In the early months after my daughter was born, I thought it was surely the hormones surging through my body that made me, someone who had never been interested in babies, find my daughter’s every move endlessly fascinating. At some point the hormones would quiet, the fascination would diminish, and I would return to my prior self.
But nearly two years later, I find myself shoveling sand into a plastic turtle with genuine enthusiasm. How do I reconcile this reality with the ambivalence with which I once approached motherhood?
We are at a strange moment when it comes to ideas about parenthood in this country. An increasing number of adults say that they are unlikely to become parents, leading to much hand-wringing over declining birthrates. Some argue a drop in people having babies signals impending societal decline. Others believe the implications are overblown. These conversations play out in ways large and small, from political and policy arguments to the inevitable uncomfortable conversations over the holiday dinner table.
For all the talk, which many of us would rather ignore, there is a kernel of something real here that’s not being adequately addressed. For my generation — and, I’d argue, especially for women in my generation — the decision of whether to have a child has become highly fraught. It’s tied up with our desires for fulfilling careers, our willingness to risk a shift in the identities and lives we have built. It’s tied up in an understanding of all that went into making motherhood a choice that we get to make. With so much at stake, it is so easy to become paralyzed by indecision.
But perhaps what I would have wanted to hear when I was dithering was something like this: Having a child has been extraordinary. I came very close to not doing it. And if I had not, that life would have been a good one, too, just a different one. The hardest part of any decision is always the uncertainty, the time entertaining two possible outcomes, not knowing what happens on the other side. For those facing a similar choice, intensified by the holiday season, know that whatever you decide — or whatever is decided for you by biology and chance and time — it gets only easier from here.
As a critical care doctor, I deal with the gravity of uncertainty all the time. I walk my patients and their families through what can feel like impossible decisions. Sometimes families spend days or even longer in a state of limbo, uncertain which treatment path to choose. Any decision is a relief, because then we can start to plan. Just as there is relief in deciding to have a child and then getting pregnant, there is also relief in making a clear decision not to. We can leave our self-imposed purgatory.
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