generation gap

I am a Generation Gap.  I had my first baby at the age of twenty three.  And I had Rosebud when I was almost forty three.  It is different having a baby at twenty three and at forty three.  Some things get easier, like delivery.  And some things get more difficult.  Like walking.  But it is all good.

The thing that changed the most about having babies over twenty years is this.  The attitude. My peers, the girls I graduated with and who all went off to university viewed me as kind of a symbol of their mothers.  Simple, old fashioned, naive. Wasting my brain.

They were the New Women.

A generation later, I was still at it.  But the young women were reacting in a way that still astounds me.

Often, when I went out alone with my belly, people would ask me if this was my first.  Maybe that is a polite way of asking “why do you drive a fifteen seater van?”  I don’t know.  But anyway.  When I would say, no, actually this is my seventh, if the askee was a young woman, they typical answer was a gush.  

Seriously?  I so want to do that!  I want to have lots of kids and I just want to stay home with them.  I don’t want to work, I want to raise my kids.  You don’t work, do you?  That would be so hard!  You’re really lucky.

One time, in a maternity store, a professional thirtyish looking woman was buying her maternity wardrobe. She ended up behind me at the till.  The saleslady turned to her, after a short conversation with me, and said, this lady is expecting her seventh baby!  Oh, the young woman’s reply was so sweet.
   You must be so excited…

I am.  I really am.

But I went home baffled that this young woman would think so though.   When I got home and told Sparky about it, he had a ready explanation.  Of course she would think you’re excited.  She is thinking that you are experiencing the excitement that she is experiencing...times seven!

And I was.  I really was.

When did this shift happen?  This shift in thought about young women and babies.  I did not get the memo.  But I was raising most of my babies during that time.  I also didn’t watch a movie for ten years.  I just wanted to sleep.  The idea of watching a movie seemed very boring indeed compared with the bliss of some sleep.

I digress.

Were these young women latch key kids?  Did they have career moms who they wish might have stayed home with them?  Were they the product of broken marriages?  Were they all of these or something else?

I do not know who they are.  But I know something has changed.
It is hip to be pregnant.

 I wonder how long it will take for bare feet to take off.