Fears of a mother

My last post made me think of something that weighs somewhat heavily on my mind so I figured I'd put it out here for others so if you have any of the same thoughts you'll know you're not alone.

Some may wonder why we have 4 kids and I have an answer but I can't promise it's a sane one so here it is anyhow. When I grew up there were always mass numbers of kids through our home since my parents (well, technically my mom but my dad was in and out of the house for food, reading, coffee and sleep) did foster care for about 16 years. One thing was always constant in our house though regardless if there were any other kids there or not and that would be myself and my 2 biological brothers. I'm the oldest of the 3. We also grew up in the middle of no where so there weren't many other options of people to play with.

How is any of that relevant? Well, I knew from early on that if I had kids I could never have just 1 because I knew the joy of having siblings around to play with so 2 sounded like the perfect number, nice and rounded. I also knew that I could not have 3 kids, especially if we had 2 of one gender and 1 of the other because growing up it seemed like someone was always the odd man out and that defeats the purpose of having siblings to play with IMO. When my husband and I were talking about kids before we got married he was fine w/ none but I had to have that 2. After talking more the question came about what we would do if we had 3 somehow and my response was that then we'd have 4 because it had to be an even number so there were no odd man out times, just nice and rounded. Well, as you can imagine that led to asking what would happen if a 5th one came along and, to be honest, my response was that odds are fine at that point because there would always be enough around to not have to worry about it as much and I was not guaranteeing any more. We were done at 4 though.

Back to my original thought. I have to say that I wonder how the teenage years will go because there will be a point where all 4 of them are teenagers at the same time. There's a scary thought for you, 4 teenage girls living under the same small roof together. We work very hard already to talk to our kids, make sure they know they can talk to us and we're already working on (at their level of course) expressing to them that they don't need to worry about having boyfriends and that some things just shouldn't be done until they're married. They're too young yet to understand the concept of a committed relationship so for now just saying married works best.

I'm not blind though, I know the statistics these days about teenage pregnancies and all that. I know that by having 4 girls our chances of having that be even one of them skyrocketed. That thought scares me. I really hope that we can work hard enough to prevent it and I don't have to worry about my family being yet another statistic but I won't be naive about it in thinking that it will never happen to us.

Those are the moments I think it would be easier to have boys. Don't get me wrong, I love my girls, but in reality, if you have a son and he gets a girl pregnant you don't usually have anything directly to worry about. The boy should be responsible and help out financially and be there emotionally but the girl's parents are the ones housing a pregnant teen (usually, I could never imagine kicking out my child though especially at that point in their lives), there for the morning sickness, helping to pay or figuring out how to pay the medical bills, there for all of the ups and downs, usually rearranging their house to accommodate a new baby, etc..

I don't think I would worry near as much if it wasn't for my little sister, as sad as that may be. She's a good kid but at 9yo she's already very worried about looking good for the boys, looking sexy and cool enough to catch the eye of the popular guys and just not a little girl anymore. My mother doesn't help much, she buys and allows her to wear clothes that I won't even allow in my house and got tired of toys being scattered so she has gotten rid of almost all toys or anything of the like. My mother and I have already talked though that we could easily see her being a statistic and that led to her saying how both of them (her and my dad) are getting too old for babies and they just could not handle taking on a baby this late in life. As is my dad will be almost 70 when my sis graduates from high school. So it has already been discussed about my husband and I taking any baby in so that it stayed w/ family. Is it just me or does any one else see a problem with this picture?

When did it become 'the norm' to plan years in advance for your kid to get knocked up as a teen and then plan on doling the baby out to family because you just don't have it in you to do it and you know your child won't be able to handle it at that point yet? I just don't know what to think of it most of the time, then again, I don't know what to think of my mom most days anymore in general either. All I know is that if we can try to be enough of an influence then hopefully we can help prevent that scenario from happening but if it does I hope that it is a minimum of 5 years from now (that'd make her 14) and then we'd go from there.

So there you have it, one of my greatest fears as a mom is one of my daughters becoming a teen pregnancy statistic.