What Parents Really Think About People Who Can’t Decide If They Want Children
Last weekend, I hosted a neighborhood end-of-summer BBQ in my backyard. My two kids, 7 and 10, were chasing our golden retriever around the apple tree, yelling about who got to hold the sparklers after dark, and the grill was smoking so bad I kept wiping grease off my forearms. Lila, the 34-year-old graphic designer who lives two houses down, leaned against the fence next to me with a can of lime seltzer, and after we commented on how the neighbor’s hydrangeas were already turning brown, she got quiet and said what she’d actually come over to say: She still doesn’t know if she wants to have kids. And she’s convinced every parent she knows secretly thinks she’s being selfish, or flaky, or immature for not picking a side after eight years with her partner.
Before I could answer, Mike, a dad of three from down the street, wiped grill charcoal off his hands and sat down on the grass next to us, and said he’d heard that, and he gets it. Mike and his wife went back and forth for 12 years before they had their first kid. They scheduled IVF, then canceled the appointment six days out because they woke up one morning and both knew they weren’t ready. Two years later, they changed their minds again. “I never tell people that,” he said, popping a hot dog bun into his mouth. “Everyone acts like you have to have this perfect, clear calling to be a parent, like if you don’t know from when you’re 20, you’re doing something wrong. But I was 38 before I knew what I wanted.”
That conversation stuck with me, because it reminded me of the thread that popped up in our local elementary parent Facebook group a couple weeks back. Someone had asked, anonymously, “As a parent, what do you think of people my age (32) who still can’t decide if they want kids?” I scrolled through 172 comments, and I was surprised how few of them were judgmental. A mom of four who had her first at 19 commented that she’d never gotten a chance to decide at all—she just got pregnant young and went with it—and she thinks people who take the time to sit with uncertainty are way more responsible than she was. A dad whose kid is already in college said he spent five years on the fence, and no one ever talks about how it’s okay to take that long for a decision that changes every single part of your life. A mom who struggled with infertility for 10 years commented that she used to get bitter when people talked about being undecided, like how dare you have a choice when I don’t. But after a while, she realized that bitterness didn’t help anyone, and that deciding if you want to carry that kind of life change isn’t something you should rush. Only a handful of comments said anything about selfishness, and most of those got called out by other parents.
What I’ve noticed, after being a parent for 10 years, is that a lot of people who are on the fence assume parents are all lining up to judge them, but most of us are too busy dealing with our own messy kid stuff to waste energy judging anyone else’s big decisions. We remember what that uncertainty feels like. I got married at 26, and I didn’t have my first kid until I was 30. I went back and forth so many times I lost count. One month I was convinced I’d be fine without kids, the next I was crying at grocery store commercials because I wanted a baby so bad. No one talks about that indecision after you have kids, like it’s something you’re supposed to hide, like it makes you a bad parent. But it’s normal. It’s the biggest decision you’ll ever make, why wouldn’t you take time to figure it out?
If you’re a parent and you’re talking to someone who’s undecided, there are a few small things that make a big difference, that I’ve picked up from watching people mess it up and get it right. First, don’t offer your unsolicited vote for one side or the other. Don’t jump in and say “oh you’d be such an amazing mom, you just have to do it” — that just puts pressure on them to pick the answer you want. Don’t jump in the other direction and say “kids are just stress and no sleep, don’t do it” — that’s your experience, not theirs, and it’s just as much pressure. Instead, if they bring it up, just say “That’s such a big decision, it makes sense that it takes time to figure out.” That’s it, that’s all you need to say most of the time.
Second, if they ask what it’s really like, tell the boring, middle-of-the-road truth, not the highlight reel or the horror story. I tell people that I can’t imagine my life without my kids, that there are days so full of laughing I can’t breathe, but there are also days I lock myself in the bathroom for 10 minutes just to get five minutes of quiet, and I miss being able to book a last-minute weekend trip without packing a cooler and three changes of clothes. No rose-colored glasses, no doom and gloom, just the real thing. Third, don’t treat their indecision like a problem you have to fix. It’s not something that needs sorting out right now, it’s just a person taking their time with a big choice.
By the end of the BBQ, the sun had gone down, the kids had burned out their sparklers, and Lila stayed to help me pick up paper plates and half-eaten chips off the grass. She said she’d always assumed that parents, especially people who chose to have kids, would think less of her for not being sure. I told her I don’t think less of her. Most of us don’t. She still doesn’t know what she’s going to decide. She might decide next year, or in five years, or never. Right now, that’s okay. We put the leftover potato salad in my fridge, and she walked home to her dog, and I went inside to break up a fight over who got the last s’more. Life goes on, whether you’ve decided or not.
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