#28: The Biggest Deterrent of Potential Parenthood (For Me)

"Just wait until" -- the desire to make one's experience the universal experience.

Being a child in a Korean family comprised of smokers (only two people in my family didn’t smoke at that time: my grandma and one of my cousins), I grew up around the smoke, despite my mom’s concerted efforts to not expose me to it. From as long as I can remember, I have been repulsed by cigarettes; the smell alone makes me feel incredibly nauseous.

Whenever I’d make a face of disgust or try to nag my family to quit, an uncle or one of my eldest siblings would laugh and say, “just wait until you’re older,” as if smoking was some prophetic destiny that came with age. I’d emphatically insist that I knew that I’d always feel repulsed by cigarettes, which was met with more patronizing laughter that kids are often subject to. To this day, I have never touched or smoked a cigarette. And I still think they’re revolting.

There has yet to be a milestone or experience (get ready to read that word a lot in this piece) in my life that hasn’t been prefaced with a variation of just wait warnings; under the guise as helpful words of the wise, these sentiments are usually projections from others.

When choosing to go to college in NYC, I was told to just wait until the veneer of the city wore off and the exhaustion began. When taking my personal training business private away from a national chain, I was told to just wait until the struggles of self-employment, like taxes and gaining new business, began and I gave up. When I went through the early days of my chronic illness diagnosis and was so exhausted I’d fall asleep on the floor, I was told to just wait until I had kids, to know true exhaustion. When I got engaged, I was told to just wait until I saw the prices of wedding things and my fiancé and I started fighting. I have a million of these I can keep listing off, and I’m sure that you can too.

But, nothing, NOTHING, has compared to the onslaught of the just wait’s from the parenting crowd.

---

#12: Why is the Baby Decision Harder Than Ever?

---

It’s no surprise that millennials have learned to dread motherhood. How could we not? From the minute a woman is pregnant, she is told to enjoy her sleep now before the baby comes, to enjoy her freedom before she’s robbed of it, to appreciate her baby’s movements in second trimester before they become painful in third trimester, to not take for granted a healthy pelvic floor before labor ruins your bladder forever, and so forth.