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Comamamunity: If the Gene Fits

It's been several years since I've been on the pill. As a casually dating single girl, condoms were the perfect choice. But now I'm in a relationship, and condoms weren't cutting it. The margin of error felt too great. I needed a prescription for birth control, but my new healthcare benefits didn't kick in for sixty days. It occurred to me that the most convenient solution was a trip to Planned Parenthood. I can't really remember the last time I visited a Planned Parenthood, but as I stepped onto the elevator of their high-security office, I was reminded why they've been my first choice for charitable donations over the years. Mounted to the wall was a sleek slab of frosted glass etched with their mission statement: Every child, a wanted child. I was there because I didn't want a child. Not at the moment anyway.

I joined two other women in the waiting room. In the far corner, one woman was fidgeting and rolling her eyes. Before long, she spoke up. "I hope they don't keep me waiting much longer, she said. "It's just making me more nervous." She explained she was there to get an IUD. She didn't know what to expect but figured it was going to be unpleasant. I knew practically nothing about the procedure but offered her my sincere belief that everything would be fine. At that point she walked over, took the seat next to me, and began to talk.

"I gained too much weight on the pill and was always forgetting to take it. And the patch burned my skin. So, I'm going to get an IUD. Ten years is a long time, but I don't want kids. I've never wanted kids. I'm in school and I want my career. When I was five years old, I knew I didn't want children. All the other girls had dolls, but I wasn't even interested. I told my mother I was never going to have children and she laughed and said what do I know about that at five? But we had a day care at our house, so I took care of children. I know. I don't want kids."

"You don't have to have children," I said and asked her how old she was. She told me she was twenty-two, to which I replied, "You have plenty of time."

But even as I said it, I wasn't entirely sure what I meant by it. Did I mean, plenty of time to change her mind? Plenty of time to realize she was wrong about never? Plenty of time for life to take all kinds of turns you can't guess at twenty-two? Or plenty of time to determine if the clarity she had on the subject at age five would endure? My own feelings about having children have always been ambivalent, but they lacked the vehemence of the young woman's. Perhaps I never felt the odds stacked against me like I suspected she did. I started wondering as I sat waiting for my own birth control, just what controls our desire to give birth?

Could it be something we are born with—a motherhood gene, if you will? The Yes, No, and mutation-prone Maybe gene? I remember my sister-in-law once telling me she knew she wanted to have a family when she was a "little, little, girl," and she is now a lovely mother of two. Another friend felt much like the young woman at Planned Parenthood; having children held zero appeal. They were perceived as an unwanted obligation, a diversion from other ambitions. My gut tells me I carry the Maybe gene. I've never assumed I would have children but also never ruled it out. It's hard for me to recall my girlhood knowing on the subject. Perhaps because the current was never that strong. Like most aspects of my life, I've believed the question of motherhood would be revealed to me in time and until recently the motherhood window felt wide open. But I just turned 38 and I feel that window closing. I have to admit that for the first time, I sense the need to sort out my motherhood fears, desires, and needs.

Some days I fear I'll lack the clarity or opportunity to say yes to motherhood if that's what I choose. Then there's the competing fear that motherhood means losing the freedom to pursue my interests. Would I ever get into my studio and paint again? I understand that having a child would open up my life as much as it would close it, and it's this expansion and contraction that becomes increasingly compelling and daunting in my mind. I feel like I already struggle to make all the important stuff in my life fit together. Wouldn't a child complicate this exponentially? Would I manage the delicate balance of nurturing a partner, a child, and myself without leaving someone or something out? Would I repeat the difficult patterns of my own childhood? Does my hesitation to share my life with a child make me selfish? Am I cursed to languish in ambivalence thanks to my Maybe gene?

Okay, okay…enough already. While these fears may be at least partly justified, they don't change any thing. I still have to rely on my heart to tell me what is right, and it argues a different case. It's motivated by growth, possibility, abundance and love—not fear. It whispers tales of a new frontier. Passage into it promises everything juicy about being human—in spades. My life as a mother can only be imagined, but I sense I would be renewed by the experience rather than undone. My capacity for love, acceptance, strength, devotion and surrender would surely grow new roots. But I also believe my lifelong search for meaning and self-awareness will bear fruit on either tree, childless or mothering.

When the fears are banished, I am left with both pragmatic concerns and growing curiosity. I can envision a full and gratifying life in both realms. The childless life is filled with various creative commitments, love relationships, friends, family, travel, and spontaneity. The life of a mother contains the same but surely strikes a different balance. Both lives will endure suffering and disappointment. Both offer the realization of dreams and joy. The irony of the Maybe gene is that a decision is ultimately, necessarily made. Any woman carrying this gene knows, "maybe" doesn't last forever. I just want my decision—whatever it is—to be made for the right reasons at the right time.

The fact that women are categorized as either a mother or not a mother belies the subtle continuum of the feminine experience that exists inside this segregation. At one end of the spectrum are women who, for whatever reason, know mothering isn't for them. At the other end are those women who completely embody "mother" both as an identity and reality. In between are infinite relationships to the energy of mothering. A million gradations of pink. And as we all know, mamas and non-mamas alike appear in every shade. Whatever motherhood gene we carry, whatever our life experiences, we know as women we are part of the same pool.

column added on 2005-11-12 :: ::

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