I am mature enough to not get in a shouting match on a forum site when I feel like someone is being a bitch face. When someone tells me that I’m a shit mother and my kids are going to grow up to feel smothered by me… I can think that the person is a bitch face. I’m not going to call them such on the forum, I have some boundaries.

But here in the place where I put all my defensive posturing, why the hell not get into it.

Yes, I had children because I felt like I needed to. You think that means my baby was born with a job and my children will hate me for that. Well, that’s an opinion. Your opinion is worth exactly how much I paid for it.

I was not capable of treating my body like it mattered before I had children. I have learned how to eat, how to exercise in more healthy ways, I’ve done things to manage my pain, and I’ve made fantastic strides on my mental health. Because I owe it to my children. I brought them into the world and I owe them this labor.

In preparation for my need to have children I spent ten years pre-children researching child development and working with children at many levels. That never scratched the itch. I was still never part of a family. I never got to work through my issues of always feeling like I don’t belong and I should go because they were always someone else’s kids.

I need to be a parent because I have to work on boundaries. I talk to my kids about establishing boundaries towards me all the fucking time. “You don’t exist for me. You exist for yourself. You need to please yourself, not me. You are the only face you will see in the mirror every day of your life. I don’t need to approve of what you do. You need to approve of yourself.”

I’ve been offering my kids chances for more space from me for years. So far they adamantly refuse. I don’t think I’m just smothering them. I give them as much opportunity for distance and space as they will permit. But I don’t force distance. I don’t force them to go to full time care. I don’t force them to go to school. It would take forcing.

I think that as long as I have Stanford behavioral health, a pediatrician who specializes in intergenerational patterns of abuse, and a list of mental health care providers who interact with my family all saying that I’m doing well and my kids are fantastically lucky… I think bitch faces on the internet can go suck on a battery.

Do you know when I tell people that they need to change how they are parenting because their kids are having problems? WHEN I INTERACT WITH THE CHILDREN FREQUENTLY AND THE CHILDREN HAVE MAJOR PROBLEMS. What the fuck. Someone saying that they needed to have children is not the same thing as “I do not provide my children with the care they need.” It is in fact… orthogonal.

I needed to be in a role of responsibility that didn’t go away. Where I can’t fake being “ok” for 8 hours a day and go home and mutilate myself to deal with my emotions.

I needed a family. I needed a family where I can say, “We don’t hit in this family” and I can leave the room if someone gets rough with me and that’s ok. I needed to live in a family where violence is not the solution.

Lately when Future Middle Child does something less than stellar we have these chats, “Is this the kind of behavior you want to remember? Is this the kind of person you want to be?”

I tell my kids all the time that my evaluation of their behavior isn’t that important. They need to care about their evaluation of their behavior. If FMC says, “Have I been doing good at _____?” I say, “What do you think? Your evaluation is the important one.”

BUT SURE. I’M SMOTHERING THE SHIT OUT OF MY KIDS.

Maybe people optimally have all their shit together before having kids. But I had my financial shit, my relationship shit, and my housing shit pretty fucking together. No I didn’t have all my self care figured out.

ALMOST NO ONE ACTUALLY GETS ALL OF THEIR SHIT TOGETHER BEFORE HAVING KIDS. GET OFF YOUR FUCKING HIGH HORSE.

Some of us won’t have all of our shit together until decades past the breeding period. So you’re saying that unless people have their shit together in a way that you approve of they don’t deserve to have kids. Good thing your opinion isn’t worth the pixels it takes to display. You don’t get to decide if other people have kids or not.

I don’t get to decide when other people should or shouldn’t have kids and neither do you. That’d be eugenics.

I feel like my kids are glowing examples of good health. I think this partially because a whole bunch of people who spend their entire lives evaluating children tell me that they think so too.

Fuck bitch faces on the internet.

Hey, better to rant here than on a stupid forum. That just goes so bad.