Thursday, April 23, 2009

You Can't Lose Them All

I just read an article which referenced people 27-30 as "young parents". Really?! In that same article a 28 year old woman (who is certainly far into what I would consider adulthood) said, "I still don't really feel like I am an adult. When I walk up to the day care with Emmett [her son], I always feel like they are looking at me and thinking, 'Oh, she's the babysitter dropping off the kid, or whatever.' " At 28?!

I really can't believe this. We're not talking about 15 year olds here, these people are working towards middle aged! Though the attitude reflected in that article certainly explains why some people (in real life, not you bloggy friends) are so rude to me-if they think 30 is "too young for children" then I guess I'm a baby having babies.

In defense of what is now apparently extremely young parenthood (from a social perspective at least), it actually does have some advantages. My children will be raised, have flown the coop, and will (hopefully) be giving me grandbabies before most of the "reasonable" people's kids hit puberty. That means a lot of really neat things-I'll get to be a young grandma...and not "60 is the new 40" kind of young, actually young...which means I can run around with them and really get to enjoy my time with them. It is very probable that I will live to see my great grandchildren and-if I'm blessed with a few more years than most-maybe even my great great grandchildren.

I also get the enormous benefit of being able to spend several decades of my adult life privately with Hubby. Don't get me wrong, I adore the kids, but because I won't be raising children into my 50s and 60s I'll get to spend 30-40 years with Hubby generally being housebums (our favorite past time) or going on vacation or spoiling our grandchildren or whatever we want to do. And we'll get to do it when we're older and have more money, as opposed to if we were child free right now while we're broke.

I will say that for the stereotypes-they're not all wrong. If they were categorically untrue they wouldn't have become stereotypes, right? We are definitely living on an extremely modest budget-which I have to admit is a step up for us from our earlier years when we would have had to get a raise to be "broke". While we don't have what I'd call "struggles" anymore-no one has threatened to sue us for money in several years now-we certainly have to make personal sacrifices on our part (mine and Hubby's-the kids are just on this side of spoiled rotten as they should be).

Our big sacrifice is technology. We love technology-give me a gadget and I'm a happy girl!-but the costs of all the glittering gizmos is extremely prohibitive [see:undoable on our budget]. Hubby has been saving for an XBox 360 since they came out (wasn't that more than 2 years ago?). I did get a laptop once with our tax return, but we had to sell it to pay for our big move. I now gratefully use a Frankenstein computer (a pre-2000 PC cannibalized and half rebuilt by a techie friend of ours) to blog and do other important Internet Business [Facebook]. Of course recently I've posted about my extremely-cheapo-digital-camera breaking (and causing a hormonal nervous breakdown), and about not wanting to shell all the money for a cell phone despite the fact that not having one these days is stranger than having two heads. We don't get a lot of cool parent toys around here because, true to young parent stereotype, we just can't afford it.

BUT

We can enter contests in an attempt to win technologically delicious goodies! Contests like the 5 Minutes for Mom 2009 Mother's Day Giveaway...in which they will be bestowing certain lucky winners with the prize of their choosing. Guess what my choosing(s) are? [Yes, you can have multiples chooses! (Even if you think bad grammar is funny.)]

The HP Mini 1000 PC Laptop and the Kodak digital camera of course!!!! The contest runs from April 22nd (yesterday--oops!) through May 9th, and they'll announce the winners on May 10th. I think that a new laptop and/or digital camera would be the perfect Mother's Day gift right now...that way I can take it/them to the hospital with us a week later and record every blink and moment of The Bean's birth!

Are the chances astronomical? Yep. But hey-if at first you don't succeed, try try again. I can't lose every contest!

4 comments:

Jen said...

I'm going to be 27 in July. I have 3 kids..and officially entered "the motherhood" at 21. When I take my kids out..I get comments like "Are they ALL yours?" Um..yeah..

I do feel that even though I'm in my mid-late 20's, I still feel like I'm too young for the kids I have. Taking my 5 year old son in for his Kindergarten registration (with the other 2 in tow) I looked at the other moms..and except for 1..I was the youngest there. It was weird.

Okay..enough blabbering! I have to go enter that contest! :)

MrsM said...

When I went to the OB/GYN last week (or was it the week before? I'm losing track of time) I was the youngest one in the waiting room by probably 15-20+ years. They were giving me dirty looks like I was a pregnant 12 year old or something! It was totally weird.

I think the worst question random strangers ask me is "do all of your kids have the same father?" Uuuuuh, yeah. They do. Do YOURS?

LoL-good luck in the contest (even if you're decreasing my chances)!

Lisa said...

Lol. I'm with ya, until you get to that part about 28 being well on the way to middle age. (I'm speaking as a soon to be 28 year old.)
When I was a kid, my mom was considerably older than most other kids' moms. She had had me at 31. Now that's considered pretty young. People are waiting such a long time to have kids. It's not unusual to hear about women having kids into their 40s.
When I had my son at 23, everyone acted like that was very young, and in fact many of the people i went to school with still haven't had kids.
At chuch, we (at 27 and 29,) are the youngest couple in the young-adults-with-children Sunday school class.
I'm glad I had my kids relatively young, and don't plan on having any more. I'm quickly approaching my self imposed child bearing deadline of 30. I'm also looking forward to be a youngish grandma.
I can't believe people ask you if the kids all have the same daddy. That's awful. Shame on them.
Good luck on the contest. I hope you win a gadget.

MrsM said...

Aw, thanks for visiting and leaving such a sweet comments Lisa!

I don't have any problem with people having kids late, but I do think it'd be interesting to know why so many people are these days. I mean when I went to the OB/GYN a couple of visits ago everyone in the office was 40+ years old having their first babies!

28 is on the way to middle aged in my own opinion, and certainly qualifies as adulthood, but being 28 does not qualify you as mid-life yet! Not even halfway between adult and midlife--I consider that to be 30, since I consider 20 to be 'an adult' (generally) and 40 to be 'middle aged' (since 80 is about the top end of life expectancy).

I hope I see you back here often!