resonant

from the cut’s “I’m 40. I Don’t Want to Be a Mom. Now What?”:

Having kids is not something a woman can back-burner forever, and as I’ve watched friends take the leap, the reality that I would not be able to leave to fate the matter of children much longer persistently crept to the forefront of my mind. It was less a pressing need to have a child than a deep, nagging fear that I wouldn’t be okay without one.

YES WORRIED ABOUT THIS

I realized that so many of those things I valued in my current life would cease to be if I opted for motherhood. Perhaps for the first time I began thinking of my life as something intentional, rather than a for-the-time-being existence.

INTENTIONAL, YES!

So now what? As my friend Stacy London said, “Breaking up with motherhood is more complicated than simply not wanting children. It is breaking up with our perceived use-value. It is looking at what we as single, childless women, unfettered by traditional roles, want to offer the world.” Life, particularly life for women, is marked with widely acknowledged signposts, beginning with puberty, then marriage, then children — or, failing that, devoting our lives to charity or career, two things women are often required to give in exchange for not producing a child. We may balk at the restrictions and create our own detours, but the established guidebook is there, as is the reward system for checking off the boxes.

I AM BREAKING UP WITH MY PERCEIVED USE-VALUE