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.

           

 

Memoir of a Scatter-Brained Four-Year-Old

 

I had a collection of invisible friends. I never told anyone I had them or talked to them out loud. Our conversations went on in my head. 

My mother used to say she wished she knew what was going on in my head. I didn’t tell her since, even at four I knew that only crazy people talked to people who weren’t there, and if you were crazy, men in the white coats would put you in a straitjacket and take you to Byberry. I wasn’t sure where that was, but I knew I didn’t want to go there.

My mother said she didn’t want them to come for her until the azaleas were in bloom. I used to hope they’d never bloom so no one would take her. I never knew why she’d want them to take her. 

Who could understand grownups?

My mother had silly rules, like looking up and down before crossing the street. 

What about cars? 

On our street there were seldom cars except just before dinner when dads came home. No one crossed the street then; you were in the house not spoiling your appetite.

What about the big road? There were always cars on that. Still, I dutifully looked at the sky and then at the ground, peeking out the corners of my eyes for cars.

I never asked why I needed to look up and down for two important reasons: first, my brother would say I was stupid; second, I knew the answer my mother would give. “Because I’m your mother and I said so.” Even at four I knew that was the answer to most questions beginning with why.

It was different in the city. There, when the white rectangle word lit up it meant you could cross the street and cars knew not to hit you. When the orange square word lit up, it meant they didn’t.

I loved going downtown. We took the train. I knew we were almost there when my brothers pointed out the window at the sky and said, “Look, there’s Billy Penn,” but for some reason I thought they said penguin. 

I didn’t know who Billy the Penguin was, but I pointed at the sky and pretended I could see him, too. I thought maybe he was like Bertie the Bunyip and lived in the television.

I knew my address and phone number, even if I didn’t know what addresses and phone numbers were. In case I was ever lost, I could go right up to the nearest policeman – or the lady behind the counter if I were in Wannamaker’s – and tell them my name, address and phone number so my parents could find me.

My parents did so many things I didn’t understand; it’s amazing I ever understood anything. My mother would decide to tell me things I didn’t ask about. 

She didn’t need to tell me about monsters because it never occurred to me that they could live under the bed or in the closet – until she mentioned that they didn’t. 

I knew they lived inside the television, just like Beaver Cleaver, Opie Taylor, Bertie the Bunyip and the cowboys and Indians.

 Too many dead cowboys and Indians was the reason our television would break, according to my dad, and he’d go behind the console and clean them out.

Anyway, when I was four I guess my aunt was having another baby – she did that often – and my mother decided to tell me where babies came from. I hadn’t asked. It didn’t occur to me to wonder. Babies just were, although I didn’t know how grownups actually knew when they were going to get one. I guess my mother knew and had to tell someone, so she told me.

The whole thing didn’t sound right, in my opinion. She started off telling me that the dad had the seeds. Wait, what? 

She lost me right there. 

I knew about seeds. They came in little paper packets that you bought at the store and planted in a garden. Then you’d get flowers or carrots or something. I had been to my aunt’s house. She had flowers in her garden, not babies.

Somehow this had to make sense. Okay, so they buy baby seeds. They plant them in a planter that’s hidden in their room. That’s why we weren’t allowed in my parents’ room without permission: they didn’t want us to know too much about the plants.

Anyway, something grew – probably something yucky, like spinach – the mom would eat it and it made her get fat. I was four, after all, and had observed that only fat ladies had babies. 

When the mother was fat enough she went into the hospital, and they put her on a diet. When she lost enough weight her prize was to go to the nursery and pick out which baby she wanted. It sounded silly to me, but it was a grownup thing.

Where did the babies come from? Well, there were always babies in the hospital nursery, just as there were always groceries in the grocery store. I guess some people need more detail than that, so I thought up the most logical solution (Whatever my mother said certainly made no sense – but again, “because I’m your mother and I said so,” was the reason behind it, so I didn’t ask).

I knew at that time that God made all of us. 

And where are things made? In factories. There were car factories, bicycle factories, refrigerator factories – there must be baby factories, too. 

God would make the babies and send them down the checkout line. 

People would pack them in boxes – the kind with the little holes in the sides and a handle top. The boxes were put in a delivery truck. 

The truck delivered the babies to the hospital according to how many boys and girls and which colors of each they had ordered. 

Then the nurses took them out of the boxes and put them in the plastic bins in the nursery until someone picked them.

I don’t know what my mother may have said about babies. This was what I put together after she mentioned the seeds. It made about as much sense to me as anything else grownups did, and I figured it out by myself, without anyone telling me I was stupid.

If I told Rob about this he’d know I was smart, I thought. I didn’t know if I was as ugly as he said, but I knew I wasn’t stupid. I never did tell him though, because I thought he might not play with me if he knew I wasn’t stupid.

With this knowledge, I was well on my way. Someday I’d know how to read and then maybe I would drive across the bridge over the ocean and see that Iron Curtain the grownups were always talking about, and the little red people in Russia. Who knew? There might be lots of other things to discover.

 

Peeves

No matter where I go, people don’t seem to understand my way of thinking.

But then, I don’t understand theirs, either.

I’ve long dreaded going to all-female things, like baby showers, wedding showers, or even the Ladies’ room at a party because of the conversations they will inevitably lead to.

It seems that whenever more than two or three females are gathered together, conversations often tend to begin with, “Men are such…” and you can add your own derogatory word – babies, pigs, etc. It seems to be an all or nothing put-down of the male of the species.

I feel a need, in those situations, to come to the defense of the men, since they’re not there to defend themselves. I don’t like generalizations about any group of people.

“I’m sorry, but I refuse to accept that generalization from anyone who propagates the myth of PMS,” I have said in many of these situations.

I am met with glares and evil looks, even when the people I’m with have no idea what half of those words mean. They know a put-down when they hear one, and I am suddenly the enemy.

I once worked in an all-female department of occupational therapists. You would think that highly-educated people would have a modicum of propriety.

 But no. 

In addition to the “men are such” sentences, they seemed to have some primordial need to announce their periods and other no-one-needs-to-know-that subjects.

A woman entering the room with a package of salted peanuts and a candy bar  -- or simply a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup – feels compelled to say that she needs this because she is “PMSing.” 

Really! 

Couldn’t you just let us assume you’re feeling a bit peckish and leave it at that?

While it may be fine to tell your significant other, your mother or your best friend – in private – about your bodily functions, it is, in my humble opinion, highly inappropriate to discuss these things in public. Particularly at work. The exception would be if there was some sort of emergency related to it.

I know in my 43 years of being cursed with such a waste of my time, only twice did I ever discuss what was going on  with my body,  and both were emergency situations – and highly humiliating. I certainly don’t want to hear about someone else’s bodily functions.

One colleague in particular, used to relish the discussion. If I were in the room, I would cut her off with, “Do you come out of the bathroom and discuss whether you went  #1 or #2 as well?” (I only put it in such babyish terms because that’s the way my “highly educated” colleagues preferred to talk.)

She seemed offended. It never occurred to her that her discussion offended me.

For a while, we had a male OT in our department. During his year or so working with us, all of these inappropriate conversations ceased. It was a relief.

Unfortunately, once he left, they resumed. 

I also don’t need to know about your hot flashes, your incontinence or a litany of your medications. If your baby was not conceived the old-fashioned way, I don’t need to know. TMI, folks, TMI.

Of course, work isn't the only place people feel the need to discuss bodily functions.

There are baby showers. 

Is that supposed to be some rite of passage, to make the poor pregnant woman suffer? I can’t imagine that someone who’s eight or nine months pregnant is comfortable in the first place. I think she’s well aware of the labor to come.

But at every shower I’ve attended, there are multitudes of women anxious to share, in gory detail, the massive extent of their morning sickness, how many hours of labor they endured with each child, and how inept their husband was in the delivery room – or the myriad reasons they wouldn’t have wanted their husband there, if they were of an older generation.

Even decades after giving birth, these women can recount every gory detail. It makes me wonder how they could possibly love a child who caused them such unforgettable distress.

“Oh, you forget after they put that sweet baby in your arms,” they say. 

But they apparently didn’t.

Of course, now you’re saying to yourself, “You know, men say things about women, too.”

Yes, I know. Women are cows, nags and bitches – and worse. 

I find that just as reprehensible. I tend to take it personally.

Ok, yes, I can agree that at times I have been a bitch. 

It’s being called a nag that offends me.

I do not nag people. I’ll say something once. If the other person doesn’t respond, my assumption is that it’s their failure. They don’t respect me. They aren’t willing to be helpful, or in some instances, do their part.

Point taken.

And when the point is taken, don’t expect me to volunteer to be in any way helpful to that person ever again, or to be part of a group that they’re in. Trust and respect are earned.

Maybe it’s cold, but you can’t accuse me of nagging. Don’t lump me in with those women at the baby showers. I will only remind someone of something they were supposed to do if they ask me to.

If you don’t believe me, just ask my husband.

P.S. When my husband proof read the blog, he noted that the last sentence is true!