Good For You!

A teacher friend of mine has a delightful student teacher this fall. She is full of energy, loves Halloween, and enjoys my borderline-inappropriate sense of humor (always a plus, haha). On Thursday, she was leaving and stopped by my room to chat. At one point, it went down this avenue: 

"So, do you have kids?" 

"No." 

"Oh, good for you!" 

Ummmmm that threw me for a loop. Like, I know younger people are choosing not to have kids more and more, but I don't think I've ever gotten that response from this age group (she's 22). 

"I did want them. It just didn't work out...in the most spectacular of ways." 

"I'm so sorry to hear that. BUT, from what I know of your life from your stories and what S___ tells me, you have a really awesome life!" 

"Oh yes! I worked hard to get here, but I do absolutely LOVE my life. I am very fortunate." 

Ummmm, how amazing is that? I AM so proud of the life I built. And, I am proud that I answered "no" to The Question, and only alluded to the why, and the rest of the conversation was overwhelmingly positive. 

I also said that I am grateful that I can give my love and patience and energy to my students, and I don't need to come home to more caretaking. I can come home and be a puddle on the couch if I want to. (Unless it's my Wednesday dinner date with my dad, and this past weekend that involved assembling a table with a tremendous amount of moving parts/leaves/hinges/interior shelves/ALL THE TINY SCREWS for 3.5 hours after dinner...) I can go out for a surprise dinner with my husband if I so choose. 

BUT, it doesn't mean that I don't also have stress. Go read Infertile Phoenix's post about Stress & Privilege -- the worst is when people think because you don't have kids somehow you are miraculously unstressed and any time you mention stress, you're reminded of all the things you DON'T have to do because of the hand life dealt you. I don't think it's true that you automatically have MORE stress if you have kids, you just have DIFFERENT stress. I have a lot of thoughts on this percolating, as there are ups and downs to both having kids and not, but one does not get to claim more stress than the other, particularly over a lifetime. 

Anyway, with that soapbox rant paused, I was overall overjoyed to have such a delightfully positive conversation about how I don't have kids.