Does She Have To?

Mia Figueroa

“How can you want to be a teacher and not want children?” I don’t think I have the right answer for this question. Quite honestly, I don’t think there is one right answer. There’s the right answer for me, and there’s the right answer for everyone else. Except, I think what everyone who asks me that wants to hear me suddenly change my mind and have a burning desire to reproduce. As if that somehow affects their lives more than it does mine. The fact that I even have to answer this notion, almost daily, is ridiculous. Wanting to be a teacher does not mean that I must have children. I’d reckon the ones I teach are going to be close enough to my own kids. Why would I want to make that even harder for myself? Even if I had an innate desire to be a mother, it would surely be fulfilled by my future students.

Regardless, even though that desire, if I had it, would be fulfilled, teaching is more than being some surrogate mother to different groups of people. Especially, with the group of people I plan on teaching. They’re not even kids. They’re fully grown adults. Yeah, I might grow fond of them, and I might grow protective of them, but my job won’t be to be a substitute mother. My job would be to help them help themselves through the power of opening their minds to new lenses. Everything else in their day-to-day life that their own mother does, is well beyond me and what I’ll be getting paid for. Now, that’s not to say that I won’t go above and beyond to help and protect my future students when need be. I will most certainly go out of my way to let them know that my classroom and I are indeed a safe space, and I will always be a trusted adult for them. One of the things that I am most excited for, as a teacher, is being able to provide as much emotional support as I can. That’s as motherly as it gets with being a teacher. I don’t berate them and teach them how to go out into the world. I help them figure out the world they’re already in. I help them make sense of the world they’re already in. I’ll be a useful tool, not a total caregiver. I don’t know, it’s hard to articulate. It’s completely different. It’s almost like saying “Oh, how can you want to be an IT and not want kids?”. What does career have to do with personal preference? It doesn’t.

When I was younger, I played with Barbies, Bratz, any doll I could get my hands on. I loved them. I loved the idea of creating another life and controlling it. Perhaps, living vicariously through my freshly done up dolls was what made me feel alive. Every time my playmates and I played with dolls, we always played ‘family’ with them. They would have their doll be magically pregnant with their fifth kid, and somehow still have a supermodel career. I distinctly remember pretending to want my doll to have a kid, too. Not because I was living vicariously through the doll, but because I thought everyone was supposed to have their doll possess a fruitful lineage.  I always thought I was weird for not instinctively wanting my Barbie to have a family. I only gave her one because that was what everyone else was doing. I always kept the roleplay going and said that my barbie had one kid, a dead husband, and a large mansion obtained from the dead husband. Ambitious, I know. Other times she was ‘thinking’ about getting pregnant but was too busy with an acting career in Los Angeles to ‘buy’ a baby. Funny how young me thought babies needed to be bought but also knew you can inherit a mansion from your rich ex-husband. Priorities, I guess.

Sometimes, the mere fact that the Barbie only thought about having kids wasn’t enough for some of the playmates I had. My five-year-old companions insisted that she have kids.

“Why can’t she have kids now?”

“She doesn’t want them now.”

“Well, she has to have kids.”

“Why?”

“Because she just has to.”

Because she just has to. She must. We were five. Quite frankly, I don’t know why I didn’t nip that in the bud right away. I don’t know why I didn’t stick up for myself (even at five years old) and say “Listen, it’s my Barbie. I do what I want”. Or something like that, at the very least. If I had to guess, based off the emotions that I feel from that memory, it was because I thought she was right. I thought that women did have to have kids later on in life, and I was ashamed for not wanting to. I was ashamed about being the odd one out. Even now, I still feel weird, and I still feel like it’s some big secret that I’m not supposed to say. I feel an overwhelming sense of kinship every single time another female friend of mine mentions that they don’t want children either. Except, I can’t quite figure out exactly why I feel this way. I know that back then that’s all women were expected to do, but this isn’t back then. Why can’t the world let us be?

The thought of having children quite literally makes me cringe. The thought of me being pregnant makes me extremely upset. I’m so terrified of it all. I don’t know if there’s a phobia for being with child, but if there is, I have it. Now, I have a lot of empathy. Some might say too much. Yet, I can’t understand women when they’re excited about it. My brain can’t compute it. I’m happy that they’re happy, and I am happy for them, but I’m not happy with them.

At least I had a few comforting people along the way. My grandpa (dad’s father) of all people is so adamant that I do whatever the hell I want. Quite literally whatever the hell I want. He’s on my side more than he’s on my dad’s.

“Why are you leaving so early?”

“I have to go to work?”

“No, you don’t”.

“Grandpa, I need money”.

“Come with me to the casino then. Play slots with me and trick all the stupid men into giving you their money”.

“I should start taking advice from you more often”.

He always is supportive of anything I want to do. Any hopes, dreams, aspirations, or whims he’s right behind me. He suggested that any man I date smell like Old Spice and gasoline, however that’s what he smells like, and… well no. I told him that the only true standard I have for a man is that he doesn’t want kids either. He didn’t bat an eye. “Good, men are stupid”. Honestly, he’s an icon. It’s too bad he probably tanked his health with all the drinking. He won’t be around for much longer, I don’t think.

Another comforting person for me was one of the previous housekeepers we had, Dorothea. She had the exact same stance as my grandpa. She was the Russian grandma I never had.  Unfortunately, we lost her due to COVID, but I know she’s probably somewhere arguing with God about how he folds His bedsheets. I absolutely loved her. My relationship with my mother is amazing, but if anyone was a substitute mother it was her. She would always tell me to not let any man keep me from doing what I want, even if it’s as small a task as brushing my teeth. “Don’t let a man keep you from your teeth or your dreams”. I’m sure it makes better sense in Russian. When we would go up to New York, I would always update her on all my trivial drama. I told her about figuring out how I don’t want kids, like at all, she said “Good. You owe men nothing”.

Dorothea and my grandpa are old people, so I find it quite funny that they want to crush the patriarchy and yet the current events in Texas are an actual thing. It’s such a perturbing thing to think of. Men that would probably feel as if their masculinity would be ripped away if they even looked at a box of tampons are making these decisions about my body. My happiness. My life. I can’t imagine how the women who are directly affected feel. How does one begin to understand that the government and half of the country would justify abortion with the death penalty? How does one begin to understand that the government would much rather focus on a barely-there heartbeat instead of the heartbeats of thousands of cages and in abusive foster care homes? What about the heartbeats that are living on the street? What about the heartbeats of those small, scared heartbeats sold to nasty, old men for God knows what? There’s all of that going on and the Texas government decided to focus on giving any abortion getter the death penalty. Never mind the rape babies, and never mind the fatal pregnancies. Anyone who gets one gets the death penalty. Because, somehow, someway, that heartbeat is way more important than everyone else’s. I feel absolutely hopeless. It is so tragic that these things are even up for debate nowadays. I guess whoever decided the global time zones set America a little too far back, even when we’ve made a decent amount of progress with our weird culture. Somehow, life preferences were made political, women’s bodies were made political, and telling people about this universally small preference of mine feels like I’m coming out of the closet to select people all over again.

It’s funny. When I told my parents I was bisexual, my mom said “Okay, cool.”, and my dad thought I was just copying Lady Gaga because she had also just come out as bisexual. Eventually, my dad accepted it in his weird way, and started saying he could ask the waitress for her number for me. However, when I told them that I didn’t want kids, my mom said “Yeah, that’s what I said too. You’ll come around”. My dad and I, though, got into a screaming match about it. He called me selfish because I wasn’t going to give him grandchildren, and I was going to cause our name to die out. He, apparently, had forgotten that I have a sister. I’m also selfish because “What if your boyfriend wants kids?”. As if that’s not the first thing I clear up in a relationship. As if I haven’t already tied myself to the stake and started my own fire by mentioning children early in the relationship and at a young age. I explained to him in the only logic he could understand by telling him that I didn’t want to be all worn out from a tiny, alien-like human playing Mortal Kombat with my insides. He told me I was being “too feminist” about the issue, and to stop being selfish. Thanks, Dad.

When not wanting kids is mentioned, it suddenly becomes a societal issue. It suddenly is no longer about the pursuit of happiness and is instead a responsibility. “Because she just has to”. Precipitously, it is no longer about me. It is about everyone else. Almost as if my would-be child is going to be the first to discover the cure for all ailments. At first, I thought this extreme dislike came from just not wanting to go through pregnancy. I told people I plan on adopting and that today’s children needed help, never mind the future children. There is, after all, a population issue. I used that as an excuse. Turns out, that was not only a lie to them, but eventually a lie I started telling myself. Even up to four years ago I tried convincing myself that I wanted to adopt. I don’t. I really, truly don’t. I don’t even like calling my cat my “son”. It feels gross. I’d genuinely give my life and everything I own in exchange for my cat’s happiness, but “son” is an overkill.

I, recently (up to a year or two ago), started being a little more vocal about not wanting offspring, and I noticed a few things about everyone’s reactions. I had to tell them something shocking. They wouldn’t leave me be unless there was a shock factor involved. So, I told them the truth: I’d sooner end my life if it meant not going through all of that. I don’t think I could ever get an abortion because my empathy is crippling. I decided at thirteen that if I ever fell pregnant, I’d drink until I put myself in the hospital. (Yes, my therapist already told me no). For a while, I had contemplated the good ol’ coat hanger, bleach, starving, painkillers, hell I agreed to start doing cocaine. Instead, I resulted in something smoother. Truth be told, I’ve never admitted that to anyone, but it must be said. I sugar coat it, tell them I’d probably kill myself, and they laugh uncomfortably and drop the subject with a few more pleas.

I mean, let that sink in. I sure had to. The mere fact that societal pressure has forced me to contemplate the possible end of my life at thirteen years old is… definitely something. I have to practically scream in the name of a foreigner’s god to get them to stop, and I’m sick of it. Why can’t I scream in the name of my god? Why isn’t that enough? It’s my life, not theirs. I’ll be sipping port wine in Italy, France, and Scotland while you send your kid off to 30 years of loan payments and most likely a mental illness given this society that we live in. That’s almost exactly what I used to tell them. That I didn’t want kids because I don’t want to pass my problems and the world’s problems on to an innocent soul. While that’s true and valid, it was still another false reasoning for both me and the recipient. Honestly, I don’t care that anyone who wants to have kids wants them. Good for them. I’m happy for them. Build your happiness while I build mine.

I can’t believe that I used to think it was all my fault that I was the anomaly. I thought I was an anomaly and planned my death all because some (probably white) man, way back when, decided women should stay home solely to bear and raise children. Now, all of us “outsiders” are reaping the plentiful benefits. My career has nothing to do with this troubled societal ideology. I want to teach college kids to help them decide on things they already know. I want to help them grow their own seeds. I want to help them plant their own seeds. I don’t want to do that for them. Helping adults achieve their dreams is not the same as bringing a whole baby into the universe and helping it learn to go to work and do their taxes. I can still be a teacher and not want children. Wanting children is not a prerequisite. Stop telling me it is because society told you that. I don’t want kids because I just don’t. That should be enough. That is enough.