On Being the Only One Not Having a Baby

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In having a light bulb moment remembering I completed my GCSE's ten years ago, its dawned on me just how many of my school year are now parents. We're all turning 26 and 27, very few are married but at least two thirds are parents. Oddly enough the third that went to university - which obviously includes me are in the minority that haven't had children, but even that is starting to change. It feels like i'm the only one not having a baby.

This week a former work colleague who happens to be two years my junior stated on facebook how she feels like one of the few people not having babies right now. O like me! Granted I've thought about children and one day I think I'd like to have them, but they certainly aren't a must for me. You see I use the word think, rather then know, because i'm not overly sure. I find it hard picturing myself as a mother, a parent, nappy changer. I don't do well with ikky stuff, I panic over minor things, I can't figure out the responsibility of being a parent. Plus at 26, I still feel too young.

Yet the difference between the school friends of myself and Joe are rather noticeable. Joe's 28 this year - very few of his school friends are married - in fact he was the first, non have had children. We both come from similar rural background, towns were everyone knows each other, towns were people either move dramatically away or never escape. But that different is huge. The same can be said of Joe's work colleagues - Joe's the youngest where he works and many of them have yet to have children. 

Are the British more bound to procreate at a younger age then the US? Even though marriages in the US tend to be at a younger age (or at least so it seems). It's starting to get to the point were it feels people are expecting me to be pushing out babies though my age and or because of being married. There's still this assumption and view of women being mothers - some of us won't be, don't want to be or will get there in their own sweet time.

Why can't people accept that a women has as much right to not be a mother as much as a right of becoming one, without being considered unfeminine or that there has to be something wrong with you.