Motherhood

My cousin had a child earlier this year. She is 20 years old. Her precious bundle of joy was born perhaps three months into her (no it wasn’t hasty it was for LOVE!!!) marriage, and at a family reunion my mother actually turned to me and said, "So when am I getting a grandchild?" Excuse me? I’m sorry, but I have much better things to do with my life than become a broodmare to some stud without an above-average IQ. Pardon me if I’m not ready (at 19) to be tied to my house 24 hours a day and to care for a screaming, needing, messy creature that will undoubtedly only turn around and bite me in the ass someday. If I wanted that, I’d get a monkey. Come to think of it, a monkey is cuter, and I’m legally allowed to keep it in a cage.

Why is it in society today that motherhood is valued above an intellect? Why do we parade these self-righteous hypocrites known as infertile couples around like show dogs when they spank science on the ass enough for it to give them a litter of brain-damaged, genetically deficient brats? And then try to blame God for it? God didn’t give you those babies sweetheart; science did. You sidestepped your Heavenly Father when you walked into that fertility clinic and sucked up the drugs. Did it ever occur to you that God didn’t want you to have kids so that maybe you could adopt and improve the life of some needy child? Oh no. Those ghetto kids are too much trouble. A crack baby? Omigod, that’d be soooo hard! Never mind that these drug-induced abominations will probably cost mommy and daddy (or more likely, the taxpayers) more money than it would have taken to care for ten crack babies. And just what do you have against other people’s genes, anyway? At least their genes were sufficient enough to be passed on to another generation. Nature didn’t throw up the "no entry" sign to parenthood for them, so I don’t think you, as an infertile, should be so damn snooty.

I am so tired of people behaving as if having children is a right. Guess what; it’s not. I don’t see anywhere in the Constitution a place that guarantees "parenthood and children for all." Basically the problem is that Americans today have an entitlement attitude. We live in the best country in the world. We’re the richest, the most developed (the most polluted), and the strongest in terms of military. We should get whatever we want. Adults today are like children; they want what they want, and no one is going to tell them that they can’t have it. Not even God. And to that I say, "Fuck you. You shouldn’t have children, and you don’t deserve children, because you are a spoilt brat yourself. Grow the fuck up and deal with what life dealt you."

And why do we behave as if motherhood is the be-all and end-all of existence? Animals become pregnant and give birth all the time, and without cooing and babying and showers and gifts. Women go to college, get degrees, become doctors and lawyers and are successful. Then they come home and watch their aunts and cousins slobber over their teenage sisters' illegitimate brats, and get the "When are you having one?" speech. I think these women should slap their relatives. Hard. Then disown the entire clan and never visit again. Or maybe that’s just what I would do.

Now that I think of it, it’s all part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. What better way to get these impudent women back into their rightful places as wives and mothers than to give them incentives to do so? They can’t very well pass laws to force them into domesticity; those butch lesbian feminists would riot. So they do it the sneaky way. They suggest laws that would pay women to stay at home. (Of course it wouldn’t be enough to live on; the women must be kept dependent on their husbands.) They give parents tax breaks and all sorts of nifty little perks, so that they focus on the rewards, rather than the responsibilities, of parenting. They encourage women to go to fertility clinics and gestate freakish numbers of embryos, knowing full well that these righteous God-fearing Christians would never disobey His will and reduce, then parade these sows as models of motherhood, despite how much their families will depend on handouts to live. By banning all talk of dirty, dirty sex in school, they keep their teenage daughters ignorant of methods of contraception, so that they will eventually become pregnant and of course dependent on a boyfriend or hastily married husband for survival, since they were raised with no independent living skills. Slowly they will nudge women back into their rightful domestic place, with only a few renegades going against the grain. Life will return to the way it was before, peaceful and tranquil, all smiles and Donna Reed-Cleaver sunshine.

So I encourage you, women; fight the slow decline of our intellects and bodies. Don’t allow yourself to become the soft, spineless jellyfish they want us to be, brains cleansed of all thoughts not revolving around childrearing and housekeeping. Have your tubes tied, lest you accidentally be impregnated and be forced to birth and raise a child (since with your high moral standards, you would never abort). Keep society alive and malcontent, and don’t allow us to fall back into the falsely halcyon days of yore. The last thing we need is to stagnate into another cookie-cutter generation devoid of intelligence and originality.

Or maybe that’s already happened.

Read Lisa's commentary on the above article: Powerful Choices