Children

Don't get me wrong - I love kids. I just don't want one.

It came as an awful surprise to me, when a year in to a relationship with an ex, she asked when we were going to look at adopting. I was stunned, and it took me everything I had not to trip over an unexpected piece of dust, and pick myself off the floor. I have always been child-free. It never occurred to me to be anything else really - I love my life as it is - the ability to go out five nights a week (I wish, I really wish), or just to sit at home with a book, in peace and perfect quiet (we'll ignore the existence of the kitten for this image).

I'm too selfish to have kids, and I know this, and that's ok. I'm lucky that I'm in a lesbian-identified relationship, and therefore most of the comments I get from people about kids come from a 'well it's not like you can do that anyway' point of view (seriously, that happened about a month ago).

I suspect that if I was in a straight-appearing relationship, that it would be a very different question. With regards to my ex, she'd never considered that I wouldn't want children, as she comes from a 'it's a woman's role' kind of place. Me, I just think 'I can't give birth - I can't have an alien growing inside me, and OH GOD, what would it do to my belly button?!' (I have a major belly button phobia. no-one gets to touch it, on pain of death). So we compromised on adopting. Except I wanted to adopt an older one, so that we'd have it less long.

And at this point i thought 'no, I'm REALLY not cut out for this'. We parted ways. She still hasn't had kids, but on a more happy note, neither have I.

I suspect this is one of the few areas of my life where it pays to be a queer woman - no-one expects me to have kids. I can revel in this, and get as many cats as I like.

This post is entirely prompted by the fact that we are about to have my partner's 13 year old niece to stay for a week. We love this kid, she's great. We have her once a year for a week in the summer, and we do STUFF with her (she's going to london for the day, and birmingham, and the cinema and bowling and pretty much anything she asks for that we can afford). Luckily for us her requests tend to go run to 'Auntie C, can we go to the museum?', and we can afford this; it's free, so we go. It gives me a week to go 'I can do this - I can survive children' and then 25 weeks to go 'thank goodness that's over' before starting to think forward to having her the next summer.

The anxiety stems from the fact that we see her little, maybe 2-3 times a year, so I always feel like I don't really know her, but it's always turned out well in the past, and it cements the knowledge that I've made the right decision - NO KIDS.