At some point in my life, I heard someone refer to Connecticut as a Breeder State. This means that the vast majority of people living here chose this state in order to reproduce. Most of the restaurants, community events, and community resources are designed with children in mind. In your travels around town, you encounter read alouds, the constant sound of crying, family events with the decorating of cookies, and family-centered daily activities where you will socialize with the other breeders of the state. As for myself, I have not ever had a job that does not involve caring lovingly for children, though childcare has nothing to do with my career path.
Don’t get me wrong. I love children and their innate cuteness. However, sometimes it seems like this focus on children slowly sucks the life out of me and everyone I know. In my head I have a picture of me, dressed in fashionable clothing and bicycling on the side of the road. SUVs and minivans whiz past me, and inside are the children that I work with. They wonder aloud why their teacher/caretaker is stuck on the side of the road. Their mothers respond, saying that I’ve yet to have that magical experience: I’ve yet to breed and begin carting around my offspring in a vehicle that cost my husband thousands of dollars. Without giving it a second thought, they will marginalize me, admonishing me for my childish fixation on riding a bicycle and writing stories. It’s a really ugly picture.
domesticatedanimals 