After becoming an adult and getting out of high school, the next step in most people’s life is to “settle down,” get married, and have kids. This agenda is especially pushed on young women. But are these steps “required” for adulthood?
“I do get the comments from my mom like ‘Oh, I thought I’d have a grandbaby already!,’ but I think I’ve come to realize that it’s not something I need to place on myself…[and] I try to limit the pressure that I put on myself,” Kelley Colwell, social studies teacher, said.
Giving into the societal pressure of what “should” happen next in adulthood when one isn’t ready could be really impactful. Abby Stallbaumer, art teacher, currently is married and has two children, and shares how this pressure affected her growing up.
“They used to have this old saying that women went to college to get their Mrs. degree, and that’s terrible and awful and I hate it… ‘You don’t need a job if you have a husband’ was the sentiment. I think that in my specific case, I was following the traditional life plan of… ‘by the time I’m a senior [in college], I should have figured out who I’m going to be with.’ So we had been dating for three years, and [my husband] proposed and I said yes,” Stallbaumer said. “So I did the traditional thing of ‘this is just what you do.’”
Colwell gives her perspective on societal pressure from the perspective of one who is not yet married/doesn’t have kids.
“I think it gets really tricky when you just go along with what’s supposed to be the status quo and don’t stop to think for a second about what’s good for you and your own personal life,” Colwell said. “If they haven’t really thought about what having a child looks like in their own life, if they haven’t considered that their life is now about serving another person and that it’s not their life anymore, I think it can [be] a rude awakening. It could lead to [someone thinking] ‘Oh, maybe this wasn’t what I realized, and maybe I don’t want to be a parent.’ So it can lead to a parent not being as present.”
Having a child is a huge step and adjustment in someone’s life, so making sure it’s something that is actually wanted instead of just societal pressure is important for both the parents and the potential child.
“I do know I want [kids], it’s more so [making sure] I’m in the right circumstances before I do that, and that I’m able to set up a child for success, and not just have a kid because that’s supposed to be the next step,” Colwell said. “I think that [having children be the next step] is ingrained in most people, particularly women because we are the ones that…feel the pressure of a biological clock, we hear that all the time.”
Whether or not someone believes they want kids and to settle down ASAP, it’s important to think about how it can impact day-to-day life and why they want kids.
“I think that had I been as emotionally mature as I am now, and as open-minded as I am now, I think my life would have looked a little bit different. Just in that I would have been a lot more definitive on not necessarily following traditional rules but doing things that served me as a person,” Stallbaumer said.
