Tick, tick, tick... phsssssssssssssss.........

When I met the Mexican Who Started It All (TMWSIA) in Brazil back in 2005, he nearly stopped my heart when he told me he wanted five children. Five children! Five children are for frontier people, needing helping hands to break that soil, harvest that crop, take care of the young'uns. Five children are the legacy of past generations, before prophylactics and tiny white hormones turned procreation into recreation. Five children are... FIVE... CHILDREN...

Now, I'm hardly Santa Angelina here in my yearnings for the next generation. In fact, were my life to continue along the same path it's been on, without any dreamy love of my life sweeping in and changing everything, I can pretty safely say that I will never be one of those women who, in their late 30s, start eyeballing potential donors with almost predatorial need. No, I can look you straight in the eye and tell you that the fulfilment of my life does not require offspring, be it biological, adopted, or purchased off the black market.

(I joked once to TMWSIA that my purpose in Mexico was, in fact, to swipe one of those edibly cute little walking Precious Moments doll Mexican toddlers. Without blinking, he said, "Why swipe? I'm sure you could buy one." He was right. That makes me sad.)

(Where was I?)

When I tell a Canadian friend that I don't at this point foresee motherhood in my future, every single one of them says something along the lines of, "Yeah, I know what you mean..." or "I'm glad I had this one but I wonder sometimes..." or "No? Mmmm. Yeah... maybe... I don't know..."

When I tell a Mexican friend this, however, you'd think I'd just confessed to them that, from this point forward, I would be eating through my nose.

A colleague (who wants six children), last week: "It has been proven that people who don't want children usually had bad childhoods and are afraid of putting their kids through the same thing."

Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Colleague, continuing: "Or they're selfish, don't want to spend their money on someone else."

Selfish?

Other colleague (who has one, wants at least two more), responding: "I didn't want them either when I was in my 20s. It changes."

She's younger than me. Still stuck on the "selfish," anyway, me.

Chorus of colleagues: But... why?

I just don't want them.

Chorus of colleagues: But... why not?

I just... don't.

Chorus of colleagues: But it's life-changing! Mesmerizing! Indescribable.

I doubt none of it. Yet.

Do I need a reason for not wanting them? Because I don't have one. I just don't. I don't feel squishy when I see babies and I don't feel googly when I see toddlers and I don't feel warm and fuzzy when the truly amazing kid of my truly amazing best friend falls asleep against my arm, or at least not any more than the warmth generated by the realization that someone loves and trusts you enough to fall asleep against you (age and relation irrelevant).

Chorus of colleagues: ... Selfish.

How much of this is cultural?

The estimated birth rate for Mexico for 2008 is 20.04 births per 1,000 population. Canada is at 10.29 births per 1,000 population, or just above half that of Mexico.

Let's put this in perspective, culturally-speaking. 10.29 births per 1,000 population translates into a fertility rate of 1.57 children born per woman. Given that it takes two people to make a baby, a fertility rate of 1.57 children born per woman means that, allowing for a bit of generalization in the grand name of a making a dramatic point, if immigration was not a reality, CANADA WOULD CEASE TO EXIST. 32 million times negative fertility rate, carry the two... well... eventually, anyway.

Mexico is at 2.37 children born per woman. (That's lower than I expected, if I'm being honest. That would imply not every Mexican wants seventeen children. Damn those generalizations proving themselves to be overreactive.)

And, just for kicks and comparisons, the US is at 2.1 children born per woman.

Well, see: my country is not a country of reproducers.

So when I confess to not feeling a pang for the little sprogs to my northern sisters, it's not a foreign concept to them. I don't need to have higher priorities (I don't not want children because it's all about my career or freedom or whatnot) and I don't need to be sick or twisted or broken in some way or coveting of my hard-earned money, hands off you parasitic spawn. It's okay to just not particularly want. My Canadian friends get it, even if they, themselves, might be gestating their third while breastfeeding their second and overseeing their first's game of building blocks.

But down here the concept of Family as Centre of Everything is so deep in the very fibre of their realities, being single and childless at 32 - nay, being okay with being single and childless at 32 - is absolutely, utterly, completely incomprehensible.

The Mexican Family as Centre of Everything is, without question, one of the things I love most about this country, because it trickles down into everything: staying at home with families until you're ready to begin your next family; eating lunch always in the company of others (as opposed to the Toronto-style 20 minute functional refuelling); actually knowing your aunts and uncles and cousins as family and not just distant relatives with similar bloodlines. In the absence of my family (and with only a few questions about how I was ever possibly able to move so terribly far away from them), Mexican families tend to informally adopt me, welcome me in. The Virgin of Guadalupe is heralded as "mother of Mexico, mother of orphans" - blue waistribbon symbolizing her own impending motherhood, bent to welcome the rest of us into her embrace.

It is absolutely impossible to not have a mother in this country. I find that indescribably beautiful.

But, remember: there are of course the countless studies that show the correlation between poverty and large families, higher education levels and childlessness, religion and "traditional family values," etc. etc. etc. All in all, as an upper middle class, Masters degree-bearing Canadian agnostic, I'd say the odds are pretty stacked against me, no?

And, yes, fine, if I listen veeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrryyyy carefully when all the computer's have been turned off and no one else is around, I can hear the merest tiniest wisp of a tick-tick-tick, although I'm pretty sure that has more to do with the intellectual reality that 32=very close to medical geriatric mother than to any quiet need waiting to be nudged to full volume.

But try telling any of that to your average Mexican.

It's just...

I'm just...

It's not...

Sigh.

Can't I just be a special kind of parasite, warming myself in the light of your familial closeness without having to go there myself? I'll bring maple syrup.