The (lack of) pitter patter of little feet

Word of the day: off-spring (noun) Children or young of a particular parent or progenitor.

I think I've written about compromise before and how I struggle with what I want out of life and what I think I can get out of life and where I'll have to make my compromises. (I'm too lazy to look at past posts to figure out if I have posted on this before so if I'm repeating myself, sorry!)

I've always thought that one thing I could never compromise on was children; I must have them and that's that. While I would love to have kids one day I've been thinking about it a lot lately and I've started to realize this just might not work out for me.

One thing that I can't do anything about is biology, namely the fact that once a woman is over 35 she has a significantly harder time trying to conceive. This combined with my own fertility issues means I've pretty much got to start trying for babies in the next year or so.

This leads to my own set of criteria for having kids:

1 - Marriage is required. I know there are plenty of women out there who have babies on their own, whether by choice or by circumstance and they do a bang-up job of raising them. And I'm not faulting them for any reason. Heck, my mom is a single parent so I know what it's like. And it's for that reason that I want to be in a committed, secure relationship before I have children. I don't want to do it alone.

2 - Financial stability is pretty important. Life costs money and I haven't exactly done the best job of keeping my finances in order. So I've got some debt to pay down. Then I would have to start saving for the aforementioned required nuptials. Then I'd have to make sure my husband and I were financially ready for little'uns. That's not an easy thing to do, especially in a city as expensive as Toronto.

3 - We would both have to want them. I don't want to force my husband into fatherhood; he'd have to be as ready for it as me. It's a big step and a big responsibility. Despite Hollywood's best efforts to prove otherwise, babies are not just the latest "it" fashion.

It's not like all these things have made me change my mind about having kids. If it works out, great. But I've recently (i.e. yesterday during a rather boring meeting) decided that I can compromise on motherhood. If I don't have kids I think I'll be okay with that. Maybe later in life I'll investigate adoption. But what is important is that I cultivate a strong and happy relationship with someone who I care for and want to spend time with and want to eventually be legally bound to. This is what is really important to me and what I hope to one day have.

If children get thrown into the mix, I will of course be ecstatic. But if it doesn't happen, I think I'll be okay.

My mom, on the other hand...