Oh, Baby

by Gwen Cooper — June 8, 2007

My mother called last night, and I got another round of her bi-monthly, "When am I going to be a grandmother?" speech. To my mother, of course, childbearing is preceded by marriage, so there was an additional conversation about where things are going with Robert. By the time she started singing "Sadie, Sadie, Married Lady," from Funny Girl, I announced, "I'm on deadline, Mom--I've gotta go."

The truth is, I've never been sure that I want to have children someday. I think there's a...thing...you're supposed to feel, some sort of almost physical impulse to produce offspring, and I don't think I've ever felt it. I've never had a desire to be pregnant. And while I genuinely enjoy children, I don't know that I want one of my own. I have no grand philosophy such as one typically hears from people who opt out of parenthood, like, "The world is such a terrible place, why bring more children into it?" As far as I'm concerned, the world has always been a mixed bag of good and bad, and it probably isn't any worse right now than it's ever been. Just ask the people who lived through the Crusades, the Inquisition, the 100 Years' War, segregation, the bubonic plague, etc., etc. So why not now as opposed to any other time? As the philosopher Hillel said, "If not now, when?"

I think, for me, the hang-up has always been more of a lifestyle thing. I have no desire to live in the suburbs, but equally have no desire to go broke on the large apartments and private school tuitions that raising kids in Manhattan entails. If I ever get to the point where I have that kind of money to throw around, I'd rather--to be perfectly honest--spend it on myself.

I remember once complaining to Robert, back when we were "just friends," that I had a typical Eastern European peasant body--large boobs and hips, quick to build muscle in the upper arms, back and thighs--that had clearly been designed for the two activities I was least interested in pursuing: hard manual labor and childbirth.

"Baby," Robert responded, "your body was made for that hard line right up the middle."

Robert wants children. We've talked around the subject tentatively, but as yet no definitive statements like, "I won't marry you if you insist on having/not having children," has yet taken place.

I've always felt fortunate, when out on the dating scene, that having children wasn't a priority for me. It makes it much easier to walk away from a guy the second you suspect you're being jerked around--there's no worrying about a ticking biological clock and the corresponding impulse to try to make a relationship, any relationship, work out before your eggs dry up.

But now that I'm thinking in terms of a possibly permanent relationship, I'm starting to worry. What if Robert is really insistent about having children? And what if it's really not something I can bring myself to sign on for?

Hillel also said: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am for myself alone, what am I?" I think the point he was driving at was about compromise. But this doesn't seem like a compromise-able issue. One either has children or one doesn't. I guess the only thing I can do now is wait and see what happens as we go along. As another wise philosopher, my grandmother, used to say, "Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday."

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.