Jan 29·edited Jan 29Liked by Leah Libresco Sargeant
Q2: Growing up in a university town, I was always extremely aware of a general disdain towards childbearing among highly educated people. But my parents served as a counterbalance to that milieu. My mom regretted prioritizing achievement over family because when she finally decided she did want children at the age of 32, she suffered infertility for several years. Thankfully, God opened her womb and gave her five kids between the ages of 35 and 42. She prizes her children infinitely more than her PhD. In fact, she couldn't care less about her world-class education in piano performance. That's quite a powerful testimony.
Despite her example, I have struggled to honor motherhood. It doesn't seem "cool" or prestigious to bear and raise kids in a world that celebrates women for being authors and engineers. But I realized a few years back that when Scripture describes heavenly treasure, it's talking about human souls. That's been good reminder to me that parenthood is God's work and will teach my heart to love what he loves.
Edit: For context, I married during college at 21, was intending to get a PhD in German Lit, got sidetracked, and had my baby daughter at 24! I want to have several more so we can galumph about, kicking up dustclouds wherever we go, like the joyful tribe I remember from my childhood. (On that note, I wonder how much people forgo growing their families due to bad childhood experiences, like domestic abuse or poverty or parental depression.)
In regard to question #2, I grew up in conservative Christian homeschooling circles, so I just assumed having children was what everyone did (I have a great aunt who didn't marry or have children, but somehow that didn't factor in for me). I kind of admired very large families, although I don't think I actually aspired to 7+ children myself, and always assumed I would go to college, get married at 22ish, and then homeschool my 4ish kids. But things didn't work out the way I thought, because I didn't have an opportunity to get married until I was almost 33. My family preferences haven't changed much, but I realize I might have more trouble with childbearing than would have been the case if I could have married younger. (We recently lost our first child to miscarriage; prayers appreciated.) I feel like God has been repeatedly reminding me that I only have a limited amount of control over things like family size. Children are gifts, not something you can mechanistically control!
One thing that confuses me a little is that my younger siblings are all over the map on fertility preferences--two frequently talk as though they aren't interested in having children at all. I feel like personal temperament is as much of a reason as anything environmental, in their case.
Question number #2 really resonates because I postponed having kids, and have since come to partially regret it. I think I got my views about family life at the time from what I thought of as a certain type of cosmopolitan media. What I'm talking about is everything from the New Yorker to mid career Woody Allen movies, to (old) Gawker, to Seinfeld and Friends etc. There's this underlying ethos of an urbane person that exists in a rarified world basically lacking in kids. I wasn't from that world, but as a kid and young adult, longed to be a part of it. Eventually I stopped caring, but I didn't end up having my first kid until 36, which is now proving to be a limit on the size of a family we can realistically have.
1. I've chosen to work to make Facebook beautiful. I deliberately cultivate and curate, seeking out art and poetry and interesting things to share. And people notice and comment on it. I still spend far more time online than is good for me, but at least I'm trying to make a difference.
2. I've always wanted to have marriage and kids. Even when I was in high school and everyone else was career focused. I knew I was supposed to have a career goal so I always said teacher. But really I wanted a career that would be compatible with a family. Looking around in college I saw female professors who had kids and who made it work-- students babysitting while they taught. I assumed that would be the career for me. But my idea of a job was always something that would fit around the children I assumed I'd have. My mom was a computer programmer and had four kids so it just never occurred to me that there was a conflict. I think my parents are still a bit bemused that I chose homemaking and homeschooling over a job, but it works for me.
Jan 29·edited Jan 30Liked by Leah Libresco Sargeant
A heavyset Latino pastor who gleefully loved to crack jokes and to laugh, and who also would get very personal and serious about peoples' commitment to Jesus in every sermon... he settled the question about WHETHER to have kids! One week, he was preaching, and I think just as a tangential side note, he said, "If you get married, you know, you are definitely* supposed to have children." (paraphrasing, and leaving out some of the negative declaration about marrying while planning to not have children.) And I was like "Oh! Okay, then." Direct and authoritative. So that was settled in about 1 sentence.
That said, my Christian fellowship definitely had the assumption having kids was good, and the influence of that (and my husband's choice) would have been more than enough in the end. Just... it's memorable that I had that experience in a sermon which very much made me go, "Okay, that's settled. I hadn't thought about that."
When I was a teenager, I had snottily declared, "I'm not going to get married until after I get my PhD!" This is funnier in context, because I lived in a very rural, redneck place: I was saying that to people who would see that as weird; some maybe wouldn't know what I was talking about. But I was dramatically shaped by my parents'/Dad's wishes for me, which I perceived to be, in order: follow in the footsteps of famous scientists and mathematicians, have the "quiet" career of being a professor that my dad imagined he'd missed out on because he didn't "hit the books" hard enough in college, (LOL! I dodged that bullet! That said, my dad was born in 1942, and his conception of the lives of the professors who taught him before he dropped out of college was that "they had it made," they had "put in their time" getting educational credentials and tenure and could now "kick back" and coast.) have a career where I make lots of money, followed by "definitely at least be financially self-sufficient." So my decision to get married right after Undergrad (like 2 days after graduation!) could be its own whole story as well.
The question of WHEN to have kids was settled by the summer I did children's church. I taught kids who were 3-6 years old. So I got the benefit of "Oh! Kids start to become interesting and you can really talk to them when they are 2 or 3... I always thought it didn't happen until they were like 5!" BUT the other end of it was I was teaching through some of the story arcs of the Old Testament; I remembered looking at my husband one day when we were at home and telling him, "It seems... to me... that it's saying that there's like two or three main ways of changing the world: having kids, praying, or doing one small action in faith." (Abraham and Sarah were in mind for the first one, and the slave-girl who served Naaman's wife for that last one.)
* Obvious intending caveats for extreme health circumstances, infertility, old age, etc.
I'm 23 and just got married last month, so the question about when to have kids/how many has come up frequently. I always grew up wanting a large family. I'm the oldest of 4 siblings (2 adopted, 2 bio) and my parents always emphasized how much they loved our family structure. They both were/are teachers and were known to say they liked working with kids more than adults. As a result, I always felt like children were great and it was good to have many of them if one could (especially because my mom struggled with infertility and multiple losses). Even though I grew up Christian, I never heard anyone talk about having kids as anything other than a personal choice/preference. From my young vantage point, it seemed we rejoiced when children were conceived and born, but mostly because we assumed it was an answer to prayer for the parents - not because there was something intrinsically important and good about children.
Recently, however, I've been made to feel a bit naive for wanting 4! At my wedding shower with my husband's family, we played a version of the newlywed game where one of the questions was how many kids we thought the other wanted. He correctly guessed 4 for me, and many of his relatives were shocked! It was met with "we'll see about that!" and "you might change your mind after 2, isn't that right, [sister-in-law very much in the weeds with a 2 year old and newborn!]" What struck me was that the women making these comments were the sisters in a set of 4 siblings around whom the entire family revolves! They always talk about how important family is to them, and my husband has lots of cousins who have been the highlight of his years growing up. Part of why I would love a large family is the ability to give my own children what theirs had - a large network of aunts, uncles, and cousins.
I don't doubt that raising kids is very hard work, perhaps the hardest work there is, but I'm realizing more and more how much my own family's pro-child culture has made me feel more ready to have more kids earlier than most of my friends/extended family.
On the first question, I’ve heavily gamed my Facebook algorithm, and so appreciate the content it generally shows me. But lately I’ve noticed many more TikTok-like videos in my feed, not all of which are the type of positive, informative content I’ve deliberately liked or intended to watch. It takes constant vigilance to not get sucked into “bridezilla” videos or “you won’t believe what my evil boss did” content. I don’t think the issue is algorithms per se, but that they optimize for attention regardless of whether it’s good or healthy. Profit prioritized over well being is not the way any business should run.
On Q2, my liberal counter cultural parents were always enthusiastically pro grandkid, insisting that if I got pregnant young they would *loooove* to help. I also loved the idea of a big family probably in part because of a Boxcar Children childhood obsession and because my wonderful elementary school teacher had nine kids (two of whom also taught us). She was a saint - all kindness and careful attention to what kids needed and hoped for.
But those vague hopes quickly ran up against the reality of having kids in a society that charges an astronomical amount for healthcare, housing and childcare. That knowledge, running the math during and after college, meant I decided to wait and reset my child bearing goals - including, major factor - choosing a partner who did not want a large family. I think part of this calculation was also informed by a fear that having a kid young would mean being stuck: shutting down so many different possible futures, locking in a partner, eliminating opportunities to grow and shift my career. Now I’m 37, have one delightful kid, and would love to have one more. I don’t regret waiting! And after they’re grown I’m hoping to foster.
I would tell college students today that we should be fighting for so much more than the CTC. That we can and should craft a society that genuinely cares about kids and families by reducing the strain on women to figure it all out in an expensive patchwork system. That it’s true that right now having kids is *so* much harder than it should be, and that it is incompatible in many cases with building the life you might want to live. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I don't use Facebook much these days - I disliked how often I was composing statuses in my head - but I do use it to check in with people occasionally. I have a browser plugin that allows me to access groups and search for a specific person's feed, but doesn't show the timeline at all. I'm grateful to the friend who introduced me to that plugin, as my FB use is now almost all choice rather than algorithm, and my time using it is drastically reduced as a result.
I ran across this piece recently on honoring mothers, and I wonder how motherhood would be perceived differently if our society followed what this author envisions. (it's by Rachel Lu. The hook for the piece is the Dobbs leak, so that's a bit dated, but the rest of the piece is really valuable.)
I have been struggling to figure out how to turn off my phone and not miss important things. I thought about it and realized most notifications are texts and people will call if it's something really important, so I turned all my texts and WhatsApp threads to silent but left the ringer on. Except my husband, whose texts I do want to read and respond to right away - I found a setting where all texts are silent except his. And if someone calls, I'll hear it.
Then when I have actually dedicated time, I can go back and read and respond to the other texts, instead of sneaking them in when my toddler's back is turned. If I read them, I will think about them, and not really pay attention to the people I'm with. If I don't read them, I can not be distracted from the people with me.
This was only a few days ago, but so far it's working really well.
1: Several years ago...(oddly enough in the aftermath that was the 2016 election/dumpster fire) I backed away from Facebook and Instagram. I have never really looked back. I do miss seeing pictures of friends kids, but everything that I was seeing was less pictures from friends and more toxic political "gotchas" and it was sickening. A couple years ago, I did the same thing with Twitter/X, and while I do miss talking with friends I made on that platform, I was really worn out from constantly resetting my account to "newest posts" versus "top posts". I am much happier and a lot less annoyed and irritated.
2: Oh this is one hits: I became Catholic in college, but my family of Origin is at best athiest-agnostic. I was *supposed* to go to college get a degree and become some big "Women's libber" (my mother's words about what my dad wanted for me) with a career and no need for a husband or kids. After all there are too many people on the earth anyway /s. When I chose to get married 3.5 mths after I graduated from college, my dad, just before we walked down the aisle, said, "Now don't do anything stupid like get pregnant right away."
I got pregnant 6 weeks later. Discovered it a bit late (long story) and was 9 weeks by the time we told my parents who spent 2 hours on the phone berating me for being so irresponsible.
After a rough pregnancy that ended at 34w6day due to Toxemia, I came home with a 4lb13oz baby boy, postpartum depression, and the decision to not have any more children.
And God giggled.
That scrawny boy is now 22 and 5'11" and has 9 siblings... Each of whom are loved by their grandparents, but each of their pregnancies was met with hostility both from my parents who didn't want me to be "just a mom" (after #8 was announced) and my "friends" who claimed they wanted me to know that I "was more than just a uterus" (after #3, 4, 5, and 6). Or one friend who joked about using butter knife to castrate my husband because I shouldn't be made to have anymore kids. (That was after #4)
I had to spend years coming to terms with 1: letting down the people who had different expectations for my life and 2: that I was not in nearly as much control over it as I thought I was. And that's not only okay, but is truly a wonderful thing.
Q1 This is something that is constantly on my mind. I think we are offered endless choices in the modern age, and it is just simply crushing. Choices are great, but the degree to which we can choose almost everything now is unnatural, and I think really affects us more than we know. As a silly example, today I read the ingredients on 6 different brands of hummus to see which one had the best ingredients. I *like* being able to choose, but it does add heft to our minds to have to consider so much. So in that sense, algorithms certainly make sense. In order to get away from algorithms in our life though, I have done a few things. Personally, getting off social media was a life-changing move; completely bypassing that particular algorithm has freed up brain space. For my kids, we have slowly gotten rid of all streaming services and now only have DVDs. It definitely takes time to flip through the book and choose, but I think it's healthier than being bombarded with all the personalized suggestions on Netflix, etc. Anyway, this was really interesting! Thanks for your writing!
I got married at 22 and we welcomed our first baby before our first anniversary. The biggest factor by far was that my husband and I both wanted children and desired to structure our lives around marriage and children first. However, it helped that we saw other couples in their 20s from our parish having children. Otherwise in our large metropolis, it’s quite common to wait until one’s 30s to have children, so at professional events, young adult events, and otherwise in our social circle we didn’t see many other examples of people having children early in their marriage or early in their working ages.
I think if I had been more “plugged in” to parenting-related social groups I might have felt more apprehensive. I didn’t have a reason to join local mom-specific groups until my oldest was of an age to do rec center swim lessons. Once I did, I became much more aware of the different financial and career standards for “ready” to have kids or a “good enough” childhood. I don’t want to downplay the expense of children, because there’s a baseline cost of eg food, medical care, and childcare time, but I’ve seen how a subjective assessment of individual comfort levels with having children can be expressed as a universal minimum.
Q2 - When I was in college I wanted to have kids in a "someday" sort of way. I just thought of it as part of the social script; I'd get married after college (presumably to my then-boyfriend) and we'd have kids, because that's what you do, particularly when you're both cradle Catholics at a Catholic university! But even when we were dating I remember thinking, "Hmm, there are certain ways I hope our children are not like him." That relationship ended and when I met my husband my thinking completely changed; suddenly I wanted to have HIS kids. I knew if my sons grew up to be like him, that would be a good thing, and I wanted him to be the father of my daughters. That was a big indicator that we should get married! It also helped that he was very clear about wanting to have children from the beginning of our relationship, so that really brought it from a "someday" scenario to "this is something we are both desirous of and planning for."
To answer question 2 - As a child my parents told me constantly that having children was a mistake and it only led to misery. As I reached my teens/twenties this narrative joined the cultural narrative that having children was a burden on women, to be free and happy you should be childless, etc. In university and graduate school this sentiment was even louder, particularly in the leftist circles in which I ran. There was also the pressure to not add to overpopulation or burden the environment, etc. It was a fairly all-encompassing, so much so that when the women's studies professor announced she was having a baby the program was shocked. I feel very sorry now looking back that so many of us young women and men had that perspective drummed into us. It is such a shame.
I TRY to consciously choose away from the "nudge," but the nudge is not always perceived.
As far as children, my wife and I were simply open to the reality that children could result from matrimonial union. That openness was a conscious choice, to refuse all forms of artificial birth control. Cultural voices that insisted on following the clarion call of "free sex" were noticed but disregarded.
I guess the primary voice for this was the Catholic Church itself, which then led to further reading that supported the logic behind the Church's position.
Q2: I attended an engineering school and got a degree in engineering. During my time in college, almost none of my female peers talked about wanting to have children. Most talked about children as expensive and they didn't seem to see a correlation between childbearing and happiness. My female professors were mothers but rarely talked about it, instead they placed a big emphasis on encouraging young women to break any ceiling in STEM fields. I remember reading Jordan Peterson early on and thinking he made a very compelling case that women should not dismiss motherhood or their maternal instinct so easily. At the same time, I had grown up in a Christian ecumenical group that was way more sympathetic towards family life and children. However, despite the fact that the majority of the people in the group were Catholic, contraception was widely accepted and even encouraged. Big families (more than 3 kids) were uncommon. The end result was that in my early twenties my approach to children was mostly pragmatical: it was in my best interest to consider having children or at least not dismiss it as relevant to my happiness but never "too many kids" as that was not "responsible". These days I'm very grateful that I don't think about children in that way anymore :)
Q2: Growing up in a university town, I was always extremely aware of a general disdain towards childbearing among highly educated people. But my parents served as a counterbalance to that milieu. My mom regretted prioritizing achievement over family because when she finally decided she did want children at the age of 32, she suffered infertility for several years. Thankfully, God opened her womb and gave her five kids between the ages of 35 and 42. She prizes her children infinitely more than her PhD. In fact, she couldn't care less about her world-class education in piano performance. That's quite a powerful testimony.
Despite her example, I have struggled to honor motherhood. It doesn't seem "cool" or prestigious to bear and raise kids in a world that celebrates women for being authors and engineers. But I realized a few years back that when Scripture describes heavenly treasure, it's talking about human souls. That's been good reminder to me that parenthood is God's work and will teach my heart to love what he loves.
Edit: For context, I married during college at 21, was intending to get a PhD in German Lit, got sidetracked, and had my baby daughter at 24! I want to have several more so we can galumph about, kicking up dustclouds wherever we go, like the joyful tribe I remember from my childhood. (On that note, I wonder how much people forgo growing their families due to bad childhood experiences, like domestic abuse or poverty or parental depression.)
In regard to question #2, I grew up in conservative Christian homeschooling circles, so I just assumed having children was what everyone did (I have a great aunt who didn't marry or have children, but somehow that didn't factor in for me). I kind of admired very large families, although I don't think I actually aspired to 7+ children myself, and always assumed I would go to college, get married at 22ish, and then homeschool my 4ish kids. But things didn't work out the way I thought, because I didn't have an opportunity to get married until I was almost 33. My family preferences haven't changed much, but I realize I might have more trouble with childbearing than would have been the case if I could have married younger. (We recently lost our first child to miscarriage; prayers appreciated.) I feel like God has been repeatedly reminding me that I only have a limited amount of control over things like family size. Children are gifts, not something you can mechanistically control!
One thing that confuses me a little is that my younger siblings are all over the map on fertility preferences--two frequently talk as though they aren't interested in having children at all. I feel like personal temperament is as much of a reason as anything environmental, in their case.
Question number #2 really resonates because I postponed having kids, and have since come to partially regret it. I think I got my views about family life at the time from what I thought of as a certain type of cosmopolitan media. What I'm talking about is everything from the New Yorker to mid career Woody Allen movies, to (old) Gawker, to Seinfeld and Friends etc. There's this underlying ethos of an urbane person that exists in a rarified world basically lacking in kids. I wasn't from that world, but as a kid and young adult, longed to be a part of it. Eventually I stopped caring, but I didn't end up having my first kid until 36, which is now proving to be a limit on the size of a family we can realistically have.
1. I've chosen to work to make Facebook beautiful. I deliberately cultivate and curate, seeking out art and poetry and interesting things to share. And people notice and comment on it. I still spend far more time online than is good for me, but at least I'm trying to make a difference.
2. I've always wanted to have marriage and kids. Even when I was in high school and everyone else was career focused. I knew I was supposed to have a career goal so I always said teacher. But really I wanted a career that would be compatible with a family. Looking around in college I saw female professors who had kids and who made it work-- students babysitting while they taught. I assumed that would be the career for me. But my idea of a job was always something that would fit around the children I assumed I'd have. My mom was a computer programmer and had four kids so it just never occurred to me that there was a conflict. I think my parents are still a bit bemused that I chose homemaking and homeschooling over a job, but it works for me.
A heavyset Latino pastor who gleefully loved to crack jokes and to laugh, and who also would get very personal and serious about peoples' commitment to Jesus in every sermon... he settled the question about WHETHER to have kids! One week, he was preaching, and I think just as a tangential side note, he said, "If you get married, you know, you are definitely* supposed to have children." (paraphrasing, and leaving out some of the negative declaration about marrying while planning to not have children.) And I was like "Oh! Okay, then." Direct and authoritative. So that was settled in about 1 sentence.
That said, my Christian fellowship definitely had the assumption having kids was good, and the influence of that (and my husband's choice) would have been more than enough in the end. Just... it's memorable that I had that experience in a sermon which very much made me go, "Okay, that's settled. I hadn't thought about that."
When I was a teenager, I had snottily declared, "I'm not going to get married until after I get my PhD!" This is funnier in context, because I lived in a very rural, redneck place: I was saying that to people who would see that as weird; some maybe wouldn't know what I was talking about. But I was dramatically shaped by my parents'/Dad's wishes for me, which I perceived to be, in order: follow in the footsteps of famous scientists and mathematicians, have the "quiet" career of being a professor that my dad imagined he'd missed out on because he didn't "hit the books" hard enough in college, (LOL! I dodged that bullet! That said, my dad was born in 1942, and his conception of the lives of the professors who taught him before he dropped out of college was that "they had it made," they had "put in their time" getting educational credentials and tenure and could now "kick back" and coast.) have a career where I make lots of money, followed by "definitely at least be financially self-sufficient." So my decision to get married right after Undergrad (like 2 days after graduation!) could be its own whole story as well.
The question of WHEN to have kids was settled by the summer I did children's church. I taught kids who were 3-6 years old. So I got the benefit of "Oh! Kids start to become interesting and you can really talk to them when they are 2 or 3... I always thought it didn't happen until they were like 5!" BUT the other end of it was I was teaching through some of the story arcs of the Old Testament; I remembered looking at my husband one day when we were at home and telling him, "It seems... to me... that it's saying that there's like two or three main ways of changing the world: having kids, praying, or doing one small action in faith." (Abraham and Sarah were in mind for the first one, and the slave-girl who served Naaman's wife for that last one.)
* Obvious intending caveats for extreme health circumstances, infertility, old age, etc.
I'm 23 and just got married last month, so the question about when to have kids/how many has come up frequently. I always grew up wanting a large family. I'm the oldest of 4 siblings (2 adopted, 2 bio) and my parents always emphasized how much they loved our family structure. They both were/are teachers and were known to say they liked working with kids more than adults. As a result, I always felt like children were great and it was good to have many of them if one could (especially because my mom struggled with infertility and multiple losses). Even though I grew up Christian, I never heard anyone talk about having kids as anything other than a personal choice/preference. From my young vantage point, it seemed we rejoiced when children were conceived and born, but mostly because we assumed it was an answer to prayer for the parents - not because there was something intrinsically important and good about children.
Recently, however, I've been made to feel a bit naive for wanting 4! At my wedding shower with my husband's family, we played a version of the newlywed game where one of the questions was how many kids we thought the other wanted. He correctly guessed 4 for me, and many of his relatives were shocked! It was met with "we'll see about that!" and "you might change your mind after 2, isn't that right, [sister-in-law very much in the weeds with a 2 year old and newborn!]" What struck me was that the women making these comments were the sisters in a set of 4 siblings around whom the entire family revolves! They always talk about how important family is to them, and my husband has lots of cousins who have been the highlight of his years growing up. Part of why I would love a large family is the ability to give my own children what theirs had - a large network of aunts, uncles, and cousins.
I don't doubt that raising kids is very hard work, perhaps the hardest work there is, but I'm realizing more and more how much my own family's pro-child culture has made me feel more ready to have more kids earlier than most of my friends/extended family.
On the first question, I’ve heavily gamed my Facebook algorithm, and so appreciate the content it generally shows me. But lately I’ve noticed many more TikTok-like videos in my feed, not all of which are the type of positive, informative content I’ve deliberately liked or intended to watch. It takes constant vigilance to not get sucked into “bridezilla” videos or “you won’t believe what my evil boss did” content. I don’t think the issue is algorithms per se, but that they optimize for attention regardless of whether it’s good or healthy. Profit prioritized over well being is not the way any business should run.
On Q2, my liberal counter cultural parents were always enthusiastically pro grandkid, insisting that if I got pregnant young they would *loooove* to help. I also loved the idea of a big family probably in part because of a Boxcar Children childhood obsession and because my wonderful elementary school teacher had nine kids (two of whom also taught us). She was a saint - all kindness and careful attention to what kids needed and hoped for.
But those vague hopes quickly ran up against the reality of having kids in a society that charges an astronomical amount for healthcare, housing and childcare. That knowledge, running the math during and after college, meant I decided to wait and reset my child bearing goals - including, major factor - choosing a partner who did not want a large family. I think part of this calculation was also informed by a fear that having a kid young would mean being stuck: shutting down so many different possible futures, locking in a partner, eliminating opportunities to grow and shift my career. Now I’m 37, have one delightful kid, and would love to have one more. I don’t regret waiting! And after they’re grown I’m hoping to foster.
I would tell college students today that we should be fighting for so much more than the CTC. That we can and should craft a society that genuinely cares about kids and families by reducing the strain on women to figure it all out in an expensive patchwork system. That it’s true that right now having kids is *so* much harder than it should be, and that it is incompatible in many cases with building the life you might want to live. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I don't use Facebook much these days - I disliked how often I was composing statuses in my head - but I do use it to check in with people occasionally. I have a browser plugin that allows me to access groups and search for a specific person's feed, but doesn't show the timeline at all. I'm grateful to the friend who introduced me to that plugin, as my FB use is now almost all choice rather than algorithm, and my time using it is drastically reduced as a result.
Indirectly related
I ran across this piece recently on honoring mothers, and I wonder how motherhood would be perceived differently if our society followed what this author envisions. (it's by Rachel Lu. The hook for the piece is the Dobbs leak, so that's a bit dated, but the rest of the piece is really valuable.)
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/05/03/supreme-court-abortion-catholic-motherhood-242925
I have been struggling to figure out how to turn off my phone and not miss important things. I thought about it and realized most notifications are texts and people will call if it's something really important, so I turned all my texts and WhatsApp threads to silent but left the ringer on. Except my husband, whose texts I do want to read and respond to right away - I found a setting where all texts are silent except his. And if someone calls, I'll hear it.
Then when I have actually dedicated time, I can go back and read and respond to the other texts, instead of sneaking them in when my toddler's back is turned. If I read them, I will think about them, and not really pay attention to the people I'm with. If I don't read them, I can not be distracted from the people with me.
This was only a few days ago, but so far it's working really well.
1: Several years ago...(oddly enough in the aftermath that was the 2016 election/dumpster fire) I backed away from Facebook and Instagram. I have never really looked back. I do miss seeing pictures of friends kids, but everything that I was seeing was less pictures from friends and more toxic political "gotchas" and it was sickening. A couple years ago, I did the same thing with Twitter/X, and while I do miss talking with friends I made on that platform, I was really worn out from constantly resetting my account to "newest posts" versus "top posts". I am much happier and a lot less annoyed and irritated.
2: Oh this is one hits: I became Catholic in college, but my family of Origin is at best athiest-agnostic. I was *supposed* to go to college get a degree and become some big "Women's libber" (my mother's words about what my dad wanted for me) with a career and no need for a husband or kids. After all there are too many people on the earth anyway /s. When I chose to get married 3.5 mths after I graduated from college, my dad, just before we walked down the aisle, said, "Now don't do anything stupid like get pregnant right away."
I got pregnant 6 weeks later. Discovered it a bit late (long story) and was 9 weeks by the time we told my parents who spent 2 hours on the phone berating me for being so irresponsible.
After a rough pregnancy that ended at 34w6day due to Toxemia, I came home with a 4lb13oz baby boy, postpartum depression, and the decision to not have any more children.
And God giggled.
That scrawny boy is now 22 and 5'11" and has 9 siblings... Each of whom are loved by their grandparents, but each of their pregnancies was met with hostility both from my parents who didn't want me to be "just a mom" (after #8 was announced) and my "friends" who claimed they wanted me to know that I "was more than just a uterus" (after #3, 4, 5, and 6). Or one friend who joked about using butter knife to castrate my husband because I shouldn't be made to have anymore kids. (That was after #4)
I had to spend years coming to terms with 1: letting down the people who had different expectations for my life and 2: that I was not in nearly as much control over it as I thought I was. And that's not only okay, but is truly a wonderful thing.
Q1 This is something that is constantly on my mind. I think we are offered endless choices in the modern age, and it is just simply crushing. Choices are great, but the degree to which we can choose almost everything now is unnatural, and I think really affects us more than we know. As a silly example, today I read the ingredients on 6 different brands of hummus to see which one had the best ingredients. I *like* being able to choose, but it does add heft to our minds to have to consider so much. So in that sense, algorithms certainly make sense. In order to get away from algorithms in our life though, I have done a few things. Personally, getting off social media was a life-changing move; completely bypassing that particular algorithm has freed up brain space. For my kids, we have slowly gotten rid of all streaming services and now only have DVDs. It definitely takes time to flip through the book and choose, but I think it's healthier than being bombarded with all the personalized suggestions on Netflix, etc. Anyway, this was really interesting! Thanks for your writing!
I got married at 22 and we welcomed our first baby before our first anniversary. The biggest factor by far was that my husband and I both wanted children and desired to structure our lives around marriage and children first. However, it helped that we saw other couples in their 20s from our parish having children. Otherwise in our large metropolis, it’s quite common to wait until one’s 30s to have children, so at professional events, young adult events, and otherwise in our social circle we didn’t see many other examples of people having children early in their marriage or early in their working ages.
I think if I had been more “plugged in” to parenting-related social groups I might have felt more apprehensive. I didn’t have a reason to join local mom-specific groups until my oldest was of an age to do rec center swim lessons. Once I did, I became much more aware of the different financial and career standards for “ready” to have kids or a “good enough” childhood. I don’t want to downplay the expense of children, because there’s a baseline cost of eg food, medical care, and childcare time, but I’ve seen how a subjective assessment of individual comfort levels with having children can be expressed as a universal minimum.
Q2 - When I was in college I wanted to have kids in a "someday" sort of way. I just thought of it as part of the social script; I'd get married after college (presumably to my then-boyfriend) and we'd have kids, because that's what you do, particularly when you're both cradle Catholics at a Catholic university! But even when we were dating I remember thinking, "Hmm, there are certain ways I hope our children are not like him." That relationship ended and when I met my husband my thinking completely changed; suddenly I wanted to have HIS kids. I knew if my sons grew up to be like him, that would be a good thing, and I wanted him to be the father of my daughters. That was a big indicator that we should get married! It also helped that he was very clear about wanting to have children from the beginning of our relationship, so that really brought it from a "someday" scenario to "this is something we are both desirous of and planning for."
To answer question 2 - As a child my parents told me constantly that having children was a mistake and it only led to misery. As I reached my teens/twenties this narrative joined the cultural narrative that having children was a burden on women, to be free and happy you should be childless, etc. In university and graduate school this sentiment was even louder, particularly in the leftist circles in which I ran. There was also the pressure to not add to overpopulation or burden the environment, etc. It was a fairly all-encompassing, so much so that when the women's studies professor announced she was having a baby the program was shocked. I feel very sorry now looking back that so many of us young women and men had that perspective drummed into us. It is such a shame.
I TRY to consciously choose away from the "nudge," but the nudge is not always perceived.
As far as children, my wife and I were simply open to the reality that children could result from matrimonial union. That openness was a conscious choice, to refuse all forms of artificial birth control. Cultural voices that insisted on following the clarion call of "free sex" were noticed but disregarded.
I guess the primary voice for this was the Catholic Church itself, which then led to further reading that supported the logic behind the Church's position.
Q2: I attended an engineering school and got a degree in engineering. During my time in college, almost none of my female peers talked about wanting to have children. Most talked about children as expensive and they didn't seem to see a correlation between childbearing and happiness. My female professors were mothers but rarely talked about it, instead they placed a big emphasis on encouraging young women to break any ceiling in STEM fields. I remember reading Jordan Peterson early on and thinking he made a very compelling case that women should not dismiss motherhood or their maternal instinct so easily. At the same time, I had grown up in a Christian ecumenical group that was way more sympathetic towards family life and children. However, despite the fact that the majority of the people in the group were Catholic, contraception was widely accepted and even encouraged. Big families (more than 3 kids) were uncommon. The end result was that in my early twenties my approach to children was mostly pragmatical: it was in my best interest to consider having children or at least not dismiss it as relevant to my happiness but never "too many kids" as that was not "responsible". These days I'm very grateful that I don't think about children in that way anymore :)