shocking declaration

shocking statement of the day:

i almost certainly do not want to have children.

take your time recovering from that statement...i know it is pretty rare to hear that from a member of the girl club.

i said something along those lines to a friend this morning and his reaction, hard to accurately gage as it was via text message, came across as a little shocked. he then asked for details. so jay, this blogs for you.

i play housewife/stay-at-home mom and get paid for it. and i'm only playing as i get to go home to my empty house every night. and i like it. both the playing part and the empty home part. i get the best of both worlds. i get to raise kids but don't have to pay for it (i get paid for it) and i can take a vacation from it whenever i want. and the last three days i've been playing stay-at-home mom 24/7 as the parents of the boys i nanny are in california. and i'm tired. i honestly can not wait til 11pm tonight when their parents get home and i can make the 35 mile drive to my child-free house.

now part of my reasoning for being able to state i don't want kids is because i don't see it in my future. at this point in my life, i seriously doubt i'll find the man of my dreams before the childbearing years are over. i would love to find someone and settle down. but after 32 years of singledom, i don't know if it will happen. so maybe for self-preservation, i've convinced myself that children aren't necessary to my life. i've never been a dater. my longest relationship was about 5 months and that was long distance. i've been told my more than one guy that i'm not dating material because i'm too much like one of the guys. i've also been told i'm perfect mistress material because i'm too independent to be married successfully, but that independence would make me a less clingy, demanding mistress. neither one of those things are good when you want to meet someone, fall in love and live happily ever after. so if i don't get happily ever after (which is a concept i'm naive enough to actually want), i don't get kids. end of story.

that being said, if i were to meet mr. right in time to have children, i would be more than willing to procreate if he wanted to. but i would no longer work with children for my job. knowing myself, i know i would never be able to stay home full time so i'd have to work, but i also know that i could never give 100% working with other peoples children and then come home and give 100% to my own kids. someones kids would get neglected and i'm afraid it would be my own.

so there it is...the quickest way i know to put my thoughts on kids into writing.