Receiving help made Karmin feel weak, and she didn't always accept the help that was offered.

Transcript

I felt like part of it was maybe like a social media influence. But – yeah, like I had – sometimes I had the offer of help, but I didn’t always want to receive the help because I felt that receiving that help made me, like, weak I guess. And when I say receiving that help I mean like, having my mother-in-law come down here and help me with the laundry and grocery shopping and all that stuff. I kind of saw it as me being weak or admitting that I can’t do this and, like, I didn’t want them to have the thoughts of maybe we weren’t ready for starting our own family when we really wanted to. And I just didn’t want the opinions of people thinking we were unprepared for this, because in a way it is our decision to live in a different city from our family.

Interviewer: And why did you feel people might think that you’re unprepared for this?

Because there’s some – like we don’t – I feel like there is this perception of you get married, you buy a house, you have a baby. Like kind of like those are the steps you’re supposed to do. Where we got married, we had a baby and then hopefully we’ll buy a house one day [chuckle]. So we rent, so – like we – yeah, we rent and you know, we maybe weren’t the most financially stable, so I kind of felt like – like my family was – when I say my family I mean my in-laws particularly – they kind of made us feel like – yeah, like, oh, you’re not ready, because they’re from the – I think they’re from like the Boomer generation and I think that was maybe a bit more common for the appropriate steps you’re supposed to take when starting a family. And when we had gotten pregnant the first two times before my current child, we were always asked, “Was this planned?”

So, yeah, even though that’s like an intrusive, inappropriate question in my opinion, yeah. Asking, “Was it planned?” So I think that was – I feel like sometimes that’s a generational thing from maybe from them because their – that’s how they did it and that’s how they were expected to do it, is have – be married, have a house and have a baby.

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