I’ll decide what’s good for me

EARLIER this week I mentioned to a friend that I was planning to meet another pal’s newborn baby.

“Oh, the danger is you’ll get broody”, they said. “Nah”, I replied. “Oh, right, good for you”, they said.

GOOD FOR YOU.

I replied with silence, shocked as I was at the response. I hadn’t heard this for at least a decade.

Let’s put this in context for a second.

I’ve recently turned 35. I’m not married. I live with my long-term partner in a home we do not own. I have a job that I love and a happy life.

Among my immediate friendship group this isn’t unusual. There are friends who are married and own a house and do not have children, friends who are flying high in their careers and have beautiful homes and are perfectly happy being single, friends who are totally loved up and are eagerly saving to buy but have never mentioned the idea of having kids. This is alongside my two brothers who both have children and are married but have never remarked on my lifestyle choice.

The comment, as you can probably gather, irked me.

It’s not 1951 and not having children and being unmarried isn’t breaking any glass ceilings, not as far as I’m aware anyway.

Since I was a child my parents, proud grandparents now, never pushed the idea on me, unlike their persistence that I should go to university (twice) and fulfil my childhood dream of going travelling around the world.

They were children of the 60s and still they knew my destiny wasn’t wrapped up in being a mum, like no little girl’s should.

But more to the point would someone say “good for you” to my partner, who is on the verge of turning 40?

The answer, we all know. is “no”. Why, in 2021, is there still an expectation that a woman’s body is there for the purpose of reproducing, and furthermore what if I couldn’t have children? Or what if I was a lesbian. Is the expectation the same? Is a nonchalant conversation the right place for me to reveal all? No. Remarking on a woman’s fertility is, quite frankly, something which should be out of bounds. We are in an evermore progressive society where I am worth more than the value of my unfertilised egg supply.

To be clear, I love kids, I adore, maybe a little obsessively, my two nephews and niece – they are gorgeous, and probably the best kids in the world.

But do I want my own? Who knows? I’ve not really thought about it, to be honest.

And if you haven’t, either, then I guess that’s good for you too.