As we college women trickle into supposed adulthood, for some of us, parenthood is on the horizon. At 20 years old, I have a severe baby fever. When I see a baby in a grocery store I actually tear up because I’m overwhelmed by the child’s sheer glow! But parenthood is a mess, especially in this polarized world, and yet I believe that being a mother is the most opulent part of my future.
My apparent baby obsession has me fantasizing over my children-to-be. I have these clear images in my head as to what my children will look like and how I will drive them around in my big SUV to swim practice or whatever they are into.
But, pump the brakes. The laws of nature say I need a man and his part of the picnic, and yet that isn’t any part of my fantasy or even my picture as a mom. Obviously, just like I want a baby, I also want a caring partner in my life, but that seems to be in the background while, in my mind, this baby is smiling at me in the foreground!
Over the last two years, I have found that my hypothetical husband and his role in my fantasies of my future fizzling away. Maybe it’s because I’m in a place in my life where I think I can do everything alone and am extremely independent. Maybe it’s because I want a baby so bad that I don’t want to have to put it off until that perfect guy comes around (which may be never)! At first, this thought startled me and this inner conflict arose; duh you need a life partner to have a baby! But who says?
So basically I am just going the long way of saying I have and seriously do consider having children on my own. Obviously not right now, I am 20 years old and a big success for me is when I am able to cook a meal for my friends. I could not handle a child right now. But in eight years? I may not have found my Mr. Right and yet eight years from now I really want to have a kid. There are ways I can work around that and if I really wanted it to happen I could adopt, I could find a donor, I could make it work!
And maybe I will find the person I need to be with before I turn 28 and want to have kids, maybe my timeline will change, maybe two years from now I will look back at 20-year-old me and think that younger, current me was absolutely bananas. But for now, I am celebrating the small victory of being comfortable knowing I would want to do it by myself. That’s how badly I want to raise a child.
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