My Annoyance When Asked About Kids, Explained
It seems like everyone around me has or is preparing to have children. And since happiness loves company, at the old age of 23 I have an influx of questions about my future. Whether it's my family members, coworkers or my beautician, everyone wants to know what's going on with my plans. Where are my offspring and husband?! It doesn't matter if I have ideas about other aspects of my life. My focus doesn't matter because it's not connected to a traditional lifestyle.
No one can tell me how to finance those bundles of joy. Do you know why? One reason is that other people don't understand what bills I need to pay and what my salary is. Another reason is because they can't figure it out either. According to The Washington Post our wages haven't grown in at least 20 years. In fact, "once you factor in inflation, wages growth is so low that workers are hardly better off than they were a year ago." That means older generations need to leave me alone when they talk about how rough it was when they were young parents. The roughness hasn't alleviated.
Even if I somehow quadrupled my income and could pay for them, what happens when they get sick? Surely I can protect them and keep them around other wealthy kids who are healthy. From the experience of being a kid, I can tell you that rich kids get sick often. After I read this article, I know their parents don't get in as much trouble for endangering the rest of us regular people. It's been proven that "wealthy people are more likely to be let off easy when they do things that can harm their children than low income people are." Even if my child didn't contract anything fatal, they will still deal with consequences their richer peers don't have to endure.
This is assuming that I want to have sex in the first place. (Editor's Note: Of course I want to have sex. I'm trying to prove a point. Bare with me.) We've all heard the stories about the 60's and 70's. Baby Boomers, you guys were sexing up a storm! That's awesome. It's just not true for us. A few of the reasons consist of "a culture of overwork and an obsession with career status, a fear of becoming emotionally involved and losing control, an online dating milieu that privileges physical appearance above all, anxieties surrounding consent, and an uptick in the use of libido-busting antidepressants." Mic drop.
Kids are wonderful and making the decision to have them is a gift. But it's my gift to open and release onto the world. Instead of worrying about what my reproductive parts are doing, worry about the people you brought into the world. Some of them really lack discipline and the insight of knowing who to scream at on public transportation. If I'm not allowed to tell you how to raise your kids, then I get to stay childless for as long as I want.
