Personal Questions and Choices

Normally at work, I don't talk that much with many of my co-workers about non-work related things. I'm mostly working with the kids anyway, and I work so many different people for short periods of time during the week, and my schedule is always changing so that I work with even more different people. I don't build up any deeper relationships with many co-workers, and I'm completely fine with that considering I have a social life outside of work. Also, teaching = talking and socializing all day, so when I get a break during the day I'm happy for some quiet and solitude. 

Now that many of my coworkers know that I'm pregnant they have started asking me more personal questions and shown more interest in getting to know me. It's weird - it's this obvious growing physical thing that people that don't know you that well just want to talk to you about and either share about their experiences or ask you about yours. I actually had one particularly pleasant conversation with a co-worker and learned a lot about her that I hadn't already known because of this, so that was nice.

Anyway, the kids at the school where I work have also started asking me if I'm pregnant too, and they have no shame in the questions they ask or personal family details they want to share with me. When a group of 6th graders I know found out, they wanted to know my age, so I let them guess. After 10 guesses they got it right, and then they were all surprised that I was in my 30's because most of their moms had them when they were in their late teens or early 20's, because they are from cultures where literally child and teen marriage is common. They also said I look younger than all their moms even though I'm older (or at least older than the moms were when they had kids), which doesn't surprise me if the moms had to start living like adults from a young age. Then I got to hear all the stories like, "My cousin in Lebanon was married and had her first kid when she was 14". Needless to say, I had a lot of questions for these kids but I had to choose them carefully. Luckily, there seemed to be the consensus that none of them wanted to get married anywhere near that young, and they seemed kind of relieved to be living in Australia where that isn't the norm. They couldn't imagine getting married and dropping out of school in the next year or two of their lives.  

A lot of people around my age don't feel ready to make grown-up decisions now, much less would they have been 15 years ago. I already knew that there were cultures where there is no minimum age to marry, and there are organizations around the world that are working to change the laws. It's more of a reminder when learn that I'm one degree removed from people who are in that situation, though. 

It all goes back to the idea that education creates more life opportunities for people, particularly girls and women, and that's one reason that I am happy to be an educator. Having this view is why I think the idea that has sprung up in the last few years in the states that education is just for stuck up "coastal elites" is so absurd to me. Yes, that's a somewhat different issue because the cost of higher education in the US is so much less affordable than it is in other countries, an issue that needs to be addressed in the coming years, but the core idea about how much the pursuit of knowledge should be valued remains the same. It makes absolutely no sense to me how wanting to educate oneself and others, and working hard to create career and life opportunities for oneself, could be seen as a negative thing.

I think I've leap-frogged topics enough for this morning. I will end with this though: I am grateful that I grew up in a culture where I have had the choices of how much education I attained and when to start a family. Many people now and in future generations will not get those same choices.