Today’s New York Times has an article about a young woman who knows she’s engaged and who discovers she’s pregnant. “Out of Step and Having a Baby” It’s an interesting glimpse into the mind of this 24 year old and her 20/30-something friends (especially for someone like me who was married at 21 and had a son at 24).
Molly Jong-Fast writes (excerpt):
Maybe there is something wrong with me, maybe I am heading for disaster, but I am just not that scared. Sure, I worry that I will have a miscarriage or that the baby will have a collapsed lung, but I’m not afraid of a baby slowing down my career.
I am not afraid of a baby ruining my marriage. I am not afraid of a baby. Of course part of the reason I am not that afraid is because I have no idea what having a child entails. Recently when I was holding a baby who spat up, I almost threw up too. And I just learned that kids do not go to school until they are 3. I was thinking maybe 6 months.
Another reason I am not so scared of what I might miss, though, is because another fear has trumped it: being 10 years older and not having a child. I belong to a generation of people mortally afraid of becoming what the generation before it became so proudly (and documented in many ambitious and wildly amusing women-looking-for-love novels): 30-something workaholics who have devoted their lives to their jobs and are now desperate to have children but quickly losing the battle with time.
Why does it always have to be “career or family (baby)”? Is that all life amounts to? Isn’t there a third option in there as well?