'SEX IN THE CITY' CHANGED MY IDEALS AND OFFERED AN ALTERNATIVE TO MARRIAGE AND BABIES.
By Kelly Emmrich
I’ve known since I was a young girl that I don’t want to have kids. Probably the first time I ever had the thought was when I was 13 and had my first babysitting gig with a little 5-year-old boy. Everything started out smoothly. I made him dinner, chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans. They were just leftovers from the fridge that the mom, Marie, said I could heat up for him. But then came bath time.
The kid had been running around all day, and he desperately needed a bath. I left him to go get changed while I turned on the bath water. He ran back in enrobed in, not his cargo shorts and soccer t-shirt, but a too small Spiderman Halloween costume. He declared that he wore this for his costumes when he was three. I remember smiling and asking him to get in the bath, and he scurried away refusing to get in the tub. Little did I know that he had swiped toothpaste from the counter.
I found him two minutes later in his room stripped naked, the Spiderman costume discarded in the middle of the floor, and squeezing the Blues Clues toothpaste all over his stomach and legs. I tried to clean up the five year old, and the carpet in his room, but both were left with several streaks of sticky blue toothpaste. I finally got him to bed just as the parents came back home. I said that there were no problems, and they paid me. I called my mom to come pick me up, and I cried all the way home in the car. Later, I got a call from Marie asking why her precious son looked like he was part of the blue man group. I didn’t have an answer.
I told my mom my plan for a childless future after the incident. She told me that I would change my mind when I was older. They said that 13-year-olds don’t know yet what they want in life. I thought that maybe she might be right. Maybe I didn’t yet know everything about my future. But now, years later, as a junior in college, I still have the same conviction. I really, really really don’t want kids.
It’s not just because of that one isolated incident of toothpaste boy, but that first babysitting gig made me think: What is the ‘motherly instinct,’ that all moms have, and why don’t I have it? I think part of it is that I have different expectations from my parents and grandparents. I want to pursue a career and travel. I want to have a career without worrying about taking care of a child. But also, I wonder if I’ve been partially influenced by TV shows and pop culture that’s making marriage and family seem like less of an ideal. Being single and childless is made to look so much more glamorous.
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When I was younger, I remember watching cartoon shows with my mom, programs like “Little Bear,” “Arthur,” “Franklin” and “The Bernstein Bears.” My mom showed me the old shows that she used to watch: “I Love Lucy,” “Bewitched” and “the Addams Family.” I noticed something about all of these shows. They all focused on marriage, family and kids.
But even as I was exposed to this traditional idea of marriage and family, I always found myself chafing against it. Perhaps one of the earliest examples was when I got together with the neighborhood kids to play “house.” It’s a simple game. Each person has a different role in the family. One person is the mom one is the dad. Then there are the kids, and, if you have excess people, there can be pets. We usually took turns with who the mom or dad was in these scenarios. However, I was never either. I always wanted to take the role of the kid or the pet. Being a parent didn’t appeal to me.
As I grew older, I began to see TV start to reflect my inner feelings about my adulthood. When “Sex in the City” came out in 2004, Carrie Bradshaw seemed like a beautiful, confident woman. There was something that was incredibly appealing about her singledom in New York. I started to understand better why I didn’t want to be a parent when I played house. I loved the freedom that she had in her character, and I wanted that same freedom in my life.
Over the next few years I watched “Friends,” “Scrubs,” “Parks and Rec” and “The Office.” None of these shows were solely about marriage, though they did deal with the issue to some extent. These shows were about single people in the work world. In “Friends” Rachel wanted to work her way up in her corporate fashion job. Monica worked to create her own restaurant. In “The Office” Pam put her engagement on hold so that she could attend art school. In “Parks and Rec” Leslie is incredibly focused on her job, and will stop at nothing to achieve her work goals. In “Scrubs,” main characters J.D. and Elliot consistently turned down dates, and monogamous relationships so that they could get ahead in jobs at the hospital.
Now, when I went back to watch shows such as “I Love Lucy” and “Bewitched” I saw things I didn’t notice before. In “Bewitched,” Samantha’s husband Darrin molded her into the perfect housewife. Samantha was a witch, and Darrin tried to make her give up magic, so she wouldn’t cause any trouble for him or the neighbors. In “I Love Lucy” Lucy was a zany housewife whose sole purpose was to support her husband, Ricky Ricardo, in the show business.
I was curious if my friends started to notice this change in culture and whether it affected their plans for their future. After all, I know I’m not alone. According to data from the Urban Institute, birth rates among women in their 20s have declined 15 percent between 2007 and 2012, and research from Pew uncovered a longer-term trend of people skipping parenthood. The number of child-less couples has doubled since 1970. Only about half of women from ages 15 to 42 have children.
I was talking to my roommate, Rose Frechette, over breakfast, and we got to talking about after college plans. I asked her what she thought that she wanted to do after graduation, and she answered. “I don’t know. I think I want to travel. Maybe have an Eat, Pray, Love journey. I don’t want to be tied down to anyone. I think that TV shows like “New Girl” andhave had a role in that, I guess the whole feminism, don’t need no man thing has shaped me.”
My other roommate, Ariana Garcia DuBar, heard us talking in the living room and came out of her room. She asked us what we were talking about. I answered that we were discussing our plans after college, and how the media and TV especially had had a role in our decision. She made herself some tea, and said, “I think that TV just like reflects how peoples like views have changed. I don’t think TV has necessarily changed people. TV probably led me to the water, but I feel like I haven’t changed because of it. I was raised to have a career and travel.”
I came to realize that maybe TV wasn’t necessarily shaping what I, or my friends, thought we wanted. Rather, for those of us who were less interested in a family, it presented us with an alternative view of life. It showed us that there wasn’t just one way to be an adult.
For my mother, TV matched what she already knew she wanted. She graduated college at 22, and moved to Florida. She met my dad when she was 25. She got married at 29, had me at 35. She quit her job as a teacher, and she became a committed mother. There was no room for anything else. She loved the old TV shows because they presented the life that she wanted for herself and created.
For me, I’ve always known I don’t have the innate desire to hold and coddle a baby. And I’m glad I’ve got TV that shows me that’s okay too.