Baby Showers and the Childless Chick

Hola, dear blog readers, and thank you for visiting again even though I’ve left you hanging since last Friday. I do have a couple of excuses, the first being hurricane Ernesto which threatened to hit our shores over the weekend but thankfully did not (southeastern Cuba and Florida weren’t so lucky…). The second one is work related (as in way too much of it for my liking) but you don’t want to hear about that, right? Good, because I’d rather not talk about it. Onwards…

… It’s rare that we here in the Cayman Islands are subject to the social phenomena and general going-ons of the world at large, mostly because we’re a sleepy little island of 50,000 people and don't have much by way of civilization beyond banks, churches, and cruise ships. We get up, go to work, drink ourselves silly out of boredom, pass out on the beach from time to time, and then do the same thing all over again the next day.

But one phenomenon has managed to infiltrate our blissfully uneventful social landscape…the baby craze. Or baby madness, if you prefer to call it (I know I do). Is it just me, or are babies, pregnant bellies, Lexus-level luxury strollers and goofy new dads taking over the world as we know it? In the interests of full disclosure, I confess that I’ve stubbornly resisted all calls to the state of motherhood from nosy family, well-meaning friends, and crushing social pressure. So while you could call me biased, I think once you look at the evidence, from the proliferation of fancy-pants baby showers to the tabloid-fueled Hollywood baby frenzy, you may just agree…

Exhibit A: I attended a baby shower just this weekend. My second of the baby season, and probably not my last. The sex of the yet-unborn child was unknown, so yellow duckies and green froggies abounded. As did the carb-laden pastries, cakes and quiches, but not so much as one ounce of a sour apple martini to take the edge off for the non-expecting amongst us (like, say, yours truly). That same night, I came across a chapter in Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowed where Rachel, the main character was subjected to one such social ritual, and where the sex of the baby was also unknown and where yellow abounded as a result… coincidence? I think not.

Exhibit B: The September issue of Glamour ran a feature article about the disproportionate media focus on Hollywood pregnancies and the effect this has on women with fertility problems and those who simply don’t want kids. Enlightening and timely.

Emily Giffin (Baby Proof) and Wendy French (After the Rice) are two authors I’ve read who delved into what it’s like to be a perfectly happy twosome (or onesome) in a world obsessed with threesome-plus families. And I for one, couldn’t be more grateful. (Actually,if you check out the Amazon reviews for these books, you'll find much vitriolic diatribe aimed not at the books' merits or flaws, but at the LIFE CHOICES of the characters...amazing).

Now, I’m not saying I don’t ever want children – under the right circumstances I might – but just as once upon a time the pendulum swung in favor of the fabulousness of Singletondom and its (implied) carefreeness, maybe these days it’s swinging a little too far the other way. Maybe we as a society need to get on celebrating individual choice as opposed magnifying social trends so as to make it seem like ‘everyone’s doing it so why not you?’

And this, to me, is what makes chick lit so very fabulous – that more than any other popular genre out there, it has celebrated freedom of choice for the average chick and explored all kinds of avenues to pursue that freedom.