The New Mothers

This woman on the left resembles the new face of mothers in America. It's the face that says "it's never too late." You can have your career, your life of exploration and pleasure, you can be selfish until you are ready to retire. Through the wrinkles, it tells us that you don't need to save your youth, energy, vitality for your children; there are injections and pills that will do that for you. It tells us that retirement is a grand time to become a mother, because these days being a mother isn't that much work anyway. You can drop off your child at day-care everyday, eat frozen foods to save time on cooking, get flu shots so you don't have to waste time building an immune system, and stick your child in front of the television whenever you have to squeeze in a bit more work for the person you love most in the world- your, fat, greedy, corporate boss.
You don't have to worry about the fact that you'll most likely be dead by the time your child is thirty because you could always use that good old argument "who knows what could happen anyway, I can be twenty-five and get hit by a truck." Yup, you tell them- there is no need to make a good decision, because things can go wrong regardless. You convince yourself that being a grandmother and experiencing multiple generations in your family is over-rated. You also tell people that you "couldn't breastfeed" and the fact that your child has a constant runny nose has nothing to do with that.
So why the delay? Busy with career? Didn't find the "right guy"? Fine. It's amusing to me, however, that in most cases where I see "delayed" motherhood, I see the least involvement. These are the very mothers who treat child rearing as though it were a board room meeting. Their children are accessories, and learning how to sacrifice at age-forty something is like teaching an old stubborn dog new tricks. They are the ones who claim that they have to work every day because they can't afford to stay home; then they'd have to give up their mini-van, vacations and prescription medication. Besides, the kids shouldn't get too attached, you'll be dead soon anyway...