Amen.
I’m resisting the urge to recount various “trails of destruction” in my family/friend circle. Some continue to break hearts and bank accounts for decades.
4 Likes
I would argue that there are countries where women, pregnant women, and children have far more resources than here in the US and where giving in to the urge to procreate is less likely to wreck things.
If I were a working class rider in France or New Zealand ambivalent about having a child, I might do it because – thanks to universal health care and cash support for prenatal visits – my pregnancy would be monitored closely. I can also be certain that my family will not be bankrupted by a birth defect or bad fall off my cute French or Kiwi horse. Public education, including college, would all be included in my tax bill.
The US’s DIY healthcare and lack of socio-economic support has made what used to be normal impulses into truly existential decisions.
8 Likes
Yes, it’s definitely doable! I’m only saying that a lot depends on your specific situation and to avoid expecting the picture perfect “normal” kid, because you just never know. For example, people think, “I’ll ride while my child is at daycare,” but they don’t realize there are kids who can’t go to daycare. Some kids are still very high maintenance into the teenage years and beyond, they don’t have friends to hang out with, can’t drive, can’t live independently. An autistic child is a joy like any other child, but the challenges are many, for the child and the parents. Caring for a child with special needs can be a full time job for life. As others have said here, have a child because you really, really want one. Hoping to easily fit one into your existing life is risky.
4 Likes
Which way would you run if your financial situation were a little more precarious, or if you had married someone who didn’t offer the partnership you have with your husband?
3 Likes
Well, I would say instead that a baby needs a loving human. My husband was home with our daughter (as I posted above) from when I went back to work until we finally put her in part time day care (more for socialization) at the age of two. And later, when we felt we had no life, he gladly sacrificed his career again. I would put him in the category of all star parent, and gender doesn’t matter. Men can be very nurturing. He was amazing–he took her so many places, talking to her the entire time, pointing things out to her. Our daughter thinks she had a stellar childhood.
My in laws thought I was behaving like a man, going off to work every day. But DH didn’t feel that way, and our opinions were the only ones that mattered.
We had no family nearby. If we had, we might have occasionally had my MIL babysit, but my parents were totally off the table (being BSC). We were proud of doing it all on our own. That meant some things had to take a back seat, but we knew that when we decided to have a child.
Rebecca
4 Likes
We do make it ridiculously tough on women in the US. No guaranteed maternity leave (FEMA only guarantees 12 weeks unpaid, and I learned the hard way most work places are actually exempt from that). No guaranteed access to child care. A whacked health care system. An economy nearly dependent on two income households. A double standard that women should work like they don’t have children while mothering like they don’t have a job outside the home.
9 Likes
I’m glad it worked out well for you and your family. But that is not the norm in our country, unfortunately.
4 Likes
Thank you. 
1 Like
OP - I am not a parent, by choice, so I can’t speak to this directly myself but I can tell you what I saw from my mother.
She was an incredible rider in her youth. She never had a horse of her own but she had all the rides on the horses at the A hunter barn she was based out of. She even showed several of them for their owners. Her “second job” (she was a barn rat at the hunter barn to earn the rides there) was breaking horses at a trail string and taking riders out, sometimes five or six times a day in summer. She loved horses, and wanted to make them a career. Her parents wouldn’t let her (“You will go into teaching or nursing” - product of their era, she went into nursing) but even through college and the early years of her marriage, she was studying and riding, and then working and riding.
It all stopped when she had children, and she never went back. If you ask her now, she will say she regrets “not figuring out how to make it work.” It was, again, a very different time, there was no room in her life for people to support her while she left home (and two young children) for a “frivolous hobby”, maybe it would have been different had she the support - but ultimately, having children was the end of my mother’s riding career.
By the time she got back into it I was in my late teens with my own horse, and she eventually did some lessons on him and would ride him on days when my college schedule was too busy to ride myself. (To this day I am only slightly bitter that even after decades off of riding, she was still a more intuitive, more natural rider with better feel and a better seat than I had - and honestly, probably will ever have.)
It didn’t last though because she was developing arthritis in her upper spine that made riding too uncomfortable, and she eventually quit riding for good a couple of years later.
7 Likes
I really relate to the way you describe you and your DH as being in it together, but totally on your own without family support.
It’s clear from your comments that you and your DH found a specific balance that worked for the two of you and your child. The way you speak about it is very loving and respectful. That’s really beautiful.
5 Likes
Thank you.
Rebecca
2 Likes
All of this.
Especially the part about double standards. It’s ridiculous. And misogynistic.
I don’t know how it changes, except by being more positive about making choices, and telling other women it’s ABSOLUTELY ok to make choices and not kill oneself trying to have it all and do it all. It’s ok to love your career and hobbies and not have kids. It’s ok to want kids and decide to give up your career. It’s ok to do a career for awhile and change your mind. It’s ok to stay home with kids for awhile, then decide it doesn’t work for you, and go back to work full time at some point.
Above all, I think our economic system, such as it is right now in 2024 in the US, is VERY hard for many families with young children.
3 Likes
Yes, yes, and yes.
I was also reminded by this never not great podcast that pregnancy generally, depending on what state we live in, has become a much more dangerous condition since SCOTUS decided the Dobbs case.
(They discuss the No Interference With God’s Plan Until at Death’s Door case in the last several minutes of this entirely alarming podcast about US law, or possibly “un-law.”)
1 Like
…and they somehow manage to make the families, parents, grandparents believe that it is their fault. It’s bonkers.
2 Likes
As a days-away-from-65 year-old near daily rider who has the incredible privilege of making riding my priority, this breaks my heart.
3 Likes
The responses from everyone on this topic are outstanding. Love the personal stories and hearing each person’s journey. So many of you are very fortunate to be able to have families and horses in your lives.
I wasn’t able to have children and was also told we would have to do IVF. I just didn’t want that experience, stress or expense and honestly didn’t know if I wanted kids badly enough to do it. When I met my husband he had two small boys who were 7 and 3 (now 30 and 26). They are great boys and having them really helped a lot and neither of us felt we “had to” have any more. None of it felt right to me so we just didn’t. That’s actually how I started riding and then eventually owning horses.
I think if I had met my husband younger and hadn’t had endometriosis, I would have had kids and a more traditional lifestyle. Things work out how they work out. My decision was made for me (in my mind) and I left it be. I agree you may need to do a bit more soul searching to make sure having kids is what your want. Just be quiet, sit and listen. Your gut will tell you. If you keep questioning and posting about it, the answer is probably a ‘no’ and you need to be honest about that.
7 Likes
Happy early birthday to you! A toast to you and your riding, may you have many miles in the saddle in your future!
My mother’s circumstances have always struck me as profoundly unfair. We can’t change the past, and physical limitations are as they are - but the older I get, the more humble my dreams become. My current mare is a lot easier (and more comfortable) to ride than my old guy was, and I think would be gentler on her neck and back. Once my mare has a few more miles under saddle, I am really hoping that I can talk my mom into hacking out around the hayfield with me come summer. It’s the little things we wish for.
To the point of OP’s question though, and after reading so many other wonderful replies, I think it really does come down to some key factors, support/a network to child-mind when you’re at the barn, the ability to commit the time to all your obligations (children, a job?, other commitments), and also the finances - because children and horses are both really expensive lifestyles, so if those things intersect in the perfect way it clearly can be done, and even if less than ideal, clearly it can be managed plus or minus some compromises with some environments - but it’s not a guarantee that it’ll work.
2 Likes
“motherhood is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, and my kiddos bring me joy more than any horse, dog, man, or material item has in my life. But they also sap every ounce of energy I have and push me to my limits on a frequent basis. I am a better person because of them, but it has come at the cost of feeling like I’m pulled in every direction all the time and nobody ever gets “enough” of me (my employer, my kids, my dog, my horse, my husband, my family, my friends…)”
I think this describes it very well. I had my first kid at 40 and the second at 41 (surprise!). I wasn’t sure I wanted kids but DH did and I had had a great childhood and thought we could offer kiddos the same. Easy pregnancies, easy happy bright babies/kids, reasonable employers, but that feeling of no one ever getting enough time is very true. The kids did have a great childhood (it was fun for me too, overall) and they continue to amaze me, seriously, with how smart and creative and courageous and fun they are. But. Lots of tears into my horse’s neck over how little attention she got, for a few years there.
Even if you can logistically get away from the kiddos, you may not want to miss out on bedtime stories, or baby gym classes, or weekend swims at the pool, or dance or soccer or whatever; watching your kids do this stuff is sweet and funny. And, to this day, there are moms who formed great relationships with each other while escorting kids around, and there are moms who formed great relationships at the barn. Since I was always rushing from one thing to another, I didn’t make those friendships. (I’m okay with it, but now that I have time to notice it, I notice it.)
If I had to do it over again, I would be far more insistent on a schedule for horse time, and woe to the husband who stuck his ass into arguing with me about it, sighing self-righteously, muttering passive-aggressively about how hard his day was, or saying anything other than, “Yes dear; of course! I will take some initiative and the kids and I will do something fun and active, not involving watching shit TV.”
Regardless, though, OP, hold fast to this thought: Things will work out okay in the end. As you can see, you can’t control everything even when you think you can control everything. But most of the time, things are okay in the end.
5 Likes
Thank you.
Forgive the further digression: 65 feels like the new 40 for me. I’ve been totally psyched about Medicare since I turned 50 and suddenly stopped getting every job and/or promotion I wanted.
3 Likes
If it hadn’t been for my girls sports I would have missed out on having some experiences! Like when I was sitting at a swim practice with a group of moms with my other daughter wearing her riding attire and the one mom said Ohhh you ride! Turns out she was from NY and was Susan E Harris’ (author /illustrator of the Pony Club manuals) riding instructor when she was young. This lady was here at the University with her family bc her husband was finishing a doctorate at the Univ here. She invited me to her campus housing apt and showed me the portraits that Susan had personally done of her horses. And she came out to coach my girls . And then a lady I met at my sons events turns out she grew up with Margaret Cabell Self !
3 Likes
