Who Doesn’t Like Babies?

 

The current trend in thinking is that empowerment requires people seeing others who look like them in careers they want to have. 

Although empowerment wasn’t a word I heard growing up, I’ve never thought of it as something others conferred, but something that comes from within. Glass ceilings and empowerment never concerned me. The world was full of possibilities, and if I wanted something, who was the rest of the world to tell me I couldn’t have it?

From my earliest memories, I had a set of things I was never going to be: a nurse, a secretary, a teacher, a waitress, a salesclerk or a mom. I had nothing against people who had those jobs; I simply didn't want them for myself. Oddly, those were pretty much the only things girls could aspire to in those days. Every girl I knew dreamed of getting married and having babies. My other “nevers” were what they would do until they had those babies.

I used to tell my mother I didn’t want to be a secretary, I wanted to have a secretary. She would shake her head and say, “Yes, dear,” and then proceed to tell me why girls didn’t do those things.

Says who? My brothers could aspire to the jobs I wanted. Why should I be punished because my father failed to give me a Y chromosome? I never understood why my parents wanted a girl in the first place, if all I was doomed to become was someone less than. I had no use for a life as a second-class human, which was all someone limited to a few career choices was, in my book.

The message I heard given to my brothers was that they could grow up to be anything they wanted. Well then, I wanted a piece of that, too.

But according to my mother’s thinking, I was a girl, so it didn’t matter what silly thing I wanted to be, I’d have to give it up when I got married and had babies.

Babies? I didn’t want to have babies!

Of course, according to her, all girls wanted to have babies, and I’d change my mind when I was older.

I didn’t see that happening. I didn’t want to be a girl in the first place. I don’t even particularly like babies.

Gasp! That’s a horrible thing to say! Don’t ever tell anyone that!

The fact is, I didn’t, and still don’t. Brief encounters with them are fine, seeing pictures are fine, but having to spend an extended amount of time with them is for others, not for me. Babies are boring. They’re noisy, don’t keep regular hours, and they really don’t do much besides eat, excrete, and cry. I’ve never been a fan of people that needy.

My dolls were not precursors of future babies. They were substitutes for the friends I frequently didn’t have.

When I learned the facts of life on where babies came from, and all of the horrors women had to put up with for the “privilege” of having babies, I was determined that babies weren’t for me. 

Just as not everyone is college material, not all women are meant for motherhood. I never yearned for it. I had no concept of a biological clock. As I’ve always said, if God had intended me to be a parent, I would’ve been born male. Since I wasn’t, all bets are off.

Besides, what if no one wanted to marry me? Considering the fact that no one asked until I was 38 and I didn’t marry until I was 39, my young adulthood bore that idea out. 

I was never boy crazy. When friends married at 19 or 20, I thought, good luck with that. I have things that are more important to me.

Okay, that meant I’d need to pursue a career. So there, Mother!

While circumstances have, at times, put me in the situation where I had to, for a time, be a teacher and a salesclerk – the latter because the former in a Catholic school didn’t pay enough to keep body and soul together – I did not stay in that situation for very long.

In college, I was a food service worker, although not a waitress. But that was to maintain some amount of financial independence from my parents without interfering with my classes, and to finance my semester abroad that my parents couldn’t afford to give me. (“If you want to do it, you have to be able to pay for it. We can’t. And if you think about calling home asking for more money, don’t.”)

I also had to do food service when I first graduated because I couldn’t get a job in my field without experience. Of course, one cannot get experience without a job. This is why you don’t see me on the nightly news.

Fortunately, I didn’t have the right skill set to ever be a secretary. In those days of sexism, before HR and sexual harassment rules, secretaries were expected to make and serve coffee. I still don’t know how to make coffee, since I don’t drink it. And had a boss ever called me “honey” and patted me on the butt, I would have decked him, and been looking for a new job the same day.

No, in truth, the way I was “groomed” as a child, I would have been too shy to actually deck the boss. Instead my letter of resignation would have been on his desk the next morning. Fortunately, I didn’t have to learn secretarial skills in high school since I was in college prep classes.

I never went anywhere near a nursing career. Instead, by default of not being able to get into the career of my choice, I ended up in a healthcare career that, while somewhat rewarding, meant I spent 30 years in a career I never actually wanted.

And my career did involve working with children. I do like school-aged children, even the preschoolers -- as long as they're not "runners". The advantage that my job had was that at the end of the day, I gave them back and went home to my dog – and eventually to a husband.

But where my colleagues go gaga over babies and toddlers, I step back and say, “No, thank you.”

What I like best are third through 12^th grade students, particularly middle schoolers and teens. I like them. They’re funny, you can joke with them, have an intelligent conversation with them, and while some are sometimes moody – as are adults, by the way – you can reason with them. All it requires is that you respect them and listen to what they have to say. 

I don’t have that nails-on-chalkboard high-pitched “baby voice” I hear many people use when talking at small children. I was always insulted by being spoken to that way when I was a kid, so I never developed that tone myself.

The funny thing is, many people recoil at the idea of dealing with teens. They freely admit that they don’t like teens, or else they make disparaging remarks about them that makes their attitude clear. Yet, if I dare to say I don’t like babies, they’re horrified.

I’m not saying do away with babies. There are plenty of people who love babies and can take care of them, so I shouldn’t have to. My mother was one of those people. But teens need proponents, too. That is where my talents lie.

“But who doesn’t like babies?” they ask.

 Well, I don’t.