03.16.2010
I was on the phone today with a friend and after spending hours discussing our mid-term, we started to talk a little about the expectations that society has. She has a 4-year old little boy that she didn’t plan on having, but nonetheless, she is trying her best to do what she can to raise him properly (she and her boyfriend, that is). She was expressing to me how many people have a rough time accepting that she was fairly young having had her son and didn’t marry the boy’s father.
This got me thinking to my own life and how when Rob and I started dating, after about 2 years people started looking at us strangely because we weren’t taking any steps to getting married and starting a family. When I look back on my mid-20s when Rob and I met, I can’t fathom getting married a few years after we met and then starting a family. If that works for others, fine, but that was so not my life. I had difficulty accepting some of my friends’ weddings because I was on a different path and I found it hard to believe that, at 22, these women had something figured out that I didn't. (Arrogant, I know.) When you agree to marry someone, you’re (hopefully) only going to do this once and I was in absolutely no rush to jump into that. You have your 20s once; you have the rest of your life to live with just one other person and I had difficulty comprehending that someone, at 22, would want to give that up.
So why do we try to convince individuals to live their lives by the standards of “everyone else”? Our society tells us from an early age that we can do anything we want and, yet, somehow that magically seems to stop at about age 25 or 26. At that point, if you’re not married, you better be on the fast track, so that by the time you’re 30 you can have your first child. And somewhere in between meeting your partner and 30, you need to buy the “adult” car, with enough room for the little ones, and soon thereafter, buy your first house with the latest furnishings including a dog.
I don’t necessarily begrudge anyone for wanting these things and getting them, I just don’t understand why people look down on those like me who take a different path. Women used to get married at about age 13 and then would have kids right away. Any woman who wasn't married by the time she was 20, would be considered a spinster and often outcast. But the times, of course, have changed and a girl who has a child at 13 or 14 is considered to be too young. So what’s the "magic age"? It’s as if a woman has to be 25, married with the perfect husband (never mind if she’s gay), and with the perfect job that will suit her just fine until she has children, which she should start having about a year after marriage. Is this what our society strives for and should I have altered my fundamental beliefs to fit that mold because, at 35, I fit none of that (except for the perfect husband, maybe)? I feel like you get penalized if you don’t follow society’s path but then, if you do, you still get penalized because you may have wanted to do other things but didn't so as to meet these standards. (I'm, of course, talking about those people who felt like they had to follow the path of least resistance...I'm not talking about those who genuinely wanted to get married and have kids young.)
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