mind clock

I am not a maternal person. Worse, I do not list having children as one of the goals I'd like to achieve in my life. However, I have started to have second thoughts lately. First, friends and colleagues of my age become pregnant one after another. In France, many women have their first kids in their early twenties. If I were one of them, my eldest child would be a first-grader now. The bad news is that my first kid is never on the way. Perhaps I won't even have one when my friends' children attend elementary school. Much as I know that life is not a competition with others, it's scary to think of the image in which an elderly woman with gray hair walks her child to school and people mistake her for the grandma. That might be me...

I am not sure if body clock exists for everyone. I do have a mind clock crisis for the time being. I am still not prepared for having my own child, but a voice deep in me keeps whispering that it would be pointless to put it off. Soon I will no longer be in the prime of life, physically speaking. Besides, even if I am better equipped financially later in life, raising and educating children is a mentally exhausting task. I might die before turning those little people into useful or just self-efficient human beings. And what obsesses me most is this impression of infertility. During one visit to the hospital several months ago, I was very "lucky" to be surrounded by pregnant women and I felt totally isolated, guilty of my inability to accomplish such remarkable feats at the same time. I fled literally wondering where I did wrong.

To make matters worse, I have learned about the pension system in France. For old people with no work experience, the government assigns a tiny amount of 400 euros, which is not a very beautiful sum for living comfortably here. As if to remind me that infertility is a grand sin that has to be punished even officially by the government, my companion burst out a comment, "For some women who are life-long housewives, who never give birth, and whose husbands die young, I don't know how they are going to make it in old age." I thought to myself, "Well, it's very likely I won't find any job to do in France, and I am not sure I'll end up having children. Worst of all, my future husband might die earlier than me, judging from the ways he abuses his health. Oh, my old age seems to be VERY miserable..." I can't say it's not fair to decide people's pension based on how many children they give birth to, but these women do deserve a certain form of encouragement. As for me, I will have to figure out how to learn a living while my female friends spend their time educating their offspring. From the viewpoint of mankind's common interest, fair enough. It's just that I feel even more isolated with this French reasoning...

I am as disturbed and shocked as the little guy in the photo. Well, we never ask the babies if they would like to be born or not, do we?