I’m 33 years old, and all my friends are pregnant and having children. A friend in her forties says that this trend will continue for the next few years, my social world entirely consumed by pregnancy announcements and baby showers and buying gifts for little ones. Then it’ll sputter out, seemingly as quickly as it began. I do have a handful of friends who had children in their twenties, whose kids are now in primary school, but they were the exception; now I am the exception. There is a myth that cis women in their thirties like me will be struck by baby fever, but I am experiencing the opposite. The older I get, the less I want children.
This is very different to how I felt in my mid-twenties, when I desperately wanted a child as soon as possible (were I in a heterosexual relationship back then, I would have definitely fallen pregnant). The emotional distance between the person I was then and the person I am now allows me to interrogate where that intense desire came from. There are a few truths that I think, on reflection, drove my desire for children. This is not to say these are the same things that drive all parents; but my journey illustrates how subconscious motives can influence all the decisions we make in life.
From the ages of 24 to 30 I talked about, wrote about and planned out having a child. I felt I was motivated by the pure light of motherhood in wanting to nurture, create, share, stimulate, mould, love. I wanted something greater than myself, to devote my life to something beyond me—interestingly, I strived for the same sacrifice in a romantic relationship. I was also very unhappy in my twenties. I dated a series of addicts and though only one of them was directly abusive, unfortunately people experiencing addiction sometimes display other behaviours that, although not intentionally harmful, can damage your ability to trust, among other things.
I was also still reeling from the ricochets of my fraught and dysfunctional relationship with my mother. In hindsight, the fact that I wanted a daughter specifically—so I could experience the kind of mother-daughter relationship that I had never had—should have been a sign that I was impelled by more than just altruistic reasons. I recently listened to a podcast with the American writer and actor Brandon Kyle Goodman, and he thought the same; that for a long time he wanted to have kids because he thought it would fix his relationship with his mother, “that it will heal us”. In his instance he hoped having kids would reconcile them, unite them over something, whereas I instead hoped to tend to the wound and absence in my life with another relationship that could eventually usurp it.
There are plenty of people who have children because of their parents, whether to please them or because they feel obligated to fulfil a social contract, an expectation of the continuation of a family name or legacy. This somewhat invisible social contract was made especially clear in India back in 2022, when Sanjeev and Sadhana Prasad sued their own son for not providing them with a grandchild, demanding that he and his wife either have one or he repay the cost of his upbringing. They believed they were owed the next generation of life in return for the life they had given their son.
Yet in my case, like in Goodman’s, the pressure didn’t come from my parents. It came from within. So what has changed that means I no longer feel the same way? Firstly, I am much more creatively and emotionally fulfilled than I was in my twenties, and far more financially stable. With these things has come happiness, meaning I am no longer seeking something else to give my life meaning. The sacrifice of my lifestyle and independence no longer seem worth it; my life already feels abundant and valuable. Secondly, so many of my friends have children that I already get to spend lots of time with children I love, and can be a better help to all of them as a friend without kids myself. And last, but certainly not least, I published a book that purged all my thoughts and feelings about my relationship with my mother and set me free in a way I didn’t know was possible. It healed me in a far simpler way than becoming a mother myself could have done—especially as there is no guarantee of the better relationship you imagine having with your own child.
