She was twenty years old when she left school and began working as a part-time waitress. She found a boy and fell in love. Soon after they started their relationship, they decided they wanted to have a baby. They tried for a few months and soon found she was pregnant. She moved into her boyfriends parents house with her boyfriend where she unfortunately miscarried her first child. She took some time to heal but didn’t allow her miscarriage to sway her from trying again.
Talking with her today, everything is exactly the same except she is now seven months pregnant and rounder than ever. She is a giggly girl who speaks a lot about her boyfriend. As of lately, the topics of our conversations revolve around her evolving body. Her ankles are swelling and her back hurts after her shift. She spends her nights at home with her boyfriend and his parents. The greatest joy she’s gotten in the past month has been a box of make-up she ordered from the internet and the many hours of play she recieved along with it.
I have known many couples over the past five years of my life who have been unmarried and found themselve with child. They’ve decided to keep their children rather than abort their pregnancies and most with simple explanations of the excitement that comes with a new glowing baby. I’ve also watched more than half of those relationships ended and split before babies third birthday. They share custody of their child and raise them in two homes. I look around and it seems to be the norm among my generation, my fellow students, my peers at work, even close friends of mine.
The twenty-three year old seven months pregnant woman from above has repeatedly said things to me that make me want to shout “A baby is not what you need right now!” If you are trying to have a child, shouldn’t you be financially stable enough to care for yourself and your child? If you are trying to have a child, should you automatically rely on your parents to watch your babe for you while you’re at work? If you’re trying to have a child shouldn’t you, ya know, be able to pay your own rent, make your own meals, and be able to fend for yourself as an adult?? How do you plan to care for a child if you haven’t begun to care for yourself?
It has only been in the last year that I decided I would like to have children but so many things would have to be happening before I would even *think* about having them. A husband would be nice. Single parenting is no easy feat and I think it’s important to have two parents raising a child…if only for the benefit of their personality alone. A job that pays well…maybe one with some kind of health coverage. Just because the state is required to birth your baby doesn’t mean it should have to. I dunno, maybe being older that twenty-five! Having lived some life and gain some substance or wisdom to pass on to your child so the next generation isn’t a walking crowd of limited beings asking the same questions we’ve asked without any answers.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Falling in love and having a child is a beautiful thing. I just feel like pregnancy and parenting have become such nonchalant topics. Our population is overgrown, our school systems are jam-packed with educational results that dwindle every year. Babies are fun…but those babies grow up to be adults. What kind of future are we offering them?
