Re: So what if I do not want to have kids?
I swear, if the husbands ever just once said something..i think these looks and stuff would just stop ASAP! And they (the talkers) know this, so thats why (well I dont think) men ever get bothered about these Qs directly, the aunties will never say to them "oh tell ur wife to quit school and start having boys. (not even kdis but BOYS!)"... blahblahblah. My cousni, who got married a month after me, just had a boy a few months ago, and when my aunts heard abt it they were like "tumhari cousin ne kar liya, abh tum kiyun nahi karti" as if we're in a competition and i'm losing? lol..whatever. And like when they ask you can't even say "Allah ki marzi" b/c they'll assume you CANT have a kid, and hence all the sympathetic, "hawww hayeeees"....and GOD FORBID you even HINT at the fact that you're actually planning on when to have them...toba toba....
Lol its really nto so bad for me right now...but i shudder to think what lies ahead :@:
I'm going through much the same now. My husband and I have been married for three years. In the first year, people would tease us lightly about kids. Now it's like an intense and urgent questioning. From close family as well as people I hardly speak to.
I love kids. I'm a teacher. I love working with kids, playing with them, observing them, even occasionally taking care of them. When I have a choice, I almost always prefer being in the kids room than the adults room. My husband is a big kid himself, and adores playing with children. We want to have kids...eventually.
When I first got married, I thought, okay a couple years to get used to life together, and then we'll start trying for kids. The 24yo me definitely assumed I'd have kids by now. But the thing is that the 27yo me still sees it as a part of her future, not her present. For the past few years, I've felt I'm too self-centered, too focused on me own needs, desires, ambitions, to really give enough and take care of a child. My care of plants and pets is half-assed. And although I would certainly take better care of a child, I do feel that the above is indicative of the fact that I'm just not mentally and emotionally ready to make the kinds of sacrifices motherhood requires. Or at least I wasn't ready in the past few years.
Recently I had a big Eid party and my chachi pointed to my baby cousin I was holding and she was like, "All these parties and work are not as important as this." And I just didn't say anything. It's not that I disagree, but it frustrates me that people (desis in particular) dismiss everything else a woman does as being trivial. Motherhood is very important, but maybe I have more to offer the world than raising and nurturing a few children. What if I don't want kids? What if I can't have kids? Does that mean that my life is worthless?
And sometimes I wonder if all these aunties putting the pressure on me are doing it because the same pressure was put on them, and the narrow-minded understanding of what it means to be a successful woman is then being imposed back on me. You chose to raise a family first. You chose to give up your career opportunities in favor of raising children. And now you're in your forties trying to take board exams and graduate courses to catch up. You may be working hard and frustrated with the choices you made. You may be regretting how much you have forgotten. You may be excited to start a new career. Why do you want me to fit into the same mold?
It worries me too because this same chachi also told me that one weekend her kids went to stay with a relative for the weekend. Within a few hours, she and her husband didn't know what to do with themselves and she was asking her husband to go and get the kids. I asked why they didn't go do something together, and she was like, oh we don't have that kind of relationship.
I don't even know what I'm ranting about here, except that I don't understand why these women who have invested all of their lives in their children, are faced with the children growing up and becoming independent, are frustrated and lost because they don't know what to do with themselves -- why do these same women insist that everyone else make the same lifestyle choices?
And why is it that I can't play with my little cousins, my nieces, nephews, friends kids without those sympathetic concerned looks?
Am I considering having kids now because I am beginning to feel ready? Or because I have been successfully pressured into it? Do I feel ready because I'm supposed to? Or because I am? Am I thinking too much about it?