In my last post, I wrote about my cousin who ‘never worked a day in her life’. Let me clarify something. The woman works. She works her ass off. She works harder than anyone I know and she looks good doing it. She has three children, one of them is developmentally disabled. She has a husband who travels a lot for work so she is responsible for taking care of EVERYTHING. And yet, she still manages to have the girls over for a movie night every few weeks. She has dinner on the table by 6 when her husband is home because he gets very impatient, and her beautiful house is spotless. All I can say is I have one husband, 1 dog and a two bedroom apartment and I’m lucky if I remember to thaw the chicken.

Here is the other thing. My cousin had an arranged marriage. She didn’t ‘choose’ to leave a career in order to stay home and have children. It was what was expected of her.

I’m not envious of her and her lack of choices. I’m definately envious of her three beautiful children, but if I had to give up everything I have now to have that, I wouldn’t do it. I can have children (hopefully) via the miracles of modern medicine, or I can adopt. You don’t get to have choices and options in life by either of those methods.

Let me tell you another story: My mother was married at 17. She didn’t leave her house without a burqua after she was 10 years old. She didn’t go to high school until she was engaged to my father, who sent her secretly behind my grandfather’s back. She spent most of my formative years telling me “if you get married and don’t work, I will expect your husband to repay me all the money I spent on your education.” My mother stayed home and raised three kids. She always said she had nothing to show for her life. Nothing that she created on her very own, nothing she could claim for herself. She said this not becaus she thought she wasn’t working hard. But because she never had a choice.

My youngest brother went to high school and mom got a job at Macy’s. She didn’t need it financially, mind you. She’s a doctor’s wife, after all. She needed it for herself. She went to real estate school and got her license. Now, at 55, she’s embarking on her career. She is different from the mom I grew up with. She’s confident and proud of herself and she has calendars with her picture on it to give to her clients. I’m proud of her too. Not because I thought she didn’t work hard raising us (she did, its not like dad was a huge help) but because now she has options.

If you went to college, or went to high school, or dropped out of grammar school and then got married because you wanted to and had kids and stayed home because you felt like it, that’s great. I think after all I’ve gone through if I end up having a child, I will probably do the same. If that is what I choose.