This post will offend some people.
After you graduate college, people you know shoot out into different directions--some continue their education, some get married, some dance the night away. Some try to have babies. Through Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr, I've come to realize that the number of people I know who are having/trying to have babies is vastly increasing.
And I've noticed this thing.
People who want to have babies and care enough to post about it on social media tend to really really want to have babies. And if they are struggling with conception, all of their 500 followers know about it.
I can name about 5 people I know who are struggling/have struggled with conception in the past year or so.
They post pictures of medications they are taking to help them conceive.
They post those weird inspirational pictures of fetuses.
They post Bible verses about God opening wombs.
These sorts of posts on Facebook get approximately 5,000 likes and comments like, "We're praying for you! Baby SoandSoerson is just being stubborn :)"
...and I don't get it.
I really don't get it. I'm not trying to offend anybody; I'm really not. But this is something that I don't understand.
I don't understand why people cry fistfuls of tears because they want to carry a baby around inside of them.
I don't understand why people spend thousands of dollars on medications and doctor's visits to try and have a little Them.
The reason I don't understand this is not because I don't want to have children. I do. I just, for the life of me, can't understand why people are so determined to have biological children.
I know I have no right to say this, but I will anyway: I find it selfish.
Tens of thousands of babies are dying every day, but we are spending money, time, and emotion trying to create one because it will look like us.
There are millions of orphans in the world. Have you ever seen a million of something?
Millions and millions of children come into this world in poverty through no fault of their own, and about 50,000 of them every day die through no fault of their own. Do we ever think about this? Yet we woe about our lack of conception? Is it selfishness? Is it pride? What is it that drives us to this determined nature to conceive?
Adoption is a beautiful thing, and something that I've thought about long before I met Nathan, who has two adopted siblings. I know there is definitely beauty in creating a child. I'm not anti-conception. I think a little April/Nathan would be hilarious. But.
Instead of using our time and efforts to create a life, why not save one?
I really don't know what to think of the lengths people go through to have biological children. I can understand wanting to pass some part of yourself onto the world, but that doesn't need to be a genetic thing. That doesn't mean they'd love the baby any less either. All they're really missing out on is the part where you see whose genes show up in what way in the child.
ReplyDeleteIf I have a biological baby, then great! Let's see what our Dutch-Chinese-Vietnamese baby looks like! (And let's hope they get MY birth weight since no one wants to give birth to a 12 pound baby). If not, then I'm skipping the child birthing part and adopting a baby from China. I consider this a win-win.
On a different note: God opening wombs? I was trying to figure what part of that phrase was horrifying and I've decided it was all of it. I really hope you were joking about that one.