The Happy Housewife

I was born just in time to interrupt my parents' honeymoon plans. I was an accident that happened on the stairs. Or, at least, that's what my mom told me. Family pictures, home videos, and things my mom have told me all intertwine to tell me that we were a biker family. We went on runs all of the time.

For those of you that don't know, runs are when a huge group of bikers get on their motorcycles, pack some tents and portable stoves, and camp out. There are beauty contests and "Best Tattoo" contests and Wet T-shirt contests and Best Bike contests. I, personally, won a couple beauty contests as a child. The biggest trophy in our house is mine. It was taller than me was when I got it.

I was around a lot of drunk people for most of my childhood: at the runs, at my house, and at my dad's friends' houses, so I don't like the idea of my fiancé, or anyone close to me, drinking too much. I just get very edgy.

My mom told me that my dad would come home drunk and they would fight. She also told me that he has looked as if he wanted to hit her, so she has come to feel scared when he starts drinking. When we weren't on runs, my dad would go out with his friends, and my sister and I would stay with our mom. Basically, my dad wasn't, and isn't, around for my sister and me that much.

Maybe that's why I plan I wanna grow up to be a wife and mother. My idea of a perfect future is that I will graduate from high school, get a decent job that will pay enough so that I can pay rent for a place where my fiancé and I will live a mildly comfortable life while he goes to college.

Then, after we were stable and married, we would have enough money to support a couple pairs of pitter-pattering feet and live in a one-story house with a backyard.

I get all excited just thinking about the things I will do. I realize that being a housewife and mom is perfect for me. I don't want it to be The Brady Bunch, I don't want the housemaid. I want the whole experience of cleaning my house, taking care of my children, making their lunches, helping them take baths, carrying them around, dressing them in cute clothes. I could go on and on about it!

I haven't forgotten about the relationship with my husband either. My fiancé and I fight, but it brings us closer. We will be forced to deal with things we haven't dealt with before -- we'll have to spend our money wisely, find a place to live, keep our marriage moving and so on. It's going to be tough, and I think I will be able to handle it. I actually challenge my future to challenge me.

You might say that I only think about the good things. On the contrary, I also think about how I have to clean up after the babies when they eat and throw Gerber mush all over the kitchen or when they decide to start coloring on the walls.

I connect my desire to be a June Cleaver precisely to the fact that I didn't and still don't really have a "family." Maybe my vision of a "family" is blurred by the television lives, the Berenstein Bears books and Archie comics I read when I was younger. The majority of those portray the perfect family with a mother and a father who are always there for the children, and children who get what they need from their parents. When bad things happens, it can always be fixed within the half-hour time slot. There's usually a moral to the story, and everybody is perfect until the next show, movie, or series.

I regret watching all that television, because it made me unhappy with my own family. But I'm convinced that I can make a family with better attitudes and situations than that.

I get a little embarrassed when asked what I would like to be later on in life. I can remember saying that I wanted to be a preschool teacher, a daycare facilitator or an elementary school teacher. So when an adult would ask me, I'd tell them one or the other and they'd smile and leave me alone. Now when I've changed my mind, and I tell them I want to be a housewife and mother, they ask me why I would want to stay home.

Considering the fact that feminists have fought so hard to have the right to work, it's easy to feel like people will judge me for wanting to stay home. They'll think I'm lazy, and that I don't want to go to work. But raising a family is work. Maybe it would be simpler to tell people that I want to be around children as a teacher is, but that's not the truth.

I don't want my children to be from a broken or dysfunctional home, and become so-called "menaces to society." I don't want to bring more people into this world to live with that stigma. I want to be a good mother because I don't want my children to grow up with psychological problems.

In fact, I'm going to read all that I can about how to be a good parent and I will try to make sure that my children have the best life that they could possibly have. I want my family to be an exception to the rule.

[Lorraine C. is a contributor to YO! Youth Outlook, a publication by and about Bay Area youth published by Pacific News Service.]