Don't Call Me Mother: I'd Only Be a Breeder if Kim Deal Asked Me to Join the Band

by Sadie Pfannkuche

Illustrations by Justin Graham

In second grade I desperately wanted a Baby Alive doll. I don’t remember why-I didn’t play with dolls as a rule-and the only other doll I had ever requested was a Wonder Woman action figure. I had the biggest crush on Wonder Woman/Lynda Carter in the history of girl crushes.  Some secret part of me wanted to touch her and change her out of the drab utilitarian uniform of her public life into the glamorous metallic and silky costume of her secret life. Yes that’s right, in short, I wanted to touch and possibly fondle Wonder Woman’s boobies. And that desire hasn’t completely disappeared. To this day when I see her on television hawking mail order contact lens I have this urge to grope her. 

But back to the Baby Alive (she never had a proper name; I only called her by her product  name.) She was a facsimile of the real thing- made of soft plastic; she had a permanently pursed mouth, ready for a bottle or the plastic feeding spoon full of fake baby food that was included with her.   I dutifully fed and bottled her only to realize within seconds that Baby Alive was much too much like the real thing. The food and water that went into her mouth, exited her bottom almost immediately. Now I know that as an adult, this makes sense, but at the age of 7, I hadn’t grasped even the most basic points of Newtonian physics. So it never occurred to me to question what happened to the “food” that Baby Alive ingested. Within seconds of feeding her, her diaper was full of creamy fake baby food, green, if I remember correctly. 

I refused to feed her again and, instead, carried her around for a few days out of obligation even though I wanted nothing more than to have Santa Claus take her back to the demented toy workshop from whence she came.  

When I no longer felt guilty, I stopped paying her any attention at all and relegated her to the shelves with the unloved stuffed animals. 

Even when I see an actual live baby, no matter how cute, my heart does not flop about like some emo boy’s bangs. I don’t make cooing noise and my body continues to run as normal, without the faintest  tock of a biological clock. What am I thinking instead, you ask?  

I don’t like kids. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate kids, nor do I wish them harm. I would apply my brakes, for instance, if a child ran in front of my car.  But their constant need of attention and care annoy me. I like attention and care, and I don’t want anyone taking that away from me. “No, kid, I will not look at you, you should be looking at me.”  I like sleeping. And reading. And socializing and about a billion other activities that are curbed or cut out altogether once baby makes three.  Or perhaps two.  

Honestly, I don’t consider childbirth a “miracle.” Nor do I approve of the mainstream worship  of mothers, especially celebrity mothers. Yes, it’s a hard job; one that I don’t want.  Sure, somewhere Angelina Jolie is making an effigy of me in order to burn it, for daring to question the sanctity of motherhood, but I don’t care, it’s the truth.    

I have no need for a mini-me. My childhood and adolescence were agonizing the first time around. If my child were to be anything like childhood me—quiet, bookish, fat and completely un-athletic—then it would be teased and mocked and/or ignored, and I wouldn’t have any good advice to give since I was unsure how to handle these situations when they were happening to me. I imagine it would be worse happening to someone I theoretically loved.  Plus, the genetic pool in which my offspring would be swimming is potentially treacherous and I’d hate myself if my potential spawn inherited even some of the less favorable genetic traits of my family:

• Bad eyesight 
• Crooked teeth
• Obesity complete with a big butt
• Mood swings
• Fish belly colored skin that requires constant application of goo or it ends up redder than a light bulb outside a whorehouse in Amsterdam
• Depression
• Heart disease
• Cancer
• Arthritis
• A mullet. I know that Darwin would say that my kid couldn’t inherit a mullet since it’s an acquired trait, but my mother had one for years. I had one as a kid. If Lamarck is correct, then yeah, the kid would be a fat, braces- and glasses- wearing, moody, pale, depressed, future heart attack, cancer/arthritis ridden mullet sporting freak. I can’t do that to a potential baby.

I don’t know how to talk to kids. I say things like “I know for a fact you are lying and your  mother doesn’t allow you to climb to the top of your swing set, so no dice.” I’ve been told that this is not how to talk to a child since you’re in effect arguing with him. You’re supposed to say something like “Your mother isn’t here and I’m in charge now so stop climbing,” which to me sounds bitchier. At least mine is honest, and I call him out on his BS. Everyone needs to be called on his or her BS I think, especially children. How else will they learn?

I am afraid to have a child. Seriously, and not because I have a paranoid suspicion I might drop it (my mom dropped me after all, and I’m mostly fine), but because I know how screwed up I am and I do not want to screw up another human being.   I am insecure and needy and I oscillate wildly between being a cold fish and being clingy.  I couldn’t be a good role model.  I have suffered from depression for years, and the thought of post partum depression scares the hell out of me. If a regular person without any history of mental illness can be driven to attempted or even successful infanticide, what in the hell would I do? Take out a pre-school? I can’t even think about it.  

Finally, because I don’t want to. It’s not as if I forgot to have kids- that my career was so demanding that I kept putting it off and now my eggs are as rotten as a certain indicted Chicago politician or that I never found the right man to have kids with. I am very lucky that I’ve had several successful long term relationships. I think any of the men would have consented to have me as a future estranged baby mamma. But I didn’t want children, so we went our separate ways and all of us seem the better for it. 

While I am lucky that my parents have never pressured me to have children (they haven’t  forgotten the gruesome Baby Alive experiment either), I am surprised at some of the things I hear when people learn that I don’t want children. “Oh, you’ll change your mind.” I hear this a lot, like not wanting to have a baby is a phase, and one day, my heart will grow two sizes and a breeder I will become.  Or, “What will you do when you are old?” This one puzzles me. I don’t know-probably the same things I do now-write, read, socialize, drink too much, maybe start a punk cover band.

 I don’t need to find things to do, trust me.  Do they mean who will take care of me when I’m older?  If so, then probably the same people who take care of me now-myself, doctors, nurses and whatever loved ones are around and alive. Having kids is no guarantee of anything-except heartbreak at some point or another and expenses all the time. 

Some say, “Oh, but it’s different when it’s YOUR baby.”  My response?  “Oh really? So you’re a gambling person are you? You’re betting that somehow a magical switch will be turned on and I will suddenly develop the patience and love, not to mention desire, to nurture a child and not scream at him? You are actually willing to gamble with the future of a human being on something so mercurial and uncertain as my feelings? Yeah, remind me not to take racing tips off of you.”  

I wouldn’t care who interrogated me about my childlessness if I was allowed the same opportunity. But no one quizzes a pregnant or post partum woman with such questions as “Wow, so you really want a baby? Why? You know, you will have it the rest of your life and in your old age you might want to be just left the hell alone…what if the baby turns out to be a serial killer?

 How will you feel then?”  Or “Do you think it’s wise to get pregnant after all those drugs you did in college?”

The irony is that I rarely think about why I don’t have children. I don’t brood over it or second-guess myself. Most of my friends are childless, so I forget that people think it’s the norm to breed in captivity.  There’s a hack expression that advises that one rarely regrets things one does and mostly regrets things one doesn’t do.  I know for a fact that I’d much rather regret not having a child than regret having one.  And even though it might be fun to mold a child’s taste and dress it like a baby punk, I am not a gambling woman, and if the thought of a plastic child terrifies me, I have no business with the real thing. I’ll simply stick to hanging out at the dog park, perhaps with my perpetually undressed Wonder Woman action figure in tow.

Comments

[christian louboutin shoes]

So wonderful post.I am bursting to leave a comment.I am also a fan of blog，you are an example to all of us.Thank you for teaching me so much.Good job.

[coach factory outlet]

Bless your friend forever! Also bless myself!*

[Discount Ugg Boots]

I shall remember that happiness day forever.

[supra skytops]

In my mind you are the best*_*

[coach handbags]

Il suffit de dire merci ne sera pas seulement suffisante, pour que la clarté exceptionnelle à l'intérieur de votre écriture. Je pense que j'ai enregistrer votre site pour les mises à jour futures. Un grand merci.

[coach coin purses]

I love Volkswagen's Beetles very much. I think that this advertisement was extremely curious for that time.

[moncler outlet]

The talent of success is nothing more than doing well whatever you do without a thought of time