Dear Care and Feeding: I'm worried my college age niece will regret not having children

[minoanmiss]

Sorry for the spam but I COULD NOT pass this one by.

My family has built the foundation of our life on the Church. It’s a positive way to look at the world, but I can understand why some might need to rebel for a while, to understand the alternatives. My cousin is in her early 20s and has left her father’s house to go to college. When I think of her, I always see her with the children of the family, the little ones following her around like ducklings and her face shining with contentment. Since she went to college, she’s shaved her hair, started to wear a whole new wardrobe, and proclaimed that she is never marrying. Everyone finds God’s path for them in their own way, but her declaration about marriage worries me, because she has always been a “mother without children,” and I don’t want her to spend her youth in one way and realize she no longer can have children later. God didn’t create anyone to be one role, but I know this column values parenthood as it deserves, and I’m wondering if you have any advice for approaching her about the devastating consequences for her worldly, short-term plan.

— Worried

Dear Worried,

Your cousin very well may have two decades to make a decision before having to turn to medical intervention or other means to become a mother—she’s hardly running out of time here. And who she is as a college student isn’t necessarily who she’ll be at 30 or 35. She may later choose to have five kids. Or, she may have already made up her mind and won’t have any at all. The version of your cousin that stands out in your memory is from a time in which she had a lot less control over her actions and how her life looked. She wasn’t “a mother without children,” she was a young girl who enjoyed caring for her little cousins. That isn’t to say she didn’t, or doesn’t, treasure the time she spends with the younger children of the family; however, those experiences and her gender are not reason enough to decide that she will only find contentment as a wife and mother. There are lots of people who are excellent with children, some going so far as devoting their work to serving them, who have no interest in becoming parents. The best thing you can do for your cousin is to be accepting and loving no matter what her current haircut and life plan may be, and to allow her to become the woman she wishes to become without making her feel that she has let her family (or God) down for making different choices than the one you would make. Wishing you the best.

— Jamilah

Comments

[minoanmiss]

*bites my lip, while smoke pours out of my ears*

[cereta]

{{hugs}} Just...yeah.

[minoanmiss]

*hugs you back*

[watersword]

Well, that's certainly a point of view, gentle reader.

[castiron]

JHTDC, LW. Stop pretending you know $DEITY's will for your cousin. Just because she was good with little kids when she was a kid herself (and indeed, just because she's female) doesn't mean that she's meant to shove babies out of her vagina. Sure, maybe $DEITY's intent for her is that she have a slew of kids (once she meets the right person to have those kids with, which given that she's saying she'll never marry clearly hasn't happened). But maybe $DEITY intends her to spend her life single so that she can do good for the world in ways she wouldn't be able to if tied down by motherhood.

(I have a young family member who adores babies and little kids; I have seen the shining contentment on his face as he plays with his tiny cousins. Doesn't mean that he has to be a father, and if in college he says "I don't want to have kids", my reaction will be "great, make damn well certain you use condoms if/when you have sex".)

[heartexalted]

Mad respect for your use of Linux Bash variable syntax here! :-D

[sathari]

Is it wrong that I want to find some way to spam LW's social media/TV viewing with the Skippy commercial about the "cool aunt" who is happy to play with her nieces and nephews and also happy that she can give them back?

Good grief, LW, it's your cousin's life. Nose out.

[fred_mouse]

Or, this song by Judy Small about the same topic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ-SsTrukJY. Much appreciated this song when I was a teen, even though I was sure I wanted kids.

[jamoche]

I loved teaching karate to kids - I got them when they were very interested in what I was teaching, and then I got to send them home.

[kiezh]

Given's LW's, um, obtrusive worldview filter, I strongly suspect that the "shining contentment" of a young girl drafted as childcare by the heteronormative and ageist expectations of family existed only in LW's imagination. I mean, it's possible she did like her siblings/cousins and try to be good at caring for them, given the only other available choice would be to take out her resentment on small children. But I have been at those kind of gatherings and I have seen the Expectations heaped on those girls, and I don't believe for a minute that the adults perpetuating this custom know or care how the young girls* really feel about matters.

* Or assigned-female people, since some of them tried it on me too and I was never actually a girl. Fortunately I did have parental support on drawing boundaries re: being voluntold to take care of other people's children.

Good for LW's niece. She's gotten free and is making her own choices, and I hope she finds whatever happiness and fulfilment she seeks, and is not terribly plagued with family concern trolls.

The advice isn't terrible - very softened and glossing over how horrifying the letter is, but well-phrased to actually be of use, if LW is at all willing to listen.

[mommy]

I think I can see why the cousin transformed herself as soon as she could get some distance.

[minoanmiss]

Yeah, I found the cousin very relatable.

[melannen]

No worries, LW, she said she was never marrying! That's nothing to do about whether she's planning to have kids. Why, she could be pregnant already!

[minoanmiss]

cackles

[lethe1]

Hahaha!

[melannen]

(blithely mentioning the option of out-of-wedlock kids as a reply to this works better than you might think, you leave them them the options of either admitting it's actually about sin not kids, which lets you segue into bullshitting about early Christian martyrs and St. Paul's views on celibacy; or the option of talking about how single parenthood is so hard, and then you can segue into all the social reasons kids these days are hesitant to parent and the leftist social programs working on fixing those reasons that they should be supporting; or they can give up and awkwardly change the subject entirely. Or I guess in theory they could agree that they approve of non-traditional family structures and you could have a nice conversation about that but that one has never happened.)

[shirou]

Almost nobody concerns themselves with whether a college-age male is going to marry or have children. This letter is absolutely dripping with sexism.

[minoanmiss]

Oozing rancidly over the floor, yes. And it's reinforced with Christianity, for extra virulence.

[lilysea]

What do you want to bet that if the cousin marries a woman and has 5 children, LW ***STILL*** won't be happy?

[tielan]

Dear LW,

From a fellow person whose family has built the foundation of our life on the church: NO. DO NOT. STEP AWAY NOW.

[conuly]

Oh, if only I knew where this LW lived so I could sign them up for a few magazine subscriptions.

[oursin]

her face shining with contentment

A fixed rictus smile, as the adults coo about how the littles LUV bigger cousin, she is Little Mother already, AWWWWWW, as they sit, well, if v Churchy perhaps not swilling down wine/beer/cocktails, but anyway, free for a while of the kiddywinks....

[lethe1]

the devastating consequences for her worldly, short-term plan *headdesk*

The world is going to hell in a handbag, but FFS, We Must Not Stop Breeding! And cousin had better start now, or how else will she get those ten offspring that every woman longs for!

The only "devastating consequence" of cousin's plan that I can see is that the world will be a little less over-populated.

[castiron]

I mean, yes, there are women who put off having children and then, when they're finally ready to try, discover they have problems with infertility. Guess what? There are also women who have infertility issues in their early 20s, and women who have unplanned pregnancies in their late 30s and even early 40s (waves). Cousin isn't even over 25; she still has a few years to decide even if she ultimately realizes she wants to produce a baseball team.

Or is "devastating consequences" a codeword for "OMG! Cousin will lose her virginity and no longer be Pure! And then no Good Christian Man will marry her, because GCMs only marry Pure Women even though they've used Impure Women to assuage their Manly Desires!"

[rymenhild]

I mean, yes, there are women who put off having children and then, when they're finally ready to try, discover they have problems with infertility. I'm one of them. And I want to slap this LW upside the head. Why are they even writing to Slate? Are they lost and have they forgotten what webpage they're on?

[lethe1]

I am sorry to hear that.

[cereta]

Represent!

[jerusha]

I have a cousin (male, if it even matters) who loves kids, and kids love him! They swarm him every time they see him. He is their favorite jungle gym, and he's always willing to play. He and his wife have cats, not kids, and aren't planning on having any children. It's very, VERY possible to be very good with kids, and yet also be very good about handing them back to their parents.

[lemonsharks]

Gee, being voluntold to parent all the children in the vicinity from prepubescence to college sounds like a great way to make a young afab person never want to grow or raise their own. 😐

[purlewe]

I was very good with kids. I was a great Girl Scout and a fabulous camp counselor. And I knew at 12 I did not want kids and I told people and I got a ration of crap for "not being a good girl" for saying that and that I would "change my mind" when I was older. And here I sit 38 years later with no kids and still damn happy with that decision. I married a person who was a teacher for over 20 years who never wanted kids and tells people she had HUNDRED of kids that she took care of at work and didn't want one at home as well. We both are fabulous aunties to a whole raft of children in our lives. We love to be with kids AND GIVE THEM BACK. There is more than one way to be an adult. And I am rooting for this niece with all my being.

[xenacryst]

Dear $cousin:

When you're done with college, I know a few good enclaves of circus folks and other artists who'd be happy to hang out with you. The pay isn't great, but the community is fab, and we usually wear awesome socks. Come look us up!

[cynthia1960]

Insert 1.2 terabytes of incoherent screaming here. Oh cousin of the LW, FLEE, run like the wind!