How times have changed. Eighteen years ago, I stood on a street corner in New York City, seven months pregnant, pigtails framing a childlike face, and a cabbie shrieked to a stop, sneering and shouting, ”What happened to you, sweetheart, ya get raped?” . . . and raced off again. Even though his words were coarse, his attitude was not that unusual. It was the late `60s, a time when it was no longer considered fashionable to have babies.
During the same pregnancy, two women literally stepped over me as I sat dizzily on a curb, obviously pregnant and light-headed. One said to the other, ”She must be drunk.” It was 10 a.m., and I had morning sickness.
Pregnancy had become an almost alien condition. I fought for cabs, longed for seats on buses and carried armloads of groceries, wishing for a helping hand from anyone–man, woman or child. But the era of pregnancy as an appealing or even acceptable thing was over.
Delighted with the daughter who came into this world, regardless of all those negative opinions, I nonetheless took a long break from having babies. During the interim, I launched a career and spent 10 years enjoying my work and being the mother of an only child.
But in the back of my head was always the longing for more children someday. Then someday came at last, and with it a second baby. My oldest child was 10 years old, and zero population growth had become not only a fashion but almost a mandate. This time people did not step over me on street corners or accuse me of being drunk: They openly glared at me or made speeches about my lack of concern for the universe. Women were wearing IUDs as earrings, and everyone practically hated babies. There was nothing cute about my condition. I was an irresponsible person. Strangers looked at me with disgust, and friends assured me that what I was doing would destroy any chance of success with my writing. What one could do with one child, one absolutely could not do with two. I almost felt as though I were expected to turn in my typewriter for good, and I seemed to be constantly apologizing and explaining. That was in the `70s, and none of my friends were having babies, nor did they ever intend to. Few of them had even gotten married, and my lifestyle and goals were considered an aberration by most of them.
When my third child came along, things were subtly changing. The `80s had dawned, and with them my friends–who had become doctors and lawyers and politicians, or just plain people–had begun to think about having babies. I heard a lot about something called a biological clock, and instead of Gloria Steinem, I kept hearing about Jane Fonda, who seemed to think it was all right to have babies, as long as you exercised like mad and looked as though you had never had any.
Some of my friends had actually gotten married by then, several were trying to get pregnant, and many were discovering that it wasn`t as easy as they had always thought it would be. They were standing on their heads after making love, taking their temperatures daily and seeing a great many doctors. So having a baby was okay. A baby. But a third baby? This news was met with much head-shaking, but at least the outright anger had lost some of its fire. They didn`t think I was completely crazy. There were the murmured cautions about my career again, all of which I half-believed.
To the daughter who was by then 13 and the son who was 3 was added a delicious baby girl, who neither disrupted my life nor my time at the typewriter. A year and a half later came another baby girl. This time everyone said I was losing my mind. Four children! And two stepchildren by then as well, who meant every bit as much to me as my own, so that made six. Six children! Clearly, I was depraved. But, interestingly, by the mid-1980s people had stopped glaring in the streets at pregnant women.
And then–oh, no! not again!–another baby! She`s obviously a wild woman! Even I was beginning to think so. But it was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. As an only child I had longed for a big family, and my husband is the perfect husband and the perfect father to such a big brood. It took me a long time to find him, but when I did, suddenly all the jarring notes became sweet music.
One day I found myself murmuring to a friend, ”I know I can handle six
–but do you think I can handle seven?” She smiled at me. She had grown up in a large Mormon family and didn`t think me crazy at all. But by then my friends who had struggled to have babies had finally succeeded–most of them, anyway–and, at 40, they were telling me what I already knew at 20. Having children is terrific! For hours I would listen to them talking about the amazing accomplishments of their 4-month-old children.
Suddenly, in the `80s babies had become not only acceptable but interesting, not to mention an important obligation. So, the solecism of the
`60s, which had become the crime of the `70s, had actually become the ideal of the `80s. Fascinating. And comforting.
It was warming to see all these women willing to admit, not necessarily that they had been wrong, but that maybe they had been missing something. What our parents knew 40 years ago, and our great-grandparents 100 years ago, had become true for us again. And the beauty of the `80s was that we really did have choices: It was okay to have babies, and it was okay not to have babies. Now women could go back to work or stay at home, or leave their jobs for a few years in order to push their babies to the park and watch their first steps with shrieks of delight and tears in their eyes.
So by the time I was ready to have my seventh child, society had softened. People no longer looked as though they were going to stone me in the street for being pregnant. One or two even smiled at me. But my friends still shook their heads in dismay, and virtual strangers asked worriedly if I was intending to have any more children.
Why was everyone fretting so? More important, why was everyone so threatened? Our children are wonderful, and we are crazy about them. They are loud and messy and scream at each other and fight over toys, and you can barely crawl over the strollers as you come in the door, but there is no substitute for those hugs and those kisses, those chubby little arms and those adorable little faces. By now, the two oldest are thinking about college, and I would be a basket case at the thought of their leaving if I weren`t surrounded by all these tiny people, some of whom are still in diapers.
But the really amazing thing happened with the impending arrival of our eighth child. Suddenly, what had been viewed as my madness, not to mention total lack of control on my husband`s part, had become not an aberration but a blessing! How wonderful, people chimed. Marvelous! Marvelous? After all those years of dirty looks and accusations? You mean it`s okay now? Even eight children are okay now?
Do you know, not a single person has asked me if we plan to have any more, not a single person has told me that my writing career would be over, not a single person in the street has stared at me with outrage.
