I'm about to turn 29, and the first of my friends is having a baby in the new year. This news made many people think. I'm pretty ambivalent about having a baby myself, but I feel like it's the next milestone. I feel a lot of pressure when I have to decide whether to have a child or not, but mostly it is my own choice. Unlike others, I don't have any relatives asking this question.
I know I have a few years to make a decision (and may not be lucky enough to have a child in this case), so how can I reframe my thinking and be genuinely happy for my friend without feeling pressured to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life?
Eleanor says: New year, next milestone, new stage of life; all these different vices that make us feel trapped by the question: “Am I where I am?” must to be in life?
I think the fact that you're feeling insecure right now really matters. Despite your ambivalence, you may be facing some big life changes: Should I move out of the country? Change jobs? – and there are big life changes when ambivalence itself makes the choice.
When it comes to having children, the risk of “doing it despite the ambivalence” affects more than just you. Having a baby in the first place is not a milestone. A child is a person; the person who can tell if their parents regretted their existence. Yes, you will hear stories of blissfully transformed ambivalence; parents who weren't sure they were going to be parents until they looked into their newborn's eyes. But there are also stories that people are reluctant to share because they are very difficult to say out loud; parents who bet on uncertainty regretted it and made their child pay a lifetime tax for that regret. I think that the rules of human creation allow for far fewer leaps, despite the ambivalence, than other great changes in life. Sometimes we associate all these “life stages”—children, relationships, careers—as questions about what I should be done with my life, when the birth of a child is really a question of whether it is worth creating someone stranger life.
This very fact can give you the strategy you want; a way to reframe it so it's not just this terrible pressure to decide for the rest of your life. Perhaps instead of diving headfirst into the issue, the goal might be to make it less harsh. Start with small information-gathering questions. Not “do I want kids” but “how do I feel when I spend the day watching my friend with his child?” “How would I feel if some all-knowing eight told me that there were no children in my future: no relief, no hardship?” “If I did have children, what parts are non-negotiable? Do I need to be close to my family; Do I want to have a partner; Would I adopt? “What kind of parent would I like to be; How close am I to that now?”
Thinking through some of these first-stage questions can make you feel less panicked and overwhelmed. The goal is to sneak up on the big issue, as if unnoticed, so as not to frighten it away; asking smaller, practical questions about what it means to have a child in material terms, rather than treating it like a big, scary symbol of “where I there must be.”
If you feel this way about the issue, it will be much easier to separate it from your feelings about your friend's new baby. You asked how you can be “downright happy” for them, but I don't think that should be the goal. It's very common to feel resentment, comparison, or even envy when friends go through big life changes. Instead of sweeping these feelings away with a broom, it might be interesting to let them (privately) long enough to ask whether they are truly a reaction to having a baby or just a reaction to life's developmental pressures.
At the moment it sounds as if the question of whether to have children seems to be a repetition of the same question of tension, compression; I'm where I am must to be in life?
But we can do a lot of harm by treating major life decisions as symbols. You should make this decision because you want it, not because of what it is.
