Now then, onto my mini rant. I want to say before I get too far into this topic that for once on this blog I'm actually not trying to offend anyone, and I truly hope that I don't.
I have a few guilty pleasures, and one of them is to watch the drama unfold on one of the local "confessions" pages. I'm not one of those girls who says they hate drama, because I don't. I love it. When it's someone else's of course. Obviously I dislike drama in my own life, but someone else's drama that in no way affects me, LOVE IT. But I digress. There was a post made yesterday that the responses to upset me a little bit.
A lot of people flipped out on her, telling her that she was selfish for not wanting a child, would make a horrible mother and it's a good thing that she didn't have children, they would never let this person around their children, and that she should get sterilized. There were people saying she was rude and a horrible person for the comment she made. Frankly, I laughed when I saw this. It's clear she wouldn't actually hurt a child, the come at my bro was obviously a joke. (Some people didn't see it that way.) And I highly doubt she responds to her pregnant friends by saying "Eww why?"
All of these pissed me off, but the fact that they said she was selfish really grinds my gears. There were a lot of people that had this response. Can anyone explain to me how her choosing not to have a child is a selfish act? Because I don't understand it. I stated as much and got some angry comments, but whatever. I absolutely do not see how choosing not to have a child, whether it be by adoption or their own, could in any way be considered selfish. I think it would be ridiculous to have a child that you didn't want because society tells you that's what's expected. Not bringing another life into this world when it's not something that you want to do is the least unselfish thing you could do in my opinion. I was pondering how these people thought this woman was selfish and I came to the conclusion that it's not, and that having children is selfish.
Now hear me out. The world has roughly seven billion people on it at any given time. That's a whole lotta people on this planet. Out of those seven billion people an estimated seven million of those are children who live in some form of foster care of orphanage. That is seven million children living on this planet that do not have a loving home with a family to take care of them. That's just a little bit less than the population of Hong Kong. All of these children would love nothing more than to have a family to call their own.
When I pointed out that bringing another child into this world while so many children went without homes was selfish, I was asked why someone would want to raise somebody else's child when they can have their own. The way it was phrased bothered me, I felt like they were saying that they couldn't possibly love someone else's child as if they were their own flesh and blood. I know for a fact that that isn't true. My step dad went as far as adopting my little sister when she asked him to. We may not be his flesh and blood, but we are his family and he loves us just as much as he loves his two biological children. The children that are in foster care or orphanages are not there by choice. They're not there because they did anything to deserve it. They're there because their parents died, or their parents were not ready and couldn't handle the stress of being a parent. They're there because they were in an unsafe living environment or their parents were deemed 'unfit' to raise them and they had nobody else to take them in. No child in foster care is there because of something that they did, and they are absolutely deserving of a family to call their own.
When you look at these facts, yes, it is extremely selfish to have a child of your own. People have children because they want to experience parenthood, they want to experience that unconditional love, they want to see the product (we're leaving out accidental pregnancies from people who aren't in a relationship for arguments sake) of two people that love each other come into their lives. They hope that their child has their eyes, their spouses nose. They want to experience the pregnancy, and labor, holding their child for the first time in the hospital seconds after it's born. They want to see a tiny version of themselves placed in their arms. They want to experience the first time they crawl, walk, talk. The first day of school, their first heartbreak, to see them start a family of their own. They want being the key words. They want to see their flesh and blood, they want to raise a child that they created. They don't want to love somebody else's child, they want to love their own. These are all extremely selfish wants.
Now, with all of this being said, it is OKAY to be selfish. Wanting to have your own child is selfish, but it is a fantastic thing. I absolutely want to experience all of those things too. I want to feel my child growing inside of me, and be there every step of them growing up. There is nothing wrong with being selfish in the least bit. If you want to have a little mini me, that is your prerogative*. If you can financially and emotionally handle the day to day life of being a parent, and that's something that you want to do, by all means do it. The only thing I have ever known with 100% certainty that I want to accomplish in my lifetime is being a parent. That's it. That's the only thing I've ever truly wanted to do. If I raise my children to be kind, caring, productive members of society I will feel like I succeeded in life. That is my life goal, to be a mother. I both want my own child, and to adopt a child who is older and less likely to be adopted. I want to provide a warm, loving, and nurturing home for both, and that's my choice. I choose to be selfish and bring a piece of me into this world, and I also choose to take in someone else's child as well. I want to see what features my baby would have of mine, and I want to experience what it's like to love a child who isn't. I want to experience the utter joy of hearing my babies heart beat for the first time, and I want to see the smile on a child's face when they realize that they have a home and a family that loves them. I want those memories and I want to experience the joy of my own flesh and blood. And yes, that makes me selfish.
And I'm okay with that.
*prerogative - I am very bothered by the fact that there is an r after the p. I even googled it. It looks wrong. It absolutely drives me nuts and I hate it. I hate it to the extent that I probably won't even write the word again because it just doesn't seem right.
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Stroke my ego baby!