The first time I ever held a baby, I knew immediately: I am going to have one of these someday. This thought was somehow preposterous, given that I was around 11 at the time. But as I cradled my brand-new infant cousin (while sitting down, of course, given that I absolutely should not have been trusted to protect her soft head on my own two feet) and listened to my dad’s girlfriend exchange postpartum chitchat with my aunt—“Is she sleeping?” “Are you sleeping?”—I knew I eventually wanted in on this funny little sorority of maternal wisdom that, as an only child, I’d never previously known existed.
My more-than-passing interest in babies only grew as I got older. Not only did I get birth doula-certified as part of a requirement for a Reproductive Justice seminar I took in college (no, I don’t know how to deliver your baby, but yes, I would be great at passing the time by facilitating conversation about the Kardashians in the delivery room), but I spent most of my undergrad summers nannying for the same Brooklyn family. This family had one son at the time, a cheerful little cherub of a nine-month-old when I met him who somehow turned two, then three, then almost four by the time I graduated, and I’m still in awe at his mom’s extremely unfussy way with him.
I barely had any infant experience when I started, yet instead of taking one look at my clunky Doc Martens and tattered Goodwill witch dresses and showing me the door, the baby’s mom encouraged me to take her son anywhere I pleased, from the Coney Island Aquarium to the Bareburger on Court Street. I would buckle him into the Snugli, fill a tote bag with diapers and puffed cereal, and we’d be off, him squealing with joy every time we passed a garbage truck and me vowing to be exactly this kind of loving yet chill mother someday when—not “if”—I had kids.
I kept nannying on and off after college, and the more chaotic and unstable my personal life was, the more sure I was of my dream of motherhood. Having never had a serious relationship, it was weirdly easier to picture myself as a someday-single mom than to imagine sharing the responsibility of having a kid with any of the various f**kboys, ghosting-prone girls and nonbinary commitment-avoiders I dated in my twenties. “I want a kid by the time I’m 35,” I would proudly declare to anyone who asked throughout the years, even referencing my sureness about my desire to parent in my memoir. I would read books by the likes of Sheila Heti, Michelle Tea and Meaghan O’Connell about ambivalence toward parenthood and feel drawn to their honesty, yet unable to recognise myself. I might not have known how I’d conceive, who I’d parent with, or how I’d pay for literally any of it, but I knew parenting was for me. Until…it maybe wasn’t?
I can’t pinpoint exactly when my feelings on having kids changed, but I’d guess it was sometime in the last year, a time when many of my best friends have embarked on their own parenting journeys. There’s nothing in the world I hold closer than the opportunity to meet the small people my loved ones have created and are working tirelessly every day to raise and nurture. Yet, after playground hangs and park dates with friends’ kids I found myself feeling excited to get home to a house that contained only my partner, my dog and a TV loaded up with brand-new episodes of The Pitt that I could watch for as long as I wanted without worrying about screen time or bedtime or all the work I wasn’t doing to pad some still-theoretical person’s eventual college fund. Part of me was secretly worried I would feel incurably jealous of my parent friends’ lives once they began to procreate. (And being a queer person with a trans partner certainly presents obstacles in terms of family-making.) But I feel like I’m learning as much from my childfree friends right now as I am from my friends with kids about how to build an adult life that feels truly and blissfully complete.
Back when I was 11 years old and cooing over someone else’s new baby, or 19 and carrying one home from the aquarium, I don’t think I fully understood just how compulsory much of the media I consumed had made having kids seem, at least for people who—like me—were socialised as female. Yes, I did (and do) love babies, but I also grew up in a time and place where most of the women around me were mothers. No matter how “other” I might have felt as a closeted queer kid, and no matter how ready I was to declare myself single-mother material without having an ounce of understanding of just how hard most single parents are forced to work, I think part of me was still conforming to type by assuming that my individual life path had to include a baby.
I know many people who have always been sure that they want kids and continue to feel that way, and I salute them. Until recently, I thought I was one of them, to the point that when I met my partner, one of my first big hurdles in our relationship was figuring out how to tell him I eventually wanted to be a mom. The spontaneity and joyfully changeable quality of our now three-year-relationship, though, has emboldened me to question the things I always assumed I needed in order to be happy. I can easily picture having a baby with my partner, but I can also picture eventually getting a second dog to keep our Maltipoo puppy Frank company, or moving to Indonesia for a year, or putting the disposable income we’d save as childfree adults to use building our dream home. It’s not that these aren’t things we could do if we had kids, but now that more and more of my friends are weighing “the baby question,” I’ve been able to see how freeing it might feel to get to build my existence around other milestones instead.
I know I’ll feel very stupid if I do have a child and said child eventually grows up to google me and find this essay, but right now, I’m repeating my brand-new chosen family-planning mantra to anyone who asks (and plenty of people who don’t): “There’s no bad option.” The privilege of being a parent would still be the adventure of a lifetime, but I don’t necessarily have to prioritise it above other adventures. Granted, I’m only 31, and it’s totally feasible that I’ll start desiring motherhood with the same burning intensity I felt when I was younger as my fertility window begins to diminish, but I no longer feel like pregnancy is a status item I have to nab.
Is it possible that I’ll get to the end of my life and regret whatever choice I make with regards to kids? Absolutely, but there’s quite literally no life choice you can make that 100% insulates you from regret. In the meantime, while I decide, there is one child-related goal that is of the utmost importance to me: If I am not my pregnant best friend’s unborn child’s favourite auntie from the exact moment it emerges into the world, I will riot.
This article first appeared on Vogue.com
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