Why I Want a Kid When Everyone Says Not to Have One: A Teacher’s Perspective
The last time I said, out loud, that I think I want a child, my friend Rachel didn’t even set down her coffee. She just looked at me across the table and said, “Really? With the world on fire? With the cost of daycare? With your sleep?”
I didn’t have a good answer. For a lot of nights, I didn’t have any answer except that I’d spent the day on my knees on the classroom rug, and a six-year-old had said “Your shoe’s untied” three times, and I’d fixed it, and it was fine. I knew I liked the work. I didn’t know if that meant I should do it at home.
Everyone has a reason not to have a kid. Some of my friends talk about their savings accounts. Some talk about climate projections. One said, very kindly, “You don’t know what you’re signing up for.” She was right. I don’t. But I’ve also spent fifteen years working in elementary schools, and I’ve learned a few things about children and about all the adults who are certain they know what they’re doing.
A few weeks after that coffee conversation, I was on recess duty. A kindergarten boy named Marcus was under a table near the bookshelf. He’d been building a tower with magnetic tiles, and a classmate had knocked it over. Marcus didn’t cry or scream. He just sat there with his arms around his knees, jaw tight. Another teacher walked past and said, “Ignore it. He’s being dramatic.”
I didn’t believe that. I sat down on the floor next to the table—far enough not to crowd him, close enough that he knew I wasn’t leaving. “That’s frustrating when things fall,” I said. Nothing. After about a minute and a half, Marcus said, “They weren’t supposed to fall.” I said, “No, they weren’t.” Then he got up and started rebuilding, not because I’d solved anything, but because someone had acknowledged that the world was a little unfair for him for a second. That is, in my experience, most of what parenting is: sitting near a disappointment and not trying to talk your way out of it.
People who warn you about having kids are not wrong that it’s hard. But they’re usually wrong about where the hard lies. It’s not the middle-of-the-night feedings, or the potty training, or even the daycare waitlists. It’s the fact that children need you to stay calm in the exact moments when your own brain is begging you to fix, control, or escape. That takes practice. And you can’t practice by thinking about it in a coffee shop.
Once I stopped asking people whether I should have a child, I started asking different questions. Instead of “What if I ruin my life?” I began asking parents I know, “What did you wish someone had told you before you had kids?” The answers were surprisingly practical.
One friend told me to decide who drives the first grocery run after the baby is born. A former colleague said to hire babysitters before the birth, not after, so you could leave the house without a panic. Another said to read aloud to a newborn even though it feels silly—not because it makes them smarter, but because it gives you a script when you’re exhausted and have nothing to say. None of this felt like the dramatic warnings I was used to. It felt like planning a road trip. Hard, yes. But manageable.
I teach second grade now, and I’ve seen a lot of parents undone by things that aren’t actually emergencies. Last year there was a four-year-old in one of the preschool classrooms who kept biting. His mother was humiliated. She said she didn’t know how she’d raised “a bad kid.” But in the classroom, the pattern was obvious: the biting only happened on carpet time, after lunch, when the class was meant to sit still. The boy wasn’t aggressive; he was stuck. The teacher added a few minutes of heavy work before carpet time—a basket of heavy books to carry, some pushing-and-pulling games against the wall—and the biting stopped. The mother didn’t need a lecture about discipline. She needed to see what her child was trying to tell her.
That one is not a parent’s fault. It’s just hard to see a child clearly when everyone hands you judgments.
If you’re in the position I’m in—wanting a kid when the world tells you not to—one of the most useful things you can do is spend time with actual children, not just with ideas about children. Offer to take a neighbor’s kid to the park. Watch a toddler at a birthday party. Notice not just the hard parts but the small mechanics that make a day work. The snack box with cut fruit. The spare shirt in the car. The phrase “We’re leaving in five minutes” said ten minutes before you’re actually leaving. None of that is glamorous. But it’s the real stuff of caring for a child, and it starts long before the baby arrives.
I have not entirely made up my mind. I still have a monthly spreadsheet, mostly for my own sanity, where I track savings and school options and the nearest family for emergency help. Some months the list seems to prove I shouldn’t. Other months I watch a kid in my classroom come to school three days in a row with shoes that don’t fit, and I think, no one is ever ready. But some people show up anyway.
The decision to have a child can’t be made by convincing. Not really. I’ve seen too many parents swallow other people’s certainty and then collapse when their particular child didn’t follow the script. The only thing that has made me feel less afraid is being around children who are not mine, noticing what they need, and practicing my own response until it becomes slower and steadier.
So I’m no longer asking friends if I should have a kid. I’m asking them to help me get groceries. I’m watching Marcus rebuild his tower from the floor, and I’m learning that I can tolerate the discomfort of watching something fall apart without putting it back together too soon. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it isn’t. I’ll let you know after recess.
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