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I Have No Interest in Being Anyone's Mommy

This is How I Would Do It If I Was

By D. Gabrielle JensenPublished 7 years ago 6 min read
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Two young girls playing in the fall leaves, credit Trinity Kubassek for Pexels.com

I have no aspirations of being a parent.

When I was a kid, it was the standard. Every girl wanted to grow up, have a career, get married, have a family, do it all. Two point five children, a dog, a white picket fence, a six-figure income. Although as kids, we probably didn’t fully understand “six-figure income.”

But as I have gotten older, that idea of being someone’s mommy has become less and less appealing. And as one more and one more of my closest friends add another human life to the population, my desire for child rearing decreases even more.

It’s not that I don’t like kids. I don’t understand kids and I have a mild phobia about spending too much concentrated alone time with them (please don’t ask me to babysit, at least not as a solo) but in many ways, kids are awesome.

Kids are honest. For the most part, they don’t mince words. They don’t know how. They haven’t learned how to sugarcoat things and tell people what they want to hear. They haven’t learned social niceties or what topics are taboo in polite society. Everything is fair game and that is kind of refreshing.

Kids are curious and eager to learn. I see a lot of myself in that. I have a Bachelor’s of Art degree in English and Creative Writing. I have a cosmetology license for which I went back to school for 15 months, ten years after receiving my Bachelor’s degree. And recently, I’ve been trying to figure out how I can afford to go back to school for…anything else. I love learning. And I love watching kids love to learn.

As a cosmetologist, I work with kids and parents all day every day. And I have friends with kids, in ever growing numbers. While parenting is not in my future plan, I have a surprising number of ideas for my imaginary, fictional children of the make believe future.

I have picked out names. The great thing is that, as a writer, I can still give those names life, through characters. But I have names picked out and I will gladly offer them to a dear friend who is looking for something. Considering I will likely never give them to my own children, I would love to see them go to a good home.

The list rotates. It is, for the most part, always the same names, just the order of preference changes from time to time. I had the idea once that, if I had to name twins, they would be (regardless of gender) Parker and Poe. Willa would be the name I’d give to a feral, wild child, with a vivid imagination and vibrant soul, with skinned knees and hair that never stayed combed. I struggle with the idea of giving a child a nickname in place of what it is “short for,” but I prefer Jack over John, Katie to Katharine (et al). I think I just love names. One of my go-to questions when I find out a couple is expecting a baby is what they have chosen as a name.

My imaginary nursery for my imaginary children would probably be an amalgam of cartoon characters because how am I supposed to prioritize Garfield over Daffy Duck when I love both equally? A classic faerie land would also be an option, decorated in rich earth tones with tiny, brightly-colored fae people peeking out from every nook and cranny in the room.

And as they grow, the room will grow with them. I am not keen on the idea of painting a room to match the whims of a five-year-old whose favorite movie changes by the week, but I could adapt the color scheme to suit their personality as it develops. And when they are old enough to help, they can help decorate.

Instilling a respect for “old fashioned” things is important. I like the idea of earning “screen time.” For every hour you spend reading an ink-on-paper book or writing in a notebook or journal, you get an hour of television or video game time.

Time spent at the library is worth double because you have to leave the house to do it so half an hour at the library (not using a computer other than to aid your book search) counts for an hour of TV time.

I would also be willing to negotiate screen time minutes for other activities, such as household chores and outdoor play (and no, reading a book outside doesn’t count for double except maybe if you ride your bike to the park to read there…See? Negotiating). I might even exchange TV time for time spent listening to the radio or vinyl.

I would teach my kids to do things “by hand,” and I would start when they’re little, before they have a chance to be influenced by their peers that none of it is “cool.” Draw, paint, cook, bake, sew, crochet, write by hand.

I love technology and all the opportunities that it has created but I hate that “writing,” as in penmanship, is something that one day, kids will have to go out of their way to learn. I love my own penmanship; I think it is one of the best things about me that is so uniquely mine and it makes me a little sad that if I were to give birth to a child in the next year, by the time they went to school, penmanship lessons may not even be a thought.

But aside from just penmanship, if I see a growing aptitude in something – even if it is something they are doing on their computers or video games – I think it would be important to teach them the “analog” way.

You enjoy the coloring app on my phone? Here are some real crayons and a real coloring book. You like Minecraft? Legos and erector sets. Do they even still make erector sets? And not the kit Legos either.

I’ll splurge the extra money to buy a five-pound bucket of plain Legos without instructions for how to build Gotham if it means cultivating a child’s imagination. Chemistry sets, telescopes, yarn, knitting needles, anything that helps combine their analog and digital worlds.

Sometimes I think it’s weird that I have so many ideas for how I would be a parent when I really have no desire to, in fact, be a parent. Sometimes I wonder if it’s the universe’s idea of sarcasm.

In either respect, I guess I always have my characters who will need a parent. And I am fairly accepting of the idea that I am “Auntie Des” to a lot of my friends’ kids, even if we don’t ever get to spend any time together. I just have to remember that, in my Auntie Des capacity, I don’t get to offer parenting advice unless asked for it specifically.

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About the Creator

D. Gabrielle Jensen

Author of the Fia Drake Soul Hunter trilogy

Search writerdgabrielle on TikTok, Instagram, and Patreon

I love coffee, conversation, cities, and cats, music, urban decay, macro photography, and humans.

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