My ambivalence about having kids ended abruptly about two years ago. Aged 30 or 31, I finally felt what so many other women say they feel—that pull to bring a child into the world. Visions of piggyback rides, Taylor Swift sing-alongs, and late-night homework help suddenly filled my head; my then-boyfriend, now-husband, happily got onboard. For the first time, I said definitively that I wanted children.
This is late by many people’s standards. Now that I’m 33—meaning any baby would arrive when I’m 34, at the earliest—I’m almost in “geriatric” pregnancy territory. But I don’t think I could have gotten to this point willingly any sooner. Motherhood simply was not something I was ready for in my 20s.
Only a handful of my closest friends and family members had children before 30. I realize this is unusual, though less so than it used to be. The ones who did have kids in their 20s all live in the Midwest, where I grew up. No member of my New York crew has taken that step yet.
I don’t want to stereotype too strongly—plenty of 20-something New Yorkers have kids, and plenty of 20-something Midwesterners do not—but I doubt that is a surprising revelation. Many of my New York friends would be happy to have kids by now, but that’s not the way life’s shaken out.
I’ve mostly made my peace with coming “late” to the idea of motherhood, though I think often of a piece I read many years ago by the writer Tom Scocca, long before I was certain I wanted children and long before I met the person I was certain I wanted to have them with. In his essay, Scocca writes, “If you intend to have children, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not banking extra years as a person who is still too young to have children. You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children.”
These lines have haunted me—not unpleasantly—since 2018, when they reconfigured how I thought about my future. For me, it was a new way to consider the proposition of having children at a time when so much of the media I was otherwise consuming detailed the many ways doing so would ruin my life.
Other people (strangely, all men, now that I think about it) have expressed similar sentiments to me over the years, all well-meaning. I believe if and when we do have a child, I will agree with them.
Still, I didn’t resist having children for so many years just because I thought I was too young, or because I thought the life I was leading in my 20s was so much more meaningful and important than a life with a child would be. Motherhood just never called to me in any significant way until recently. That is perhaps something men like Scocca and my well-meaning friends can’t understand; I’m not sure I do myself.
***
I am trying to be delicate in how I write about this topic now. The unfortunate, ugly reality of this conversation is that having babies is being politicized by conservative politicians across the country, as they “debate” women’s place in our society.
To write about my desire to become a mother at this time feels like I am playing right into their narrative, that I approve of what they are saying and hope all the other childless women will acquiesce as well.
This could not be further from the truth. I have no aversion to people having kids if they really want them, to women staying home with their kids if that is truly what their heart desires. I do have an aversion to politicians and political influencers telling me and other women there is only one way to live, and that we are doing it wrong. I’ve pushed back against that narrative my entire life.
“There is something threatening about a woman who is not occupied with children,” writes Sheila Heti in Motherhood, her own exploration of whether to have children. “There is something at-loose-ends feeling about such a woman. What is she going to do instead? What sort of trouble will she make?”
It is also an unbelievably precarious time to be pregnant in America. Those same politicians who want women to have more babies are making it more unsafe to do so by the day. What if I get pregnant and miscarry—will I end up imprisoned? Forced to carry a dead fetus to term? Made to bleed out in the parking lot until a doctor will see me? These are not questions that anyone should be asking in 2026. And yet.
There also seems to be a counter-reaction among progressives, that anyone who wants kids is selfish given the state of the world. These lines of attack seem unbelievably shortsighted to me. What is the point of advocating for change and progress and a set of political ideals if you have no faith in a better tomorrow? Surely the future envisioned by the progressive movement is not one without mothers and children included.
“Many of us also find that having children inspires us to try to make the world a better place,” Lindsey wrote in her own defense of motherhood. “Becoming a parent has not dulled my ambition but sharpened it. No one should underestimate a mother with a mission.”
Against this suffocating political backdrop is my desire, finally, to have a child. That it aligns with this dangerous shift is hard for me to square with my own beliefs and values. But as I approach 34, I know I don’t realistically have much more time to wait.
***
My mother, who would very much like to be a grandmother, recently said to me that my generation thinks too much about all this stuff, that people have always just done it and figured out the rest later. I agree with her to an extent, though I find calling millennials too thoughtful and considered a bit funny, given all of the other things our elders have said about us over the years.
But I’d be lying if I said the age of my parents—they are now both in their 60s—isn’t another factor weighing on my mind. I deeply loved all of my grandparents, and I hold so many treasured memories of the time I spent with them growing up. My mom was the caretaker for her parents, so we were at their home most days after school. And my dad’s parents—who lived just around the corner from my mom’s—came over for family dinners and movie nights multiple times a week. Nana A. brought me boxes of used mystery books—still my favorite genre—and Papa A. was the kindest person I knew, my number-one fan and cheerleader.
I still dream about Nana and Papa A., though they’ve both been gone a very long time. I want my child to have those sweet memories of their grandparents, too. To find comfort in them.
So it is against this family backdrop, too, that my decision lives, as I consider how many years I hope my children get to spend with their grandparents. We often talk about whether or not to have a child as if only our own desires and timing matter, but of course that’s not true. My parents, and Chris’s, count too.
***
Still, I consider the life my parents provided me and wonder if something similar is possible today. Personal finances are part of the equation, of course, but more than that, stability. It’s hard to look at the trajectory of the economy right now—never mind all of the political violence—and feel good about it. What kind of life will any child of mine have if I am unable to provide them with the advantages I enjoyed?
That I have any choices at all is, simply, incredible. It can be easy to take for granted the freedom that I’ve experienced throughout my life, more freedom than most other women—past and present—have ever known. Is it so wrong to want to celebrate the life that having the choice of when to conceive allowed me to lead? And to be scared my daughter might not experience the same thing?
I can’t predict what the future will bring or what kind of world my child might inherit. And after years of ambivalence, wanting a child now doesn’t mean I’ve reconciled all of the contradictions that come with my choice. The timing will never be perfect, but this time is all I—and my loved ones—have.
