On Being A Young Adult Parent

We eat a lot of beans, vegetables and eggs. We pay for our groceries in cash that has been set aside each month for the food budget. We walk to the grocery store and load up the bottom of the stroller with our food. Almost all of my baby’s toys were gifts or donations from friends. Most of our books come from the library. Most of our entertainment comes from play dates, music, Netflix, free adventures around town and cooking. Recently, for fun, we took the bus downtown for a day’s adventure of walking around and seeing a new angle of our city home.

When I go to the park I sometimes feel more like the nanny then my babies mother. Most of the nannies are blithe, young adult women or older looking Latina women, with an occasional hip looking manny thrown in for good measure. The parents on the other hand, mostly look older, adulty, pale lip-gloss and clothes that don't look like they came from the thrift store. Some of them look more crunchy, Chaco sandals and tank tops instead of Jcrew and LV bags, but it seems like most parents have caught onto the adult, "I'm in charge look," that I don't have yet.

Daddy and I break the mold we see around us, we don't own a house, have two careers, two cars and a whole list of needs to support this life style. Almost everything we own is used. I wear the same clothes most days and Sweetpea's pants become caprice and her onesies become tuck in shirts as she grows. It would be nice to be able to get new clothes and have more room in the budget for decadence, but I am noticing we don’t really need that stuff to be happy and comfortable. On weekends we go to the park or go swimming, we have an open lifestyle that is not scheduled to the bone, leaving more time for us to just be present with our daughter and each other.

One of my goals in parenting is to connect my daughter to the turning of the seasons. I can name the trees in our neighborhood and most of the birds, I am teaching her these things on our daily strolls. I want her to have a deep sensual connection with the place she lives, to know her neighbors and what colors the lizard is that lives behind our potted tomato plants. I already see how she is getting a chance to do this when she toddles around the playground scooping stones into her shovel, examining ghouls from the pecan tree and scrambling up the slippery slides.

I like that my baby daddy is 27 and I am 30. We get to be young and parents and figure out our identities and careers while parenting. Parenting does not write the script of our life, it dances along side our visions and dreams.

Though some of the things about our lifestyle now will shift in the near future, its nice to notice the benefits of being a younger parent. I feel that I have a better understanding of what my daughter is going through because I remember going though it too. I can better advocate for her because of this. Sense our lives are not completely set in stone right now, we get to dream big about the things we want for ourselves as individuals and as a family. Our daughter gets to watch us figure out how to lead an adult life instead of just seeing that everything is already set up.

I know that most mothers in this world and most mothers in the US are a lot younger then I when I started parenting. I also know that most people's norm is to not have two incomes, a house one owns and two cars, but this is a lot of what I see, and a lot of what I grew up around. My mom waited till 34 to have me, I was the youngest and everything was pretty much set in stone by the time I was born. This is the paradigm I thought I would mimic and my older brother seems to be mimicking. You have it all "figured out" before you have a child. We have not gone down that path and it worries our parents. We might never have it all "figured out" in this post-industrial world and I am excited to see what potential comes from the paradigm that we are creating.