Undecided about kids in your 30s

An increasingly uncomfortable limbo

Recently the decision about whether or not to have kids has been on my mind. It’s on my mind a lot, in fact, and I imagine it might be for much of the next ten years. I’m not alone in that - it’s a defining question for lots of women in their thirties. As more and more of my friends plan or start their families I find myself feeling increasingly ‘in limbo’.

So I did what anyone foolish enough would do and posted about it on social media. 1.4 million views and over 2,000 comments later, I am reeling from the response.

For the last few years I have been openly agnostic about this decision. Growing up I was adamant that I’d never become a parent but by my mid twenties that had all changed. My partner and I realised that we both wanted children and so we started planning. We planned around contraception, finances and my maternity leave which, as a self-employed person, would involve a lot of saving. Finally we fixed on May 2024 as the month we would start trying. My contraception would expire, our wedding would be out of the way, we’d have finished our house renovation and we’d be in the mood to settle down.

But then something happened.

We started spending more time with parents of children. Not just of babies and toddlers but of older children and teens, too. And as we watched them we started to think of parenting as a lifestyle choice rather than an inevitable life stage for us to pass through. We could actively choose to adopt this lifestyle that our friends were living but, it struck us, we could also choose *not* to.

We realised as we looked around that we didn’t want to share our lives with kids of any of these ages. Not the babies, not the toddlers, not the seven-year-olds or the eleven-year-olds or the fifteen-year-olds. It’s not that we don’t love them - they’re our nieces and nephews and the children of our closest friends and we would walk through fire for them. We just don’t want to take them home with us right now. So we halted our plan to try for a baby.

I am not at all sure that this is a permanent decision, and luckily - hopefully - I’ve got time to change my mind (many times if I want to!)

But it’s not just a case of having a baby or not having one. Being someone who doesn’t know yet takes on a whole meaning of its own. Of my closest friends more of them are on the baby-rearing path than off it, whether that’s planning jobs around maternity leave, trying for a baby or actively parenting one or more kids. I love my role in their lives. I am so proud of them that my heart could explode. But the balance is tipping and as someone without kids I will soon be in the minority. There’s inevitably a lot of change that comes with that and a certain amount of discomfort, too.

My friends who are child free by choice have embraced it fully. They find community with each other and plan their lifestyle and their finances around a child-free future. At the moment this life appeals to me more but I’m nowhere near sure enough to commit to it. It’s strange and sometimes difficult to look ten years into your future and not know which camp you’ll fall into.

Someone recently told me that it’s better to have this conversation with your friends, like everyone does, rather than on the internet. For a moment I felt a flash of grief and shame. I imagined ‘everyone’ sitting around dinner tables with their friends, talking openly about this over a glass of wine, and wondered why I didn’t have that in my life. But I know I’m not the only one that this isn’t a reality for, and for good reason.

My friends are on their own journeys, quite possibly struggling with their own relationship to parenthood. Complicated pregnancies, IVF and issues conceiving all complicate the ability to have this conversation in a way that feels good and healthy and constructive. Something that felt hypothetical and far-off in our twenties now feels tender and all too real. I find that being undecided makes things particularly challenging as people occasionally try to steer me very gently in one direction or the other. I don’t think they do this on purpose. I think we like having our friends in our camp.

I’m very lucky with my friendships but that tableau isn’t a reality for me and I know it won’t be for lots of you, too. All this to say that I think the internet is absolutely the right forum for this conversation. I hope we have it more and more.

The comments on the video I shared have been - to put it politely - varied in content and tone but I’ve found them lots of them insightful and interesting. If you’re in the same boat as me I’d recommend having a look. I’ve been trying to delete the ones that don’t add to the conversation but inevitably some will fall through the cracks. If you’re feeling vulnerable I would give the post a wide berth.

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