We want to hear all of your parenting conundrums — whether you are seeking out advice, can’t decide if you made the right decision about something, or just need to rant. Tell us: What are the hard parts of parenting for you right now? Email Amil at TheHardPart@thecut.com. (Anonymity is okay. So is hating gentle parenting. No judging! Check out our submission terms here.)
Dear Amil,
I have a friend who froze her eggs after having delayed pregnancy for at least a couple of years because of her career. She wants kids badly, and it’s making her sad and stressed out because she’s afraid it’s getting too late, but she also feels she hasn’t achieved the thing she wanted to achieve before having kids. For women having kids in their mid- to late 30s, career is such a big part of their identities, and for so many of my friends it seems impossible to step out of the stream for a bit — the impact is real — and have that first kid. Is there really a “right time?”
—Asking for a Friend
Dear Asking for a Friend,
Before I had kids, my mom encouraged my sisters and I to wait until we were settled in our careers, had traveled, lived a little, and made enough money. And I took that advice to heart, not even contemplating kids in my early to mid-20s. I was working on my career, dating, drinking, partying, hanging out, sleeping in, traveling, partying, and generally doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I couldn’t even picture my life with a child; the mere thought felt so alien. It helped that almost none of my close friends had kids and my larger friend group was mostly made up of other layabouts like myself.
At 32, I got married, and suddenly, having a baby with a person I loved so profoundly seemed like the only thing I could think about. Being with someone so kind, thoughtful, and generous allowed me to better understand my own capacity for love and care and creating a life together, making a whole person that was part him and part me, seemed to just make sense.
So we started trying, and as the months went on, our friends started announcing their pregnancies, reaffirming for me that the timing was now “right.” But the months of trying turned into a year, and as the days and weeks and months kept ticking by, I began to feel like I wasn’t just ready for a baby, but that I was now actively losing time, and soon I might have no time left.
Every time I got my period or a negative pregnancy test I lamented not having tried sooner, about having wasted so much time trying not to have a baby, sometimes even wondering if my body was punishing me for having waited too long. It wasn’t until after over two years of fertility treatments and a round of IVF that I became pregnant. I was 35 when our first son was born, and it wasn’t long before I started doing the math on how old I’d be when he started school or became old enough to drive, when he’d enter adulthood or maybe want a baby himself. Would I be physically or mentally capable of still helping him, still caring for him in the ways in which I’d want to? For a brief moment, I worried I should have had kids younger, even though that was a useless, toxic exercise. As I started to settle into parenting and then a couple of years later had my second child, I became aware of how much better I was as a parent in that moment, at that age, than I probably would have been had I had them a decade earlier.
The other accounting I was rapidly doing in my head, even at 35 and with nearly 15 years of experience in my field, was what would happen to my career now that I was stepping away briefly to have a baby. I still wasn’t making what felt like enough money, and while I had built up a solid reputation in my industry, I panicked about what, if anything, would be waiting for me when I came back. It suddenly felt like even though I’d been waiting for years to have this baby, maybe it was still too soon. I was so worried about it that I ended up making a drastic job change just a few weeks postpartum and then just shy of two years later, quitting that job altogether to go freelance. I don’t regret the path that ultimately led me down but I say this to make it clear that our working lives are long and the way you think about work before having a baby is likely to change after having one. Even if it’s just about the kind of hours you work or where you work. So, there was no magic “right” time, only the time that was right for me.
A lot of the parents I asked this question echoed similar feelings.
“Sometimes I wish I had started sooner, but then I wouldn’t have met the son we have,” Christine wrote me over Instagram DM. “I don’t know that there is a perfect time where every aspect of life is lined up and perfectly cemented,” said Keri. “But I know I had my baby when I felt confident in my own ability to be a mother.” Another mom, Andrea, told me she’s spent a lot of time reflecting on whether there’s a “right” way or time to do it but has settled on the idea that there probably isn’t. “I have often felt like I should have waited longer, but I’m starting to realize I don’t think it would have made a big difference,” she said.
Of course there were others who wished some things had gone differently. “I wish I had mine later so I had more time to develop as a person,” said Seli.
Riya had her first baby at 30; she was waiting for financial stability, she says, but now she thinks about the what-ifs. “I’m glad we waited for the stability but will probably wonder if my second pregnancy would have been healthier if I had been younger,” she wrote.
But even the parents I chatted with that wished some things had gone differently agreed that there probably isn’t some scientific “right” time where having kids somehow gets easier, less stressful, or makes no impact on your career.
Truthfully, the only regret I have is believing that you need to wait until you have “enough” money, a bigger home, or a better job, like you “earn” the right to have a baby by accumulating the correct number of life points. For many of us, baby or not, our careers naturally evolve and shift as we age. Why put off such a huge milestone based on something that will change as you change? Had I given into my own job anxiety around motherhood, I would still be waiting to have my first.
More From This Series
- Choosing to Become a Single Mom by Choice
- What If My Baby Inherits My Medical Condition?
- ‘He Changed His Mind’