The money thing: thank goodness I live in 21st century America instead of 19th century fictional Japan, right? I have many more options for earning a living, and I’m also lucky enough to have a family that wouldn’t renounce me if I married a foreigner and abandoned my family culture and religion. (They might not be ecstatic about my choices in such and instant — and if I were to have a child on my own, they would have misgivings, but they’d also be supportive, certainly not renounce me. Non renegata.) But I still don’t feel convinced that I’d be able to give a child the material things I’d want to be able to give it — yes, love is the most important thing (and, yeah, food, shelter, that stuff), but it kills me to think of not being able to give a child even half of the “perks” I had growing up. And my parents were pretty frugal compared to the average 1970s American middle class parents; we’re not talking about insane luxuries here. Or even store-brand not-on-sale cookies.

Gah. So incoherent tonight. I will leave off with a translation of the Butterfly aria that gives this post its title:
Do you know what that man thinks?
That your mother should take
you on her shoulder, And forth should wander in rain
and tempest Through the town,
seeking to earn enough For food and clothing.

And then yesterday I found out that I am older than the stepmother of one of my co-partiers. Sigh.

Adoption, I know, is a perfectly wonderful way to build a family. I know people who’ve adopted, I know people who’ve been adopted, and I’m not going to completely rule it out. But … if it’s possible, I really would like to carry a child. That may not be reasonable, but so be it. This is not entirely the land of logic, here.

This is what I really want: a husband, children, a family. Yes, the prospect does make me a little nervous, because over the past several years I’ve definitely gotten used to doing things on my own, and I would undoubtedly chafe a bit as I got used to the restrictions of a serious relationship, of marriage, of motherhood. But being a little scared of something doesn’t mean I don’t want it. I do. I really do.

But I also know – happily not from personal experience – that marriage with the wrong person is worse than no marriage at all, by far, and that it’s not good for anyone involved. And for any number of reasons, some in my control, many more not, I haven’t been even remotely close to finding the right person. If I truly desperately wanted to get married more than anything else in the world, I’m sure I could find somebody to marry. But a good marriage, the kind that would provide a solid foundation for raising a family and sustaining companionship after the child-raising years are over — that is what is hard to find, apparently particularly if you are a busy, slightly cowardly introvert.

Since I’m now 34, and especially since I’ve learned that genetics may mean I start menopause earlier than normal and have very few years of real fertility left, there’s not a lot of time left for this traditional path to work out for me. Especially if I want “children” and not just a single child. So, I’m starting to think about having a child outside of marriage. If I do, that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on getting married, it just means that I’ve accepted that for me, marriage and motherhood are happening on two different tracks.

Most importantly, though, the fact that I’m thinking about Plan B (and Plan C and Plan D) doesn’t mean I’m giving up on Plan A. If I can take Plan A, I will, and frankly in my ideal world this blogging project would be rendered irrelevant, and soon.

“The mean or average age at first birth for the United States in 2004 was 25.2 years, unchanged from 2003. Mean age at first birth for non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and Hispanic women was unchanged between 2003 and 2004. Mean age at first birth was highest for API women, 28.4 years, and lowest for American Indian or Alaska Native women, 21.8 years.”

If I got pregnant tomorrow (unlikely!) and delivered 9 months later, I would be 34.75 years old, almost 10 years above the mean. 10 years above the mean sounds better than 10 years below the mean in this case, at least!

“The 2004 general fertility rate (GFR) was 66.3 live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age (15–44 years)”

I include this not so much for the stat itself, but because this was the first reference defining childbearing age that I really noticed. I’ve got another decade according to their definition, anyway.  But that pesky mother-went-through-early-menopause thing makes me inclined to ignore their definition for personal comparative purposes.

“The proportion of all births to unmarried women increased to 35.8 percent in 2004. Birth rates for unmarried teenagers continued to fall, though more modestly than in previous years, whereas rates for unmarried women aged 20 years and over continued to increase. ”

Wow – more than a third; that’s a lot. However, “unmarried” “single” in the sense of having no partner involved in helping to conceive and/or raise the child. For starters, outside of Massachusetts, any lesbian partner would still be “unmarried” even if the pair had planned for and will be raising the child together. And I imagine there’s more than a few cohabiting heterosexual couples included in those numbers.  (Later in the report, this is mentioned: “Data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, conducted by CDC’s NCHS show that 40 percent of recent nonmarital births were to cohabiting women”.)  Still. This surprised me.

Of course, day care for babies costs more than for toddlers and preschoolers. And babies go through lots of diapers, which toilet-trained preschoolers do not, and babies also need to go to the doctor more frequently, and grow out of their clothing and need more clothes much more quickly. These same friends estimated that the annual tab for the first couple of years was probably more like $20,000.

So…could I spend more than a third of my take-home income on baby-related expenses? Not including the indirect expenses like additional rent (surely for the first year or two a 1BR apartment would suffice – but that would still cost a good bit more than I currently pay for my half of a 2BR apartment). If I had a child, I would certainly be quitting my music lessons for several years — even with unlimited funds, the time crunch would, I think, dictate that the music study go by the wayside — so that’s roughly $3000/year saved immediately, and there would be some tax breaks and such, but…still, it would be a big bite. Daycare alone would be more than I currently spend on rent.

I make a little more than the median family income for Boston. I’ve often thought this before in various contexts, and now I’m thinking it again: How on earth do those other families manage?

I know that lots of women want children and have not been able to have them, or (worse?) have had children and lost them. I know many people who have found spouses or other types of life partners aren’t able to just have kids and have to investigate a lot of the same options I’m thinking about. I am not claiming to be unique.

I know I’m lucky in many ways. If I were a single man who wanted to be a father on my own, my options would be much more limited; it’s much easier for a woman to get someone to give her sperm than for a man to get someone to lend him a womb. A single woman who had to have a hysterectomy for health reasons would similarly be dealing with limited options. If I were trying to get by on minimum wage, or had severe health problems, or were in one of any number of other circumstances, really, I don’t think I would be able to seriously consider solo motherhood, or any motherhood for that matter, at all.

I know terrible things are happening in Darfur. I know life is very hard and difficult for so many people in Afghanistan. I know terrible things are happening to some people in the United States. I know life is very hard and difficult for so many people in Boston. I know there are a lot of people on this earth whose emotional energy is almost completely expended on survival and would love to have time for the type of navel-gazing I’m indulging in here. But this blog is not about those people. Not because they don’t deserve attention, but because that’s just not what this particular corner of cyberspace is for.

I know lots of women – both those who did and those who did not want children and/or husbands – have had happy and fulfilling lives without ever being a mother. I know lots of women have had lives always tinged by grief because they dreamed of becoming a mother and never did. I know those two camps aren’t entirely separate – that one can live a basically happy and fulfilling life that nonetheless is always missing something, just as the death of a loved one doesn’t mean life will be empty from that point forward, but one never is entirely “over” it either. I do hope that if my opportunities and choices and luck result in my never being a mother, that I will still be able to make a happy and fulfilling life for myself, but at this point I do know that if I do not have children, that will be a loss that I will always feel, regardless of whatever else I have going for me in life.

(I am joking. Mostly.)

I’m kind of freaked out that I am actually seriously thinking about this stuff in a not-totally-hypothetical way.