who needs pregnancy?
But then what are the dreams all about?
'What can you figure out about a guest just from the way they check in?':
Front desk employees and hotel workers discuss different character traits
about guests that tell them how their stay will be
-
Imperceptible traits can teach you more than you think!
Some people can tell you everything about themselves by just their
appearance, the way they walk, ...
10 hours ago
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12 comments:
Marie, I completely understand where you are coming from and I have four children (-: I posted many of the reasons why, here.
http://maniacmum.blogspot.com/2006/10/that-pesky-glass-ceiling.html
Every time I found out I was pregnant I had a funny panicky thought of help, get me out of here, even though that's what I wanted. Or thought I did. The last one was totally unplanned and I hated being pregnant with her, and felt guilty that I didn't want her till nearly the last minute.
I think having babies and the reasons we do it is fantastically complicated. There is definitely the biological impulse, but that doesn't affect everyone. There is also a certain selfishness in wanting to reproduce oneself(Shakespeare's sonnets cover that particular human wish very well). Some people altruistically do want to produce Life as you say..
I don't think there's anything wrong in wanting children for the company. Mine are really good company now, and I'm immensely grateful to have them in my life.
But I don't think I made at all a logical considered decision about having children. I was terrified of the whole notion, up until no 1 was born. Personally, I think that's the right response. Having a child is such a HUGE responsibility you should consider it carefully. Having said that, I think without dramatic events in my life coinciding at a particular point I'd have still been wobbling on the edge even now. Sometimes you just have to do something and not think too hard about it.
What annoys me is the suggestion that a woman is unnatural if she says she doesn't want children. Better not to have them if she feels like that. But equally annoying is the aggressive feminist I Ain't Never Having Babies, Sistah! approach favoured by someone I worked quite closely with. As in all decisions in life, live and let live. What's right for one, isnt' right for all. People should be free to choose to be parents or to be childless and not condemned for either decision.
Btw. Am always fascinated by people's dreams. Maybe you are working out your attitudes to pregnancy in your subconscious. Like I say, it's a complicated thing...
I don't see anything particularly wrong with not wanting to have children. Not to mention that you can take the high moral ground with regards to the world over-population crisis.
But I think your last paragraph gives the game away: the dreams are about your new book.
(Ha! Word verification is ratinme: perhaps how some nervous mums-to-be feel?)
Hmmm. Really interesting topic. I've run the gamut of feelings on this one. When I was younger I really felt I didn't want to have kids. Then, when I was working as a student midwife and all I saw were (mostly) happy couples being (mostly) ecstatic about having babies, and I was surrounded by hormone soup, I started to really want to be a mother. Granted, what I probably wanted was to be on the receiving end of all the lovely midwifery care I was seeing, rather than on the learning/giving end! But I think it opened my eyes a bit to my previously dormant maternal side. Since then (I'm not working in midwifery anymore) I have still felt the need/want for kids but it comes and goes. So I guess now I'm feeling more neutral, like you... or perhaps ambivalent is a better word. Even though I'm 32 and also in those prime baby-fever years this just isn't the right time for me or my partner. And I'm mostly fine with that, not all broken up or biological clock sounding an alarm or anything. It's just that there is a point where it gets too late, and I do worry a little about that. I still feel like there's time though.
I have one close friend who has always known that she didn't want to have children, and in fact, had the surgery to prove it in her late 20s. She had a really hard time with some of the nursing staff who kept trying to get her to change her mind - even as she was being wheeled into the OR! Unbelievable. She is also a writer, interestingly. So perhaps there is something to this correlation between creative work and having/not having children? For me, I think it comes down to wanting to do everything (!) which isn't possible, and so every path taken means looking wistfully back at all the paths not taken. Which is silly and pointless, but there you are. When I am feeling the desire to be a parent, I also always feel terrified of the enormous responsiblity so I guess I'm on the right track there ... what I want is partly the company (I get along with my parents, so it makes sense I guess), and partly to keep the family genes going (or just the family... something... because I would be open to adoption, I think), and partly curiosity. There's a scientist in me who would be fascinated by watching a little human go about the business of becoming a full-grown human. And maybe it IS arrongant but it feels like my children would be interesing people, and I am looking forward to one day meeting them. Which doesn't mean that, for now, when I hear children screeching and crying in public I don't go home and thoroughly appreciate the peace and quiet. ; )
(Sorry for the epic reply... obviously an important subject for me!)
Dream interpretation has always seemed a bit iffy to me, but the new book does sound like a plausible explanation. Or, you know.. your body saying that you don't eat enough pickles and ice cream.
(Has anyone in the world ever ACTUALLY craved that?)
I have two kids, and definitely one of the reasons I had them was to keep me company! I had a strong urge to have my own children, not that I am that fond of other people's kids, and it seemed like as good a time as any to get started. I didn't think about it too much tbh. I wanted to be part of a family - nothing altruistic about it. I'm not very gregarious and never found a job that I liked doing very much - I reckon if I had your talent and was able to follow a fulfilling, absorbing career like yours I would probably feel exactly the same as you do now. (p.s. love the blog by the way!)
The great thing about children is that they don't weigh much. It allows them to climb along the thinner branches of a tree and pluck the fruit. The problem is stopping them from scoffing the lot instead of sharing with the elders.
Perhaps your sub conscious is just trying to figure it all out and searching for why you feel no particular urge to procreate. Sub conscious' are pesky for that.
One part of you doesn't understand the other part is all :)
There is obviously no middle road to travel when parenting: everyone seems so militantly righteous in their practices. And now you point out that there is even no middle road in choosing to be a parent. People all seem to want you to be vehemently for or against, but so many of us are oddly ambivalent. There should be a name for us type of singles or parents.
As for why be a parent...let's put it this way, if, for whatever reason, you have a child or children, you'll probably learn new aspects of your character and discover new perspectives on every sort of matter from organic foods to the scary precariousness of world peace. Since becoming a parent everything has changed in my brain and heart and I don't think it would have been so if I hadn't had children. But, that could just be me. And, you can ask why change what is in your brain and heart?
Even though I didn't want kids for company, they have turned out to be good company. They are, for example, my favourite travelling companions. Imagine travelling with someone who doesn't complain, doesn't need to talk to you incessantly, never smells odd, but always gets the joke? Doesn't get better then that.
Marie, think Christine has a point about the author/mother thing. Virginia Woolf was childless, and in her diaries at one point looks enviously at her sister who she regards as an earth mothery type (I think, long time since I read them). She does talk about being barren, but also the books fulfil her, and there's a bit of her that recognises she might not be able to have both books and children. Mind you she also had other mental health issues which muddied the water, which I know don't apply in your case (-: However, it is an interesting idea: Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Elliott, all childless. Coincidence? I don't think so.
To be fair to Charlotte Bronte, she did try to have kids, but died of extreme morning sickness. Although that is another entry in the "reasons not to" column...
True, but it was after her success. Sylvia Plath also managed to have children and write, but look what happened to her...Enid Blyton by all accounts while delighting children worldwide was an abysmal mother.
OMG. What am I doing to my children??????
Uh...Madeleine L'Engle: good mother (of three)and writer, but struggled for some years before finding the balance. Alice Munro: mother of two (I think) and writer, but I think her kids had some issues with her mothering (few kids don't). Carol Shields: good writer and (by all accounts that I know of) good mother of five. A lot of the examples being given (Austen, Brontes, Elliot)are from an area when child-bearing and rearing were far more labour-intensive (sorry about that) than now. You really couldn't write unless you had, as Woolf herself put it, "a room of one's own", and a household staff. Some would argue that that hasn't changed.
Thanks Persephone, you've cheered me up. I hadn't thought of those egs. And of course you're right about the childbirth thing. Also still inclined to agree that A Room of Your Own still an essential part of it. Being a mother I find, particularly as they get older doesn't always allow me enough mental headspace to write. Am really struggling at the moment because of overload of stuff they have to do interfering with things I'd rather think about. Though, paradoxically, I am also huge procrastinator and as I don't get much time to write, I do find I generally write at furious high speed when necessary. Think if I didn't have children I probably wouldn't get anything written at all (-:
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