Why have kids

Sound nice? I believe one needs to have their own private, uncensored process in that kind of environment to find out what they want.

I have had the great honor of providing that environment. And I want to help you create that environment for yourself. But there are ways to get unstuck and move forward,. Begin with deciding to take a designated break one to three months from any discussion about the topic with your partner. No more thinking one way or the other. Stop trying to figure this out by making a pros and cons list.

It will keep you stuck. Write a few sentences on each one describing the sensation of how good it felt to have made them. Create separation between desire and decision by putting the decision to the sidelines until clarity of your desire is known.

To do this, make a list of all your fears related to this decision. Then put these two lists in an envelope and put that envelope out of sight.

Do not look at it or entertain anything in it until you have clarity of your desire, and you know why you want what you want. The why is important, not because you owe anyone an explanation but because you need to know what is driving your desire from the inside out so that you can be honest with yourself.

This time of exploration, without the pressure of having to make a decision, will help you discover your honest desire. To entertain a decision prematurely without complete clarity of desire will only make your decision-making process more complicated than it needs to be and delay the peace and calm you so deserve.

You can only know how you want your life to unfold and do everything you can to have it unfold that way. Parenthood is neither a destiny nor a debate. There is no single right choice. Ann Davidman is a licensed marriage and family therapist, parenthood clarity mentor , and author. Traditionally, regret has been viewed as the purview of the childless. In every other realm where regret is experienced, people soldier on, she notes. Her research even indicates that women who feel guilt over regret are more conscientious parents.

Exacerbating gendered parenting imbalances is the fact that, as mothers entered the workforce in record numbers in the s, parenting philosophies increasingly embraced hovering attachment. Time spent by parents with their kids has doubled in four decades, The Economist revealed in November; in an analysis of 11 wealthy countries, mothers spent an average of minutes a day caring for children in , up from 54 in Men do less, but far more than they did in the past: 59 minutes a day, up from Declining fertility rates and older, more educated first-time mothers have also contributed to heightened expectations.

The fertility rate in Canada has dropped from 2. Older mothers are used to autonomy. Magali Delporte. Declining birth rates have also seen a surge in pro-natalism. The belief that women are uniquely equipped to parent also marginalizes fathers: author Rahna Reiko Rizzuto was publicly shamed when she revealed she preferred not to be a full-time parent in her memoir, Hiroshima in the Morning. The late feminist philosopher Sara Ruddick, author of Maternal Thinking , tried to publish a book on the topic, with contributions from scholars who were mothers, but had to shelve it.

But Blackstone, the Maine sociologist, said parents and the child-free are driven by similar desires. Indeed, it was the desire to preserve a happy relationship that nudged some of our readers to decide against children. To throw that away for a kid would be nuts. Others, though, saw parenthood as a way to honor either past or future relationships. We started to question what life was truly about, and realized that for us it could include raising a child. Another dreaded the deaths of her parents and, subsequently, the prospect of life without unconditional love.

According to Blackstone, the child-free and the childless both emphasized creating meaning. For Isabel Caliva, the woman who unearthed the Rumpus column, that desire for meaning came in an unexpected way. They stayed up all night talking, then dated for all four years. Post-college life took them to different cities, and they broke up.

They got engaged the following year. She had always been open with Frank about her kid-indecision, and he patiently waited as she mulled. One perfect spring day in , Caliva was driving home from work near Washington, D.

She rolled down her windows, turned on the radio, and gazed out at the clear sky. A wave of contentment and joy washed over her. But the elation was cut with boredom.

She drove home and told Frank about her epiphany. Their son, Jack, will be 2 years old this year. For childless women, though, meaning comes about in other ways. Humans are anxious about their own deaths. To manage that anxiety, they seek to leave a legacy—often in the form of children, Aarssen explained to me recently,. But there are other types of legacies—such as art, science, or religion—and historically, the money and influence necessary to create them belonged solely to men.

Thus, for millennia, women often had only one choice for making a lasting impact: reproduction.