Dear Sugar,
For those of us who aren’t lucky enough to “just know,” how is a person to decide if he or she wants to have a child?
I’m a forty-one-year-old man and have been able thus far to postpone that decision while I got all the other pieces of my life in order. Generally speaking, I’ve enjoyed myself as a solo (or partnered) human. I’ve always had a hunch that as I continued on my path my feelings about parenthood would coalesce one way or the other and I would follow that where it took me. Well, my path has taken me here, to the point where all of my peers are having children and expounding on the wonders (and of course, trials) of their new lives, while I keep enjoying the same life.
I love my life. I love having the things that I know will be in shorter supply if I become a parent. Things like quiet, free time, spontaneous travel, pockets of non-obligation. I really value them. I’m sure that everyone does, but on the grand gradient of the human condition, I feel I sit farther to one end than most. To be blunt, I’m afraid to give that up. Afraid that if I become a parent, I will miss my “old” life.
As a male, I know that I have a little more leeway in terms of the biological clock, but my partner, who is now 40, does not. She is also on the fence about a child, and while the finer points of our specific concerns on the subject may differ, we are largely both grappling with the same questions. At this point, we’re trying to tease out the signal from the noise: do we want a child because we really want a child or are we thinking about having one because we’re afraid we will regret not having one later? We both now accept that the time for deferment is coming to a close and we need to step up and figure it out.
When I try to imagine myself as a father, I often think back to my two wonderful cats that I had from the age of twenty-two until I buried them in the back yard almost two years ago. They were born prematurely to a mother that was too sick to care for them. I bottle fed them, woke up in the middle of the night to wipe their bottoms, was there for every stage of their growth from kitten to cat and basically loved the be-jeezus out of them for their entire lives. I raised them to be trusting, loving creatures. And I did it consciously, even thinking at the time that it was great training for the day I had a child if that felt like the right thing. I really was their dad. And I loved it. Yet I also loved it that I could put an extra bowl of food and water on the floor and split town for a three-day weekend. I’m truly torn.
I was speaking yesterday to one of my closest friends who at forty just had his first child. While talking with him, I made the connection that I believe I am one of those people who could be perfectly happy without having children, and yet that doesn’t necessarily mean that I wouldn’t also be perfectly happy with children. He knows me well and as I said this, something clicked for us both.
So here I am now exploring this. Exploring it for real and deeply. Sugar, help me.
Signed,
Undecided
Dear Undecided,
There’s a poem I love by Tomas Tranströmer called “The Blue House.” I think of it every time I ponder questions such as yours about the irrevocable choices we make. The poem is narrated by a man who is standing in the woods near his house. When he looks at his house from this vantage point, he observes that it’s “as if I had just died and was seeing the house from a new angle.” It’s a wonderful image—that man among the trees—and it’s an instructive one too. There is a transformative power in seeing the familiar from a new, more distant perspective. It’s in this stance that Tranströmer’s narrator is capable of seeing his life for what it is while also acknowledging the lives he might have had. “The sketches,” Tranströmer writes, “all of them, want to become real.” The poem strikes a chord in me because it’s so very sadly and joyfully and devastatingly true. Every life, Tranströmer writes, “has a sister ship,” one that follows “quite another route” than the one we ended up taking. We want it to be otherwise, but it cannot be: the people we might have been live a different, phantom life than the people we are.
And so the question, sweet pea, is who do you intend to be. As you’ve stated in your letter, you believe you could be happy in either scenario—becoming a father or remaining childless. You wrote to me because you want clarity about which course to take, but perhaps you should let that go. Instead, take a figurative step into the forest like that man in the poem and simply gaze for a while at your blue house. I think if you did, you’d see what I see: that there will likely be no clarity, at least at the outset; there will only be the choice you make and the sure knowledge that either one will contain some loss.
We’re contemporaries. I’m forty-two. I have two children, whom I birthed in close succession in my mid-thirties. If a magic baby fairy had come to me when I was childless and 34 and promised to grant me another ten years of fertility and good knees so I could live a while longer in the serene, feline-focused, fabulously unfettered life I had, I’d have taken it in a flash. I, too, had spent my adult years assuming that someday, when it came to becoming a mother, I’d “just know.” I, too, placed myself on the leave-me-the-fuck-alone end on the “grand gradient of the human condition.” I decided to become pregnant when I did because I was nearing the final years of my fertility and because my desire to do this thing that everyone said was so profound was just barely stronger than my doubts about it were.
So I got knocked up. With a total lack of clarity. On this, Mr. Sugar and I were in complete accord. Though we were generally pleased to be having a baby, we were also deeply alarmed. We liked to have sex and ramble around foreign countries in decidedly un-baby-safe ways and spend hours reading in silence on two couches that faced each other across the living room. We liked to work for days without interruption on our respective art forms and take unscheduled naps with our cats and spend weeks backpacking in the wilderness. We did not, throughout my pregnancy, have many conversations about how awesome it was going to be once our baby was born and doing these things would become either indisputably or close to impossible. Mostly, we had ambivalent, mildly sickening talks about how we sure as shit hoped we hadn’t made a dreadful mistake. What if we love the baby but not as much as everyone says we will? I’d ask him every couple of weeks. What if the baby bores us or annoys us or grosses us out? What if we want to ride our bicycles across Iceland or hike around Mongolia? Fuck. We do want to ride our bicycles across Iceland or hike around Mongolia!
My point is not that you should have a baby, Undecided. It’s that possibly you expect to have a feeling about wanting to have a baby that will never come and so the clear desire for a baby isn’t an accurate gauge for you when you’re trying to decide whether or not you should have one. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true.
So what then, is an accurate gauge?
You say that you and your partner don’t want to make the choice to become parents simply because you’re afraid you “will regret not having one later,” but I encourage you to reexamine that. Thinking deeply about your choices and actions from the stance of your future self can serve as both a motivational and a corrective force. It can help you stay true to who you really are as well as inspire you to leverage your desires against your fears.
Not regretting it later is the reason I’ve done at least three quarters of the best things in my life. It’s the reason I got pregnant with my first child, even though I’d have appreciated another decade from the magic baby fairy, and it’s also the reason I got pregnant with my second child, even though I was already overwhelmed by the first. Because you are content in your current childless life, attempting to determine what you might regret later strikes me as the best way for you to meaningfully explore if having a child is important to you. So much so, that I suspect that whether you’ll regret it later is the only question you must answer. It is the very one that will tell you what to do.
You already know the answers to everything else. You know you’re open to becoming a father and that you’re also open to remaining childless. You know you’ve gotten pleasure and satisfaction from nurturing the lives of others (in the form of your dear cats) and also that you get deep satisfaction from the freedom and independence a child-free life allows.
What don’t you know? Make a list. Write down everything you don’t know about your future life—which is everything, of course—but use your imagination. What are the thoughts and images that come to mind when you picture yourself at twice the age you are now? What springs forth if you imagine the 82 year-old self who opted to “keep enjoying the same life” and what when you picture the 82 year-old self with a thirty-nine year old son or daughter? Write down “same life” and “son or daughter” and underneath each make another list of the things you think those experiences would give to and take from you and then ponder which entries on your list might cancel each other out. Would the temporary loss of a considerable portion your personal freedom in middle age be significantly neutralized by the experience of loving someone more powerfully than you ever have? Would the achy uncertainty of never having been anyone’s father be defused by the glorious reality that you got to live your life relatively unconstrained by the needs of another? What is a good life? Write “good life” and list everything that you associate with a good life then rank them in order of importance. Have the most meaningful things in your life come to you as a result of ease or struggle? What scares you about sacrifice? What scares you about not sacrificing?
So there you are on the floor, your gigantic white piece of paper with things written all over it like a ship’s sail, and maybe you don’t have clarity still, maybe you don’t know what to do, but you feel something, don’t you? The sketches of your real life and your sister life are right there before you and you get to decide what to do. One is the life you’ll have, the other is the one you won’t. Switch them around in your head and see how it feels. Which affects you on a visceral level? Which won’t let you go? Which is ruled by fear? Which is ruled by desire? Which makes you want to close your eyes and jump and which makes you want to turn and run?
In spite of my fears, I didn’t regret having a baby. My son’s body against mine was the clarity I never had. The first few weeks of his life, I felt honestly rattled by the knowledge of how close I’d come to opting to live my life without him. It was a penetrating, relentless, unalterable thing, to be his mother, my life ending and beginning at once.
If I could go back in time I’d make the same choice in a snap. And yet, there remains my sister life. All the other things I could have done instead. I wouldn’t know what I couldn’t know until I became a mom, and so I’m certain there are things I don’t know because I can’t know because I did. Who would I have nurtured had I not been nurturing my two children over these past seven years? In what creative and practical forces would my love have been gathered up? What didn’t I write because I was catching my children at the bottoms of slides and spotting them as they balanced along the tops of low brick walls and pushing them endlessly in swings? What did I write because I did? Would I be happier and more intelligent and prettier if I had been free all this time to read in silence on a couch that sat opposite of Mr. Sugar’s? Would I complain less? Has sleep deprivation and the consumption of an exorbitant number of Annie’s Homegrown Organic Cheddar Bunnies taken years off of my life or added years onto it? Who would I have met if I had bicycled across Iceland and hiked around Mongolia and what would I have experienced and where would that have taken me?
I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.
Yours,
Sugar
66 responses
Yes, Sugar, a thousand times yes. Just because one doesn’t board the sister ship, doesn’t mean that the life chosen won’t bring unbelievable joys – and sorrows. The thing one doesn’t want is regret.
I don’t really know too many people who regret having children.
The only way I can say thank you, I love this, without revealing more than I should about my life is to say: thank you, I love this.
Sugar, I love how you draw up the negotiations we make, facing a river with multiple outlets and we must choose one, and I love how you call the other one a sister-life, that you give it a sort of anti-character. This is how I have always felt about the other life choices, the ones I set aside to be the me of here. There are those rituals, those ways we retain of sending messages of hope and despair, prayers or intimations to that other life, we have our messages in a bottle, we have desires we stash there, maybe even trade, as if we might be shopping in a shadow market for the weights behind ideas.
Walking into today, toward a brother tomorrow, I am reminded that there are no mistakes, only choices. That I can’t do it all. That it might be just as critical to un-choose one ghost door as it is to choose the ones I ultimately put to wood, brass and hinges.
As always, Dear Sugar, you make life larger. Thank you.
Marisa, I really don’t think it’s socially acceptable to say that you regret having children. I haven’t met a lot of regretful childfree folks, either. I was downright giddy when I realized that I could be an adult without being a parent.
This struck me to the heart, Sugar. You took me right back to my moment of decision, seven years ago.
The doctor left me alone with my then-husband for ten minutes while I considered my choice: either no children ever – or a slight chance of children someday plus at least six more months of blood loss and transfusions and inability to work or support my husband and possible death. I was not a Julia Roberts movie. I chose no children ever, and grieve that sister life often. Today, again, after reading your ever-beautiful words.
But this is my life now, and I find the joys it contains.
Thank you Sugar. I always am heartened by your writing. You grab me by the throat/testicles/soul and force me to perceive the complexity and difficulty of life in such simple, beautiful terms that I am left chanting “I can do better. I will do better. I am better.”
Thank You!
This is great insight on how potential future regret can be a divining rod when grappling with present choices. It’s often the options that scare me the most that I’d most regret not taking. Thanks, Sugar, for helping me understand that.
That was just beautiful and true and full of life and wisdom and the wisdom of life. Thanks so much.
Oh, Sugar… how you do write like a motherfucker!
This is a really fascinating train of thought and Sugar has followed it brilliantly (as usual).
I think it’s difficult for most people (I know it is for me, at least) to set aside time & mental space to evaluate your deepest desires and hopes for the future. Why is it such a scary thing for us to do? Is it because it necessarily involves our death/the fact that we only have a limited amount of time on earth?
This is so true. You cannot know what you do not live.
I married a man who didn’t want children and, shortly after the wedding, I went through a time of feeling I’d made a horrible mistake. But I loved him more than the future children I might have and I didn’t want to resent him. In talking with a friend, I said I was worried I’d end up a bitter lonely old woman. My friend said, “You better make a decision, or you’ll end up a bitter lonely old woman. With children.”
In that moment I understood, it wasn’t the children or the other things outside us that decide the kind of person we will be, it is how we meet life. I have met many people with children who live lonely regretful lives, not for having the children, but just because. I stayed with my husband. I have many, many, many children in my life. None of them my own. But I’ve been able to give them a kind of non-attached presence that I don’t think I could have achieved if they were my own. My life is full. I have NO regrets, only joy at the wonderful life I have and the way I’m able to give and support all those other children. I do have that sister-self that walks alongside me, that woman with children. And another sister self who became a doctor and another who is an actress and another who raises goats and grows many yummy vegetables on a farm. I don’t think this is too crazy…it’s just all the possibilities that reside within.
I wish there were a Sugar every day. I’m always so sad when it’s over.
Every time Sugar, every time.
I read your columns and I wonder where you have been all my life.
I read your columns and I am happy to have found you.
I’m one of your contemporaries too – Annie’s Homegrown Organic Cheddar Bunnies and the later in life baby.
Thanks doesn’t seem like enough, but it is what I have, so a million thanks to you.
It is not socially acceptable to say that one regrets having children, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I know a man who had three with his loving wife, and then ten years later she decided she didn’t love him anymore and after a bitter divorce and ugly custody battle he is having to declare bankruptcy after giving her all of his money in child support and lawyer’s fees. And he lost the kids, too. He regrets having them mightily, for what has been done to his life AND theirs. Knowing what he knows now, he would have never done all this to the lot of them–but who could know?
All that to say, Thank you for a beautiful navigation technique toward a wonderfully unknowable answer. While this question isn’t mine, I still got a chill at reading the last two lines. At nearly 40, I have already seen off at least two of my ghost ships–that of wife and that of office dweller. While either might have worked, they were not going my way.
Damn you, sweet Sugar. You’re late. I needed you to write this for me about 20 years ago. But better–much better–late than never. Thank you, from me, and on behalf of all the others for whom this message won’t be too late.
Sugar, you are awesome! I have had moments in my life where I felt just like the LW, not sure I wanted to have kids but afraid of the potential regret I might have if I didn’t. In my particular case, I was with someone who didn’t want kids, & he was more important to me, so I was happy childless. Then he left me for another woman, & had 2 children. I could have been angry & bitter, but like Jackie I embraced the choices I made. I ended up with a man who would have liked to have kids, but didn’t have the right partner in life to do so up till this point. We are at the age that while we still could have a child we have made the decision not too. Will we regret it? No, because we choose to embrace our decision. Jackie hit the nail on the head…..we choose how to become the people we want to be. It is healthy to look at our sister selves & wonder, as long as we choose to create our own happiness with the path we choose.
Once again, Sugar, you tear through all the intricacies of an impossible dilemma and shed some light on the true question at hand. There are always sister-ships and sister-lives…..the best part is that sometimes we can surprise ourselves and take that path that we never imagined we’d take in the first place. Life is short. We have to take comfort that the decisions/choices we make along the way were our own at least, whichever ship we wind up on.
Thanks so much for writing this article. For the first time in a long time, I haven’t been in tears reading your column, probably because this one hit SO CLOSE.
Mainly, I think it’s because you reminded me that every single major, life changing decision I have made in my life was based on a complete leap of faith – half gut-feel based on what I thought I would regret NOT doing the most and the other half being a complete in-the-moment system override of my fear that competed with my gut. Everything hasn’t worked out perfectly – I was too lonely after moving to NYC and moved home after 18 months in defeat, but then again, I married my husband after 2 months together and we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary… It’s all just a part of the great human experience. And I think I am going to start actively trying for that kid again…. It might not work out, but c;est la vie, oui?
it’s the not-knowing, isn’t it, that we always struggle with? that desire to make the *right* decision when most of the time there’s no such thing. no right or wrong — just a decision. and the not-knowing, painful as it can seem, is just the place where hard-won self-reflections (you know, the good stuff we mine when we write)come from. thank you, s.
Oh, no…. time to get a big sheet of paper. Why do your columns always hit so close to home?
I have never seen as brilliant a treatment of this question. As a young child, I snuck out of my bedroom and overheard my mother talking on the phone. She described having me (her only child) as an experiment, and I was deeply shaken. I think I get it now: how could she have known? As I’ve grown older, my attachment to having children (which appeared to be a challenge from the perspective of my young, gay teenaged self looking into my future) has lessened, and I have become far more aware of the other births I’ve given or midwived: my businesses, my partnerships, the thiving organizations and communities I participate in…
But I still wonder and always will. A mentor once told me, “MJ, you simply will not be able to do it all. You /have/ to choose.” AndI may have to choose every thirty seconds some days, and other times I may choose and not think twice for months. Somehow, though, having children had escaped this view and been a subdued but almost torturous, ticking clock in the back of my mind. I just am making my peace with that now.
Thank you, Sugar. As someone who just did some Mission Impossible ninja shit to get herself onto that sister ship before it sailed over the horizon, I can tell you, as I cradle two beautiful babies, that I definitely made the right choice… and was lucky. The tabloids lie–it’s HARD to get pregnant at 40. I advise all regret-prone women to start weighing the pros and cons before 35 because your eggs start going downhill fast after then. Unflatteringly but accurately, doctors call it “advanced maternal age.” Ouch!
I took the sister ship NOT to have a baby and I am so glad I didn’t! I love children, I have many in my life but the decision to not become a mother was amongst the best I ever made. Thank you Jackie for this: “It wasn’t the children or the other things outside us that decide the kind of person we will be, it is how we meet life.” We can chose to regret the things we don’t do or we can embrace and be grateful for the things we end up doing. I might have been a great mother, I might not have been. One thing is for sure: I have a smashingly beautiful life (with all of its suffering and joys) right here right now.
Well, here’s a mother w/”regrets”… Not so much for the existence of my son, but I regret that I had him under the circumstances that I did (coercion), w/the sire I was married to at the time (the marriage failed anyway), and at my “advanced maternal age”.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have had him before age 30 – I would have been a lot more resilient, probably more calm & even-tempered, & w/MUCH better feet & knees!
I am constantly haunted by life on those sister ships of mine.
I think this is one of the harder decisions to make because it is irrevocable once made, and it involves another person, the child, who is utterly at the parents’ mercy. If it’s a mistake, or if it’s regretted after the fact, the child suffers.
While I think it isn’t possible to know for sure…I also think, from talking to a lot of people, that even for the “on-the-fencers,” there’s a kernel of truth deep in their gut that says “yes” or “no.” I have seen people override the “no” because they were so convinced their lives would be diminished or not good enough somehow if they didn’t have children…or because they hear people talk about what they get from parenting, and feel wrong for not wanting those things.
I’ve always known I wouldn’t have children, and didn’t want them. People tell me all the time what a wonderful parent I would be. Ironically, one of the reasons I might be a wonderful parent is because, due to not having kids, I had the time, money, and emotional/psychological space to spend several years in therapy.
I have never had a child, so I cannot truly say that I understand your perspective, but I do! However, true as your perspective may be, we Human Animals are incredibly selfish and still are driven by our reproductive genes to procreate even when we are annihilating ourselves on this planet with the over-abundance of people as pollution and the lack of supplies to nourish and maintain them. I decided when I was 8 yrs old that there were too many people in the world, and since then it has more than doubled. I understand that you, Sugar, have experienced something wonderful, and a part of me yearns to share that amazing bond, but I am also very glad that I did not succumb to the insistence of my friends that ‘you might change your mind!’ and so now, at almost 60, my husband of 35 years and I find ourselves looking at each other more and more often saying ” I am SO glad we didn’t have kids!!” My advice: If you are not sure, do the world a favor and abstain. You can always adopt later.
i completely agree with heather. also, better not to have a child and regret it later than have one and resent him/her later.
You can always flip a coin to make major life decisions. It sounds crazy, but that’s really what you’re doing anyway, deciding your life with the toss of a coin.
Sugar,
Your writing always hits me in my heart and mind leaving me thinking, smiling or crying, but never unmoved. Thank you!
Its funny that this is the topic of the day because recently I read http://www.fluentself.com/blog/stuff/bolivia/, what I thought was the best answer I had ever read on the have/not have kids question. Without a doubt, yours will now accompany it whenever friends around me grapple with the question aloud.
Thank you!
As usual, this is a lovely, thought-provoking column. But I couldn’t help but have two thoughts while reading this column: first, Sugar, I have a hard time endorsing making a decision based on your life at age 80, because there’s no guarantee we’ll live another year, or five, or ten… I have a hard time making a decision to sacrifice many years of freedom and happiness for a someday I may not live to see, or that may not work out the way I think it will. I also agree with the person above who mentioned adopting. I’ve always felt that if I decide “too late” that I want children, well, there are tons of children in the world who need parents. It seems a viable option for someone who’s on the fence.
Finally – Tara, I agree! I often toss a coin because it ends up telling me what I actually want – I either get a feeling of relief and confirmation, or the feeling, “wait, can I toss again?” And there’s my decision, already made, illuminated for me by the coin.
I have considered the adoption thought as one to fall back on when I panic about being single and almost 40.
But *my* child-bearing dream has always been exactly that, a dream of *bearing* a child, the experience of being pregnant, of *making* a baby, of creating a family with a Mr. Sugar.
On the other hand, if Undecided got off the fence and decided along with his partner to go for gold and have a baby, whose to say that everything would go as planned? Whose to say if I met and fell in love with my own Mr. Sugar in the next year and we did decide to have a baby that biology would line up on our side?
I’m just saying that we can envision how our lives will be and decide we’re going to step toward that; we can get off the fence, choose a man who wants to have a baby as opposed to one who doesn’t, but there are no guarantees. And the fact that two people are in such a position–in love, bolstered by stability, have space enough in their healthy minds and hearts to contemplate such a (potentially selfless) decision is a blessing in itself.
Oh give me a fucking break. We’re not taking about buying a car here. The best parents I know are the ones who came from good parenting. If you need to debate the question about becoming a parent, then it looks to me that the writing is on the wall: you shouldn’t be one.
Found this through a friend that linked this on Facebook.
Your advice is thoughtful and words very inspiring. I often see all my friends posting pics of their newborns, toddlers and children and wonder if something is wrong with me that and think “I should want to have a kid, shouldn’t I?” I don’t, though. I have been with my boyfriend a long time, 12 years, and never see that as a path for my life. Maybe it’s selfish, but I don’t want to be responsible for another human. I don’t want to pass on all the emotional damage my own mother gave me. At the same time, when I see my friend posting pictures of their kids it makes me so happy to know that happy healthy people do have kids. So maybe there is my own alternate life of me with kids and all the worries go with that, but to be honest, I love the freedom I have now.
thank you for this and for leading to me a beautiful Transtromer poem I had yet to encounter!!
Lydia,
The best parents I know are the ones who found themselves in the position of being parents unexpectedly and found a way to deal. Does my anecdote cancel yours out? Personally, I’m way more comfortable with a person who’s at least willing to question themselves about such a huge decision than one who’s working from a place of absolute certainty. People who are that sure of themselves are probably the least reflective on the planet, and as someone who’s raised a child, let me tell you, I had tons of times where I had to be reflective about the situation I was in.
What a compelling discussion. Sugar, I love reading your column but this one bites me. As a 27 year old my hormones/ curiosity/ life situation won out over my intended life course of contemplation and creativity sans children, and I got pregnant and married. Our child was born with unanticipated birth defects and lived only four months. The marriage was never strong and disolved some years later after the shock and fear faded somewhat. Now I’m 54, a very happy wife and artist. Never tried again to have children. The indescribable pain of trying to nurture one who could not survive and to watch her struggle and die was too much for me. What of us, dear Sugar? Those who for all sorts of reasons can not. During my 30’s and 40’s I evinced a bravado about not wanting children. I even felt oddly blessed to have my life back. Now that ship has well and truely sailed I don’t believe what I feel is regret. Its a mix of awe, sadness and pissed-offness at the wonder of life. I am always conscious of that sister ship just off my port bow, but I don’t suffer so much from the conceit that I make all the choices or that having children would shield me from pain.
I didn’t really think about having kids. The difficult decision for me was whetheror not to get married. Once I had answered that decision affirmatively (because I couldn’t imagine my life without the angel I married) I considered the question of whether or not to have kids already answered – At the time, it seemed to me to be just the next step on the path I had chosen. I had no idea what to expect. But when that little girl was placed in my arms for the first time – Dear God – my heart found its home. As always, life has been beautiful and heartbreaking since, but I do not regret it. It scares me to think how easily I could have missed my heart’s desire.
I hate to admit that I disagree with Sugar on this one, but I do. A lot. Regardless of which path one chooses, one will have some “regrets,” some what-ifs; that’s the nature of life & being human. But I beg you not to have a child unless you are *absolutely & completely certain* you want it. Please don’t bring a child into the world because you’re afraid you’ll regret it later if you don’t. Good grief. That’s a genuinely terrible reason to have a child.
Read BLINDSIDED BY A DIAPER, edited by Dana Hilmer. Very enlightening. It’s a collection of essay by different authors on how having a baby changes your relationship with your partner.
So Nadia, what about those of us, like me and my ex, who had a child unexpectedly? Where do we fit in to your universe? And don’t pretend that choice wasn’t involved, because my ex could have terminated the pregnancy if she had wished. We weren’t certain we wanted one–we weren’t certain our marriage was going to last another six months (it lasted six years, mostly because of pressure from family and the church we were members of).
Sometimes–most of the time, I’d argue–we don’t “choose paths” so much as we stumble blindly through the options left to us. And like I said earlier, nothing terrifies me more than a person who’s absolutely sure they want something, because they’re not thinking of the potential downsides. Those are the kinds of people, I’m convinced, who put their children’s photos in place of their own on their Facebook profiles, who cram down their own personalities as soon as the child is born, who stop being people and start being parents to the detriment of all else.
@ Brian — Are you equally terrified of people who are certain they *don’t* want something? And are you terrified of people who are absolutely certain that they want, for example, love?
There’s a difference between making choices about an accidental pregnancy, and deliberately choosing whether to have children. The element of desire and motivation can be taken into consideration differently. It is quite possible to consider the downsides to something, and still be sure you want it — or perhaps more accurately, and still be sure the risk is worthwhile to you personally.
The act and impact of having children is too big *not* to have some complex and conflicted feelings about. 100% certainty? Damn near impossible for most people. And that’s just the messy reality that comes with being human; it’s not a character flaw.
Being not 100% certain doesn’t make people bad prospective parents, though I hope most have explored their desires and ramifications before the baby is born. (This presumes a hetero model. Some queers end up with parenting regrets but the steps required for homos to procreate forces you to think through having kids on a level some opposite-sex folks may not do.)
Parents should be committed to making a family work, which is perhaps more necessary than knowing definitively beforehand that you want children.
Reader,
If a person is certain that they don’t want, for example, a child (since that’s what’s being discussed here as opposed to say, chocolate), then I’m not as terrified by them because at least their decision isn’t likely to fuck up another human being. But if you’re not questioning, at least a little, the fact that you’re bringing another human into being on this planet in this day and age, then you’re probably the least qualified person to make that sort of a call in my opinion. Absolute certainty is the product of an incurious mind, and people with incurious minds are the most dangerous on the planet.
FYI, not to be a wet blanket, but 40 for a woman is considered on the very far end of the fertility spectrum. The reproductive industry would like women to believe anything is possible with the right and very expensive interventions. Movie stars who have babies in their 40’s often use donated eggs. Perhaps you should also consider what if the decision of having a bio-child has already been made for you?
I spent years struggling –agonizing, truly– with this question, long before I was in a situation (emotionally, relationship-wise, financially) in which a decision was even relevant. So I am an expert on my own viewpoint. I hope someone will find at least some of my thoughts helpful.
One point I want to make is to echo earlier comments of those who urge ambivalent people to give weight to the idea that they might be doing a generous and selfless thing to consider opting out of biological parenthood – there are so many avenues to the kind of nurturing, loving, meaningful (and yes, challenging) relationship that being a parent provides (adoption, foster parenting, helping people who just need help with their children…the list, I imagine, is endless).
I am a woman who chose not to have children. And I did many of those nurturing things (some fun, some definitely not) with other people’s children, and those experiences were, and remain very important to me. Then, as life would have it, through a divorce and new relationship, at 45 I unexpectedly became a step parent to two adopted children (they were adopted by my new partner, not her biological children either, fyi).
Which leads to my second point. Life holds surprises. Life is filled with chance. (Maybe other people have different names for it “God,” “Destiny;” fine). We, in cultures like this one in America, live as though we get to do everything; and as though we get to choose and determine everything about our lives. As if everything is a guaranteed right of existence for everyone, just for our picking and choosing. But in my own experience, I have come to suspect that our decisions, our “haves” are not always the most important part of what leads to a well-lived, meaningful life. Of course life would be miserable without free will, desires, and the ability to make our own choices, and I’m not saying don’t make choices, especially considered, honest, caring ones. I’m simply saying I have learned to hold the whole concept of choice just a bit more loosely; like lovely Janaki shows us, even our choices often turn out in ways we could never predict.
Maybe just consider that we are not here (if there is a reason) solely to meet all of the desires we possibly can. Maybe there are things bigger than that. And that if, like me, you don’t get everything you think you’d like, or you get things (sometimes wonderful things like my beautiful, funny daughters, and sometimes painful, heart-breaking things like terminal illness) that you didn’t ask for, maybe life is still OK. Maybe it is being just what it is supposed to be.
Sugar, I think this is fantastic. Pure and good and fantastic. My partner and I had one child and I desperately wanted another. Desperately, blindly, harmfully. He didn’t. It almost destroyed us, but we found a marriage therapist who said, essentially, what you’ve said here.
In our discussions, my partner and I decided, to the best of our reckoning, that there is no truly unselfish reason to have a child. Our friends without children are often told that they’re selfish, but I find that of ridiculous.
I agree with Lydia!
I’m also childfree-by-choice and couldn’t be happier with my decision. Teachers, Doctors, Family members all said I’d grow up to regret my decision and they’ve all been wrong.
Furthermore, I know several friends/family members who have admitted to me privately that if they had to do it all over again, they’d pass on being parents.
It’s not for everyone.
Absolutely! Thank you so much for this column Sugar. As an earlier poster said, no decision this complex and momentous should be made without some degree of at least serious thought, even if your desire is crystal clear. To be a parent is a fearful and awe inspiring task whether you fall into it or advance cautiously. I’ve known for years that I wanted children. There was never any question. But I’m also a traveler, introvert, insomniac who loves her freedom and privacy. And I’m single. Now that I’ve decided to adopt a child I’ve had to watch those ghost ships sail away – the one carrying my imagined husband, the one carrying children born from my womb, the one with the little picket fence and parents who approve of my life. The thought of my adopted child to come fills me with joy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have to sit down and mourn for what might have been. It’s okay to mourn loss while still embracing another life. And who knows – perhaps when my child is old enough we’ll bicycle around Iceland.
I think i’ll get a “write like a motherfucker” mug even though im a nurse and i dont write squat, but it’s a nice “dear sugar” souvinir 🙂
I love this column. I struggled with exactly this in my mid-thirties, for all the same reasons, along with my husband. I disagree that struggling with this question means you shouldn’t become a parent or that you won’t make a good parent. We knew we could be good parents and that we would give ourselves whole-heartedly to parenting, which is *why* it was a question worth serious consideration before making a decision. We weren’t going to do this half-assed, so we had to be ready to give up a lot to do it.
We ultimately decided we didn’t want to miss this huge and transforming experience of life, and I have no regrets. I’m glad for the ways it has changed me that I couldn’t have imagined, and I’m joyfully appreciative of my amazing, beautiful child.
That said, the early months were rough going. I did not have some spontaneous burst of bonding-love the minute I held my child, and I did wonder if I’d completely effed up life forever. (Some of that was PPD talking.) Even now that we’re a few years past all that, I still sigh, now and then, imagining the work I’d be getting done and the naps I’d be taking in my alternate universe. And to be honest, I think I could’ve been perfectly happy if I had decided the other way, because I wouldn’t know what I was missing. But then, I don’t really know what I’m missing now — maybe instead of good work and luxurious naps, my alternate life is filled with lots of MMORPG-playing and TV-watching and nothing all that special.
Nobody knows what a good life is, I think. Nobody knows a secret formula to being happy. Sometimes you just have to decide.
This is one of the best pontifications I’ve read on this Big Decision that–because I wasn’t, and never would have been, able to make——I didn’t. Instead, at 34-yrs-old and married, somehow I got pregnant on the Pill.
Let me tell you, Undecided, whose *exact* boat (or ship, slowly sinking by the weight of the great debate) I was in: This was the very best way to do it. Without actually deciding to do it! Oops, it just happened.
And then, after sobbing and regretting and being mean to your husband and living in total-and-complete fear for 9 months (or, in my case, just 6, bc I, uh, didn’t know I was pregnant for awhile) you just GO With It.
But then magically, wonderfully, once this creature that you freaking created, is born— you’re somehow happy that you did.
dear Sugar,
i am speechless!!! i was reading the question and the response, while my 1.5 year old son was trying to gain my attention. while he was calling so many times “mommy”, i was split again in two, one part of me wanted to go and play with him and another part of me just wanted peace and quiet and to have my privacy!!! i know i will never have some things i used to, but i have never regreting having him even when he brings me at the end of my rope!!!!
i had the same dilemma, and i still do not know what i would suggest to someone who is at this state. i am trully and deeply in love with motherhood and at the same time i cannot stand it and i feel i miss individuality. never the less, i believe that motherhood is so strong and profound that contemplates for any loss!!!!
i think i fell in love with my son the moment i saw him out of me!!! and at this time the dilemma finally got an answer
Thank you, Sugar. I’m a young woman contemplating marriage with a man who wants kids, but I’m in the same situation as this letter writer. This column has given me a lot to think about.
My husband wanted kids. I didn’t think that I did. In the end his certainty won out over my uncertainty. I totally decided to have a child because I was afraid that I would regret it later. For that reason, and because of my wonderful parents and three adult siblings. I realized that if we worked very hard at it, in thirty years or so, my husband and I could find ourselves (like my parents so often did) at our dining room table, surrounded by our kids and their partners (and maybe even their children), sharing all of the events of our everyday lives, embraced by the love that we all have for each other. And when I lost my mom to breast cancer when I was five months pregnant, I realized how very much I wanted to have, and to be around to meet, my grandchildren. But I was terrified of all the things that have been expressed here: losing my freedom, my individuality, that I wouldn’t love my child enough. I, too, did not fall instantly in love with my baby at birth. But then, I’ve never fallen instantly in love with anyone. I do love her more than anything else now. And I know that I will feel the same about my second child, when he/she is born in December. I have several friends that have faced the same decision as I did and decided against having children. And I believe wholeheartedly that they are perfectly happy and fulfilled and complete human beings who made the correct decision for themselves. But I don’t necessarily think that if they had chosen to have children that it would have been the wrong decision either. One thing that I tell friends grappling with this children/no children decision is that it is easy to imagine all of the negative aspects of reproducing, all of the things that you will lose, but, unfairly perhaps, until you have kids, it is much more difficult to truly imagine/understand all of the things that you will gain. I went into this thinking I’d have about a 15 year hard slog before finally getting to the happy place I’d envisioned (I had never particularly enjoyed small children). Wow, was I wrong. When it is your kid telling you that “wolves don’t have elbows” at 5:45am, it really is different.
Emily-we are kindred spirits. I too just had my first baby after YEARS of indecisiveness. My husband was ready a good 5 yeras before I decided to just bite the bullet (and more because the clock was ticking than anything). I also thought it was going to be years of a hard slog before any sense of normalcy, me-time, or happiness came my way again. We now have a 6 month old daughter whom we are completely in love with. I went into parenthood expecting it to consist of about 90% grunt work (laundry and dishes and cooking and endless bottle washing and stressing about money and more laundry….) and 10% joy/contentment/happiness and so far that is proving to be the case. I think I went into this very realistically and have seen a lot of my friends expect that parenthood is just going to be really great, more often than not. I too didn’t fall instantly in love with my baby when she was born and didn’t have that ‘over the moon’ feeling. But, I am in love with her, I am happy we are now a family of three…I too would have no idea what to tell somebody who is on the fence, there are just no guarantees. I believe that if you are a relatively happy person, you’ll continue to be a relatively happy person whether or not you have children. Some people have a very strong biological drive that I just never did, I think that makes the decision a no-brainer for many. I think the trick with any major decision in life is once you make it, go for it-and don’t look back! I also agree that while pretty much everyone knows how much you have to sacrifice to have kids, you can’t truly know what you’ll gain unless you have them.
Dear Undecided:
We want an update!!
P.S.,
Thoughts count as an update too. 🙂
Elizabeth said: “I also agree that while pretty much everyone knows how much you have to sacrifice to have kids, you can’t truly know what you’ll gain unless you have them.”
Please.
I don’t think I know a single parent who knew how much sacrifice parenting would involve. They had the general idea, sure, but not until you’re in the thick of it do you really get it. And if you’re in it for what /you’ll/ gain? That seems like a lousy reason. What about what you can offer? How about starting with that?
As for “Undecided” I don’t read one thing in his letter that has to do with what he could offer a child. It’s all “I, I, I, me, me, me”. I like this and I like that and all my friends are having kids, so I want them too, but do /I/? Even the story about the cats is about how he took care of them, but then threw some extra food in a bowl and took off for days. I have a cat, not a particularly needy cat and I can’t imagine leaving him alone for days, thinking that merely leaving enough food and water were all he needed.
There are too many people in the world as it is. If you really want a kid, what is wrong with adoption? Another flag that tells me this is all selfish. I have known people who have desperately wanted only a biological child. But then: they desperately wanted children.
My parents never should have had children. That didn’t stop them. They weren’t equipped. They were like this guy. It was all about them. Which left little to nothing for us.
One of the best Dads I know was ambivalent before the kids. His spouse was not. He went along with it to keep her. Of course, he was well equipped to be a father and they both knew it. He was just scared.
Maybe this guy should spend some real time with infants and toddlers. Like full days at a time. Give his friends a chance for a getaway, give him some insight into what he’s really getting into.
The assumption is that he’d be a really good Dad if he allowed the miracle of a child into his life, because Sugar is a Mommy and that’s what happened for her. Of course, through her writing we all know that while Sugar might enjoy travel and alone-time to work, she’s also gifted with an amazing amount of compassion and a nurturing soul. But “Undecided”? It seems glaringly obvious that if he had a kid, he might love the kid, while still saddling his partner with most of the responsibility because he likes “free time, spontaneous travel, pockets of non-obligation” and “sit(s) farther to one end than most”.
RED FLAGS EVERYWHERE.
I’m a little late to the party, but I want to add that not everybody loves their kids more than they’ve ever loved anything. Many parents of middle-aged children are let down by the experience. They didn’t get along with their kids and don’t now. They got along with them but don’t now. Their kids turned out to be addicts. Their kids died young. They were shitty parents and their kids hate them. In my middle-aged experience, there’s about a one in four or five chance that you’ll have a great relationship with your kids when they are 39. Also consider that when you consider all the sacrifices raising them will involve.
Apoptosis was absolutely ON THE MONEY.
I read that, and while I liked your response, Sugar, I thought the man asking the questions was incredibly selfish and emotionally crippled. It was all about him him him him him and really…cats are not a good gauge of emotional fitness for nurturing a human being.
This man should really not reproduce.
Though this was published about a year ago I just got it today. My niece sent it to me and it’s my first time learning about you Sugar. First of all I look forward to reading more. I am hooked on you Sugar.
I find your response to Mr. Undecided profound and well written. Mr. Undecided is soooo not alone. His concerns are more common than one may think. I know because for 20 years I have been working with men and women who are just tortured by not knowing. It is a deep pain to not know and not know why you don’t know. Making lists of pros and cons won’t help because the issue is not external. It is an internal unresolved issue. Your advice is good. The questions you pose are good ones. I heard myself in your suggestions. Deciding to make your life a thriving life no matter what path you choose or end up on is at least one way to do life. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. And thank you to Mr. Undecided to be vulnerable enough and brave enough to put out there your not knowing which is unpopular in our culture. If anyone wants help getting to the bottom of YES-NO-MAYBE to a baby…check out http://www.MotherhoodIsItForMe.com or http://www.FatherhoodIsItForMe.com.
Wow. This is an incredibly beautiful perspective. Thank you.
OK, honesty: I CAN’T see myself not as a father. There are plenty of “what if”s, but being a parent is my only root. All I can envision is utter, utter BOREDOM without children. Or loneliness, because I guess if I’d never married/partnered I wouldn’t have had children.
If this is limited to viewing “the path not taken”, it excludes all the attractions of the road taken. I have plenty of regrets, but trying to become the best papa monkey isn’t on that list. Others have commented on the selfishness of the original LW; I get that, but I really, truly am having so much fun being a middle aged father and husband that the “others” disappeared. I want to emphasize that: I have aches and pains, but the wrinkles I’ve shared with my wife are PRECIOUS, and so are the children that shape our lives.
Gratefully sober
In the last two days, I’ve read all of your posts. I’m so hooked, you’re amazing.
My boyfriend has never decided if he wants kids. Says he’s not closed to the idea, but hasn’t met a woman he wanted to be tied to for the rest of his life. I think he’s been waiting for that “feeling” of knowing as well. I love how you explained it as there may never be a ‘feeling’. You’ll have to just decide.
Thank you <3
My husband is turning 49 this week – I am 41 and due with our first (and only) baby in 10 weeks. We are healthy and full of vitality and life though. The reason I’m doing this so late is it took me forever to find this wonderful husband of mine. But on the bright side, I matured so much in the years I waited to find my Mr. Wonderful. Anyway, we carefully discussed having this child, and we agreed together that we wanted to do this, even though of course we have worries and concerns about bringing a child into the big world, and into our home and into our marriage (which will now be a family of three, not just us two). We discussed the loss of freedom we will have, and how we will cope. We discussed our feelings on parenting (he has a teen son from his ex-wife). In the end, once we had bought a good home, and gotten our sh*t together, we decided together to do it. We conceived within days of that decision, and tested positive by the month’s end. We are now awaiting the birth of our little one, he is very excited now, and kisses my belly daily, kisses the baby good morning before we go to work, hello when we come home at the end of the day, and kisses the baby goodnight, too. Life will change when our child arrives, but I can’t think of a better man to create a life with than him, and I can’t think of a better father to give to a daughter. We aren’t perfect but will certainly do our best to raise a strong, capable, happy, sincere, person and teach our child all we can so that she’ll have the tools and strength to handle herself well in life. That’s all we can aim to do.
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