What Parents Really Think About People Who Can’t Decide If They Want Children
The cheese on my beef patties was just starting to bubble and burn last Saturday when my great-aunt Marnie leaned over the patio rail, grinned at my 32-year-old neighbor Lila, and popped the question we’ve all heard a hundred times: “So when are you two having kids?”
Lila twisted the cap off her lime seltzer, looked out at my 7-year-old chasing our golden retriever around the fire pit with a supersoaker, and said, honestly, “I still don’t know if I want them.”
The conversation around the grill fizzled for a beat. My brother-in-law, who has a 2-year-old he posts about three times a day, opened his mouth then closed it. Marnie clucked her tongue and said, “Well, honey, you’re not getting any younger.” Lila just shrugged, but she hung back by the rail for the next 20 minutes instead of joining the cornhole game, and I noticed she didn’t bring up the topic again the whole night.
After most people headed inside to watch the football game, Lila and I stayed on the back steps sharing a crumpled bag of potato chips, and she told me this is how it goes every time. When she tells other parents she’s undecided, after seven years with her partner, they fall into two rigid camps: the ones who tell her she’ll change her mind once she meets the right baby, and the ones who whisper that it’s smart to wait because parenthood is way harder than anyone admits. No one ever just says “that makes sense” and leaves it at that.
I get that. Ten years ago, when I had my first kid at 26, I would have been one of the people judging the indecision. I always knew I wanted kids, so I figured anyone who didn’t know was just scared of responsibility, or putting off the inevitable. My cousin was 34 and undecided back then, and I remember thinking she was being selfish for dragging it out. She ended up choosing not to have kids five years later, and she’s now the first person I call for no-kid weekend getaways and honest advice about when my kids are driving me crazy. Watching her build a life she loves completely changed how I see people who can’t make this call.
After Lila left that night, a handful of us parents stayed up cleaning the grill and talking about it, and I was surprised how many of us shared that shift. My friend Sarah, who has a 5-year-old, said she waffled for six years before getting pregnant, and she still resents how her in-laws pressured her to just decide already. She said she respects people who take their time way more than she respects people who pop out kids just because it’s what their 30s timeline says they should do. My brother-in-law even admitted he’d been thinking it: he always knew he wanted kids, but he gets why someone wouldn’t want to rush that kind of permanent, life-altering change. No one there said it was wrong to take time to decide.
That’s the thing no one talks about: most parents, when you get past the default small talk lines, don’t actually care that much if you decide yes or no, and a lot of us think taking time to decide is smarter than jumping in blind. The problem isn’t the indecision – it’s the way we, as parents, often react to it when it’s shared. We’ve picked up these bad habits of pushing our own experience onto other people, and it’s unnecessary.
I’ve started working on this myself, and there are a few small, concrete things I do now that work better than the default lines. If someone tells me they don’t know if they want kids, I don’t lead with “you’ll change your mind” or “your clock is ticking.” Instead, I say, “What’s the hardest part of that spot for you right now?” It gives them space to talk if they want to, instead of shutting them down with my pre-written opinion. If they ask what it’s like for me as a parent, I don’t sugarcoat it or make it sound like the worst thing ever just because I had a rough week with my kids. I tell them the truth: it’s the best and hardest thing I’ve ever done, it’s not for everyone, and that’s okay. And I never, ever bring up fertility stats or age-related pressure unless they specifically ask about it. Lila told me that’s the number one thing that drives her crazy – every parent she knows feels the need to warn her about waiting, and it just adds more stress to a decision that’s already heavy enough.
A couple days ago, I ran into Lila at the grocery store. She and her partner just got back from a five-day hiking trip in the mountains, and she showed me photos of them at the summit, sunburnt and grinning with empty backpacks. She laughed and said she still doesn’t know if she wants kids. I told her that’s fine, we chatted for another minute about the price of strawberries, and we went our separate ways.
I don’t have a neat conclusion here. Some of us knew we wanted kids from the time we were 10, some of us took 10 years to decide, some of us never decide one way or the other. I still mess up as a parent most days, I still have quiet moments where I wonder what my life would be like if I didn’t have kids, so who am I to pressure someone else to have an answer before they’re ready? Most of us parents, if we’re being honest, feel the same way.
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