Fence-sitting because I don’t know the “correct” amount of self-sacrificing for a mother to be
I’m 31F and my fiance is 35M. We’ve had a lot of discussion around kids as we approach our wedding.
To begin, I’ve always wanted kids. But I grew up with a style of parenting that was quite different than the way I’m seeing people our age parent now. My family’s from a Balkan country, and it was very much “the kids fit around our lives, not the other way around.” I remember falling asleep to the sounds of my parents laughing and drinking with their friends. My mom was also career oriented and missed some (not most) activities in my life. I very much admired her for it and thought she was cooler than the other moms (still do). I had a happy childhood and while I would do some things differently from my parents, I don’t FEEL damaged in any way.
In the past few years, I’ve started to really hesitate about having kids after seeing a new style of parenting by millennials: super permissive and kid-centered. Super self-sacrificing and all-consuming. It’s got me wondering if they know something I don’t. If I would be traumatizing my kid somehow if they wanted to go to the park one day after work and I said “not today, mommy’s tired.” If I continued to prioritize my career and only went to 75% of their games instead of 100%. I’m prepared to be a mom if it means like…75% self-sacrifice. But not 100%. And I don’t know what’s objectively right.
My fiance is also a very selfless person and absolutely adores kids. He spends as much time as he can with his toddler niece and nephew. He plays with them for hours upon hours, and his sister and her family are very much the “new-age parenting style.” We live near his family, not mine, and I worry I’m going to be outnumbered into a parenting style that’s overwhelming for me. Even though he says “we can do it our way,” I’m worried the guilt and social pressure will be too much for me.
I feel very torn. I feel like I would have been an above-average parent in the 90s and will be a below-average one now by mainstream standards. I want to do “right” by my future kids and I don’t know what “right” looks like.