#147: Who’s allowed to want kids?

Furthermore, the world hadn’t paused. The good ones had been snatched up, just like people always said they would be. I had always scoffed at this, because I knew so many fantastic guys who were single into their thirties and forties. But chasing some of those fantastic guys unsuccessfully for years had shown me what everyone was talking about when

It can sometimes feel like society isn’t keen on airing these thoughts of ambivalence. The way in which I can be a passionate advocate of access to free, safe, legal abortion as well as have complicated feelings about my own experience, sometimes wondering what if? In funnelling people into polarised positions, in resisting the difficulty of feelin

‘Do you mind either way?’ The woman behind the till has scanned my box of Colgate and bottle of nit shampoo, but her hand pauses over the pregnancy test. My eyes flick quickly up to hers. I have four children already; asking me if I mind, as I buy a test that will seal my fate, feels way too intimate. What if I had been a different person, in diffe

When people say they want kids, what is it they actually want? Lots of folks would say they want to have a baby with their partner, but what’s the difference between wanting that and wanting your own baby? It felt like people with kids knew something at the onset that I still couldn’t understand.

“Those who look to parenthood as a solution to their discontent will typically find that the rewards, though real, are some years in the future.”

I’ve already explained the most obvious reason that this supposed freedom seems profoundly coercive: You can, with some effort, rebel against the ways you were raised. (Consider, say, the number of lapsed Catholics, despite all the combined and ferocious efforts of parents and nuns.) But you can’t rebel against the genes implanted inside you: The c