Do I Owe My Mother Grandchildren?
“It’s time to get off that fucking pill and get pregnant already.”
My mother and I are on the phone on a rainy weekday afternoon. We’ve been on this call for over two hours, and after moving through the day’s topics — her obsession with a reality show about codependent mother-daughter relationships, the health of my pets and husband, real estate in Brooklyn — she has arrived on her favorite subject of all: grandchildren.
“You’re 32 years old and you’re not working right now. This is the perfect time to get pregnant. I don’t know what the two of you are waiting for.”
As a matter of fact, I’m waiting for a lot of things. Waiting to figure out my next career move, to start; I recently quit my job of nine years and am working to ensure that my next workplace is a better choice than the last one. My husband and I still need to consult with a financial advisor about whether we can afford to buy a house at some point in the near future, let alone have the money to raise a child in an expensive city for the next 18 years. I’ve been doing intensive work in therapy, trying to manage my anxiety well enough to make pregnancy and parenting possible, and I’m not convinced that I’ve done enough of it. I’m waiting for the right time to start a family, if such a thing exists. (It probably doesn’t, but right now is not it.)
None of these are good reasons for waiting, according to my mother. “Why bother to look for a new job just so that you can get pregnant and have to drag yourself to an office when you have morning sickness and then quit when you give birth?” she asks. People have children all the time without calculating the costs five or ten years down the line and overthinking everything, like my husband and I do. I worry to the point of incapacitation and really must speak about that with my therapist, she says, but the real cure for all that anxiety is having a baby.
I don’t tell her, of course, that pregnancy and parenthood are also potential triggers for my anxiety. I have no intention of mentioning my concern that my hypothetical pregnant body could be a tripwire for the eating disorder I’ve kept under control but which lies latent, waiting for any opening it can find to show itself; or that childbirth will be traumatizing to someone like me, who dreads dental cleanings and blood draws; or that I will suffer from postpartum depression and isolation; or that I am bringing another resource drain into the Global North while the earth is on the precipice of environmental collapse; or that I will make all of the mistakes my mother made raising me, plus a few more for good measure.
I don’t tell her outright that, while I would be happy to have a child, my happiness is not dependent on having one. Nor do I tell her to mind her own goddamn business, which, frankly, she should.
Instead, I let her talk.
My mom and I have always had a close relationship, though it has sometimes frayed around the edges, like an over-loved afghan. My mother is loud, gregarious, and a touch overweening, a woman who never hesitates to communicate her always-strong feelings. I am quieter, more introverted, considerate of the feelings of others to a fault, a people-pleaser. She takes motherhood very seriously; when she was a teenager and a young adult, her sole ambition was to get married and have children. She ended up with two, born nine years apart, and considers her children to be the primary joy of her life. On the other hand, a nuclear family was never a part of the life that I had pictured for myself when I was growing up. I wanted to be independent, travel, write, meet interesting people, love and be loved; and while I didn’t imagine an explicitly child-free life, kids weren’t included in it, either. I didn’t think I would even get married, instead envisioning a string of long-term partners interspersed with periods of being single.
Two years ago, though, I got married, and my position on having children shifted. I went from leaving kids out of my vision of the future to giving the idea of having a family, with children, serious consideration. That consideration is what is preventing my husband and I from trying to conceive, at least for now, and is what most frustrates my mom. If I don’t just do it, go off the pill, step into the shit without turning it over and over in my head, she believes that by the time I finally manage to make up my mind it will be too late.
I understand my mom’s impatience for me to give her grandchildren. All around her, friends and Facebook connections are flaunting their status as “Grandma” or “Gigi” or “Mimi,” posting status updates about their grand-babies’ milestones and pictures of themselves with their small, apple-cheeked progeny. She sees grandparents with their grandchildren in public, at grocery stores and strip malls, and feels a pang of envy. When she tells people she meets that her daughter is married and lives in New York, they will always ask her if she has any grandchildren, and, when she replies that I haven’t given her any, if she’s expecting to have any. Grandchildren are a rite of passage for women of a certain age, and she doesn’t want to be excluded. All she wants is what everyone else seems to have, this one simple and natural thing, and I am refusing to give it to her. I am, essentially, refusing to make her happy for what she feels are my own selfish reasons.
I wish that the fact that my husband and I haven’t started a family yet did not wound her so deeply, but those wounds are not ones for which I am solely responsible. My grandfather died recently, leaving my mother an orphan. She was the family member who took care of him during his decline; she was by his side as he navigated the never-ending carousel of hospital, rehab facility, and home in his last years and devoted the bulk of her time and energy to ensuring that he received the care he required. It is difficult to go from parenting children, to being a primary caretaker of an elderly parent, to having no one to care for at all.
When my grandfather died, I flew home to Florida to attend the funeral and help my mom begin the process of winding up his affairs. Not all of our time together was spent doing practical things; a lot of it was spent drinking coffee, zoning out while CNN droned in the background, and grieving. One morning, a few days after the funeral, my mom returned to the topic of grandchildren. During this conversation, she expressed her sadness that Grandpa didn’t live long enough to greet a great-grandchild, and in a particularly unguarded moment, she said, “I want you to have grandchildren so that I can have something to live for.” Her pain and grief were palpable, but what struck me was the lack of purpose that she was experiencing. Adult children aren’t very good at filling that void, but young, dependent grandchildren are. Grandchildren call out for care, for attention, for spoiling, and for love. Maybe her admission is selfish, but it was by far the most honest explanation for her baby lectures that I’ve received.
My husband and I will probably try to start a family, but it may not happen for another couple of years (if, in fact, it ever happens). We will either make a decision, or the decision will be made for us by the passage of time and circumstances of life. I’m also trying to encourage my mother to make new friends, volunteer with children and animals, and seek therapy for the enormous life change she is currently navigating. For the time being, though, despite my annoyance, I’ll let my mother choose prospective names and point out tiny infant clothing sets and badger me about going off my birth control. She needs to talk through her pain, and I can make the space I need to work through mine.
