I'm considering finding myself a job in an afterschool program again this school year. I'm finding I'm no longer motivated by the desire to actually impart information to kids; I've lost all my romantic notions about that. That process is so mitigated by the nature of your employer, and the required curricula, and the families of the children I work with, and ultimately my own personality and that of the children that I simply can't simplify it enough to convince myself I am doing nothing but good when I do it.

Still, it's the only part-time work I can think of which is constrained enough in its schedule and not utterly demeaning. I called my friend who has some connections in other programs. Here's what the first thing on my mind was while I was doing that: I need to keep learning how to handle kids. And the thought that followed that was, Because I'll have to eventually anyway.

I don't often fall into this trap. I don't wear a lot of makeup, I play with computers, I sit with my legs apart; I think I've got a pretty good, practical grasp of queer theory. But occasionally I still fall into a certain hopelessness and tell myself that no matter how much I want to devote myself to my career, I will still end up with a husband who will not do his share of the child care, probably not out of any sense of proper roles but simply because of how his own family worked. He may end up drawing the line at a certain workload simply because he feels he's entitled to a certain amount of time for himself, and I'll end up shouldering the rest. Maybe it's because I grew up with a divorced mother who was the daughter of a single mother, but I just have this feeling I'm not going to be satisfied with how anyone else wants to raise my child. Despite any amount of negotiation with my partner, maybe I will want to do it my way.

And then other times I go back to thinking I'm not going to have children at all. The more recent me is listening to the people in my peer group who say it's immoral to bring a child into this fscked-up world, that there's too many out there already. The me from earlier stages of my life says, Babies are gross, and what's the point. I want to raise a really good frisbee dog instead. And looking over the last year, I think, god, there's so much to mess up, and I'm not a stable enough person to do it right.