Have That Baby
Want kids? Don’t wait for the ‘perfect time’
‘ARE you ready for a baby?” ask the headlines in women’s magazines — and also nosy people in your life.
Recently, the British site Stylist had a feature about the perfect time to have a baby. They note a recent survey showing a third of women wanting to have comfortable savings and owning a home first.
The story continued: “Meanwhile, the bucket list — once restricted to things to do before you die — now pops up on parenting websites, in the guise of ‘things to do before you get pregnant’, on the premise that there won’t be a lot of bungee jumping going on once you’ve given birth. There is a sense that we need to get our (metaphorical and literal) houses in order — and live a little — before we take the plunge.”
You’re having a child, not dying (kicking the bucket), so why do you need a bucket list? Since when do we have this strange notion that having a family is what we do when we’re all done having a life?
“Doing it before you are ready could cause resentment towards your new lifestyle, partner and baby,” Stylist quotes Beth Follini as saying. Follini is, “a life coach who helps women decide whether or not they want children” — because apparently that’s a thing now.
There’s this idea that there comes a point in your life when everything can pause for a bit as you take time off to have a baby, secure in your finances and the knowledge your career will pick up right where it left off. It doesn’t actually work like that — for women or men.
At the start of your career, you’re new and mostly replaceable. As you climb your career ladder, you take on more responsibilities making it harder to step away. As for the resentment, life is filled with various resentments no matter which road you take: Have the kid, resent how your life has changed; don’t have the kid, resent how your life hasn’t changed.
It’s not just women being told they have to accomplish everything they’ve ever dreamed of before getting started on a family. A new book from conservative writer John Hawkins, “101 things all young adults should know,” has plenty of solid advice. But No. 79 is: “If you can’t support yourself, don’t get married and have children.”
Hawkins writes that financial problems can strain a marriage. That’s true, of course. But his idea that “this is something to think about if you’re thinking of having a kid or getting married young before you start making real money” is where he gets it wrong. Any number of things can strain a marriage, very much including “making real money,” which can require long hours away from the family and gives the family grist to argue over how it gets spent.
Successful marriages have two people working toward the same goals. Not having reached those objectives in advance isn’t a liability for a couple and there’s no guarantee of a financially secure couple making it work, either.
The fact is that being financially comfortable is a fleeting feeling. As we make more money, our expenses tend to go up. You get a nicer car, a bigger house, better vacations. We’re a country of spenders.
I wrote in these pages last September how half of Americans making $100,000 to $150,000 have less than $1,000 in savings, with 18 percent of those having no savings at all. They’re making “real” money, should they be having children?
The twist is that having children can often be the grounding experience that people require. Earlier this month, Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted his support for Ivanka Trump’s paid-family leave ideas, saying, “In America, no family should be forced to put off having children due to economic insecurity.”
Writing in The Federalist, Mollie Hemingway challenged Hawkins’ idea that people should wait for the “right time” financially to have children. About her own experience, Hemingway wrote: “We were more productive and successful with what we did, because we had to be.”
Hemingway also repeats her father’s advice: “If you wait until you have enough money to have children, you will never have children.”
That’s the thing about having kids, there’s no right or wrong time to have them. Are you ready for a baby? No one actually is.
And guess what? You’re still allowed to bungee jump or procrastinate on writing your novel after they arrive. There’s no rule that says you have to own your own home or have made partner at your firm.
You can have all the money and still be a terrible parent or have very little of it and win at parenthood daily. Aim for the parenthood winning and let the rest fall into place.