Maybe the first toy you remember ever being put in your hands was a baby doll. Maybe, at some point, the concept of “growing up” vaguely started to seem synonymous with finding a husband and starting a family of your own. Maybe you watched your older cousin dodge a barrage of when’s-the-baby-coming questions from extended family two months after her wedding. Maybe someone told you that you’ll never know the true meaning of life until you hold your baby in your arms after giving birth. Maybe your parents are starting to ask about when their currently nonexistent but also somehow inevitable grandchildren will be conceived. Maybe you saw your colleague work countless early mornings and long nights in the office up until the day she gave birth, only to see her struggle to advance upon her return mere weeks later. 

And maybe, just maybe, at some point you let the thought cross your mind… though you likely held it inside and didn’t dare whisper it to anyone else, careful not to startle others at its suggestion… but, still, before you could suppress it, those eight words floated up to the top of your brain and you asked yourself, “Am I sure I want to have kids?”

Can I ask you a personal question?

You’re not the first to ask this question

For roughly five years, America’s fertility rate has been hovering around an all-time low. Birth rates have fallen nationwide as more and more women choose to delay motherhood until well into their thirties or forgo having children altogether. The same story also rings true in developed nations across the globe, leading to those grim warnings of population decline you may have heard from economists, politicians, and executives alike in recent years, all citing the significant economic burden of an aging population on society. Many countries have even tried (without much success) to use financial incentives to encourage citizens to have more children. Let us assure you, however, that the fate of humanity does not hang in the balance of your very personal decision to have or not have children. And if it’s any solace as you think through that decision in your own life, you’re clearly not alone in giving it a great deal of thought. So let’s try to unpack it all. (A quick note: We’re not going to get into all the benefits of motherhood and pregnancy in this piece, though they are also undeniable; instead, we’re going to focus on highlighting the other side of the coin, the one that’s so rarely discussed openly.)

Kids don’t come without their costs

One major factor in the falling fertility rate, experts argue, is the increasing economic cost of having children for women in particular, as educational and professional opportunities for women have expanded in recent decades. From 1950 to 2000, the female share of the U.S. labor force rose from around 30% to just below 50%, where it’s plateaued since. American women are now outpacing their male counterparts in college graduation. “Women have more education, they’re in jobs that are more fulfilling, and they stay with them,” said Claudia Goldin, who won the Nobel prize in economics last year for her leading research on women in the workforce. (You may remember Goldin from our first ever NTP: So… do your friends know how much you make?.) Goldin is perhaps most well known for her concept of “greedy work”, which describes jobs that pay disproportionately more for increased hours and decreased flexibility and are incredibly difficult to perform as a parent handling the majority of childcare responsibilities (think: lawyers, bankers, etc.).

Fathers, however, make up only 5% of stay-at-home child caregivers in the U.S. Multiple different studies have shown that “mothers tend to say they do more than their spouse or partner, while fathers tend to say they share responsibilities about equally.” (This was especially true throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, as it drove women out of the workforce.) In her own research, Kelly Musick, professor of sociology at Cornell University, found that “before having their first child, women in heterosexual couples make about 40% of the couple’s total earnings. After birth, her earnings drop to less than a third—and remain there for the eight years that follow.” If modern-day women are seeking to optimize their economic opportunities, it’s not hard to imagine why they may consider opting out of motherhood in the face of such information.

The share of Americans that have never been married by the age of 40 is also at an all-time high of 25% and nearly half of babies in the U.S. are born to unmarried mothers. While working mothers are already 30% more likely to experience burnout than working fathers, and single parents are predisposed to remarkably elevated levels of anxiety, nowhere does the stress of parenting seem to be higher than amongst single working mothers. Even in two-parent households, the cost of childcare has become untenable for many American families. According to the Center for American Progress, “families with infants would need to pay nearly $16,000 per year on average” – or approximately 21% of the U.S. median income for a family of three – “to cover the true cost of child care.” Not surprisingly, skyrocketing childcare costs (in some cases up 32% from 2019) are driving more parents out of the workforce.

Under the U.S.’s Family and Medical Leave Act, most employees are only eligible for up to 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave annually. Women’s leaves are on average 3 times longer than men’s (54 days vs. 18 days), but women only receive full pay 32% of the time compared to 55% for men, while single women are significantly more likely than partnered women to receive no pay at all while on leave. One study found that “despite men and women reporting similar attitudes towards caring for children and sharing equally in caregiving responsibilities, men consistently reported planning to take less time away from work for parental leave than women.” Even when leaves are taken more equitably between mothers and fathers, bias against fathers penalizes them for not completing work-related tasks during leave.

Kids don’t always come easy

Childbearing and child rearing, of course, not only have economic costs but are also incredibly arduous tasks for the female body. Though common public discourse on the topic of pregnancy might lead you to believe it to be a purely magical and joyful experience, it can also be extremely challenging for many women. As Cat Bohanon, author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, puts it, “over the course of a pregnancy, you have effectively two competing agents: one trying to survive and not give too much, and the other trying to get as much as it can… a successful pregnancy is a stalemate that lasts, well, roughly 9 months.” While many women struggle with general pain and discomfort as well as frequent sickness, other health implications can be more serious. Nearly 1 in 12 to 17 pregnancies, for example, are accompanied by high blood pressure, which increases the risk of complications like preeclampsia, eclampsia, and stroke for the mother as well as preterm delivery for the baby. In recent years, maternal mortality has been on the rise, and it is particularly high for Black women.

While, for some, childbirth may be the beginning of one of the happiest stages of their lives, for many others – 10 - 15% of mothers – it may be the beginning of a battle with postpartum depression. Postpartum depression can manifest as “sleep disorders, mood swings, changes in appetite, fear of injury, serious concerns about the baby… sense of doubt, difficulty in concentrating, lack of interest in daily activities, thoughts of death and suicide… fear of harming the baby, [and] weak attachment to the baby.” Postpartum anxiety - often associated with scarily realistic intrusive thoughts -  is another common consequence impacting an estimated 17% of mothers that often lies undiagnosed because there’s no clinical definition for it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). On top of this, roughly 9% of women experience postpartum PTSD following childbirth, often due to traumatic deliveries such as unplanned C-sections. (In fact, after carrying and delivering her daughter, one of my friends commented that the pregnancy and birthing process was “the most significant trauma she’d ever experienced”. Two years later, she’s going the surrogacy route for her second kid.) Perhaps on the less severe end of the spectrum, “maternal ambivalence is [also] common, but very rarely talked about because it’s often linked with shame,” says clinical psychologist Dr. Sarah Gundle.

We certainly want to be wary of painting something as incredible as childbirth in a predominantly negative light. The strength of mothers, the power of their bodies, and the process of reproduction are each amazing in their own right. But we also think it’s important for women to be able to talk about the transformation their bodies and minds can undergo during and after pregnancy, as this side of the conversation can often be quieted by society. Take the case of Frida, for example, a company that sells products to help new parents through pregnancy and postpartum. In 2020, the company was rejected by ABC and the Oscars from airing an ad that showed the very realistic and painful daily challenges (e.g., simply going to the bathroom) a woman who’s just given birth might experience. As they said in response to the rejection, “and we wonder why new moms feel unprepared.”

But kids are a requirement, right?

We know that society has much higher expectations for women than men when it comes to nurturing qualities. And you’ve undoubtedly heard of the “maternal instincts” that live inside us and make the idea of not having children as women seem unorthodox, at best. One study found that childfree individuals were viewed as “significantly less psychologically fulfilled” than those with children and even evoked feelings of “moral outrage” for their choice to abstain from reproduction. Another found that “women face extraordinary difficulty in seeking sterilization as physicians routinely deny them the procedure,” often citing the “possibility of future regret” (as if adult women are unable to make that decision for themselves). In 2006, the CDC issued a set of recommendations for all women of child-bearing years to “behave as if they were already pregnant, even if they had no intention of conceiving in the near — or distant — future.” In 2015, Pope Francis said that choosing to not have children was a “selfish” act. When Elizabeth Holmes was facing trial for fraud at Theranos, many speculated that her pregnancy was a stunt to gain sympathy from the public. Social media is flush with “momfluencers” that tend to paint an overly rosy (also read as: affluent, white, unrealistic) picture of what motherhood truly looks like for most women.

But let us attempt to quiet some of that noise. On the topic of maternal instincts, while mothers’ brains have been shown to potentially undergo “synaptic pruning” (more or less a rewiring of sorts) that “promotes mother-baby-bonding,'' other studies have also demonstrated that the “father's brain is sensitive to childcare experiences,” too. So as a woman, you shouldn’t somehow feel more responsible than a man to be a parent. In fact, in the United States, parents are actually reported to be 12% less happy than their childfree counterparts, the “biggest happiness gap between parents and nonparents in the developed world.” One study by economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman involving over 900 women even found that they “recalled being with their children as less enjoyable than many other activities, such as watching TV, shopping, or preparing food.”

However, as another study outlines it (quite nicely, in our opinion), parents may “experience more daily joy and more daily stress than nonparents,” but there’s “no reason to expect that one group will be better or worse off than the other once other circumstances are controlled.” In other words, parenthood is likely associated with higher highs and lower lows than a childfree life, but general levels of happiness and fulfillment during life as a whole are likely not all that different between the two. And there are so many other ways to contribute to society and to support its young people without necessarily being a mother yourself. If you’re looking for an example of a woman who made the choice not to have children, we’ll leave you with these words of wisdom from Oprah Winfrey when she was asked about her decision:

“Throughout my years, I have had the highest regard for women who choose to be at home [with] their kids… Nobody gives women the credit they deserve… I have not had one regret about that. I also believe that part of the reason why I don’t have regrets is because I got to fulfill it in the way that was best for me: the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. Those girls fill that maternal fold that I perhaps would have had. In fact, they overfill — I’m overflowed with maternal.”

Let us know what you think by voting in our poll and leaving an anonymous comment.

  💭 Our two cents

This is a big topic. And, shocker, there’s no single right answer to the question of whether women should, if they’re able, have children of their own. But to us, it sometimes feels as though society would rather you not question the status quo on this topic, that it would rather you keep “women” synonymous with “mothers.” (Aside: I have always found it interesting, linguistically, that we nearly always use the male descriptor first in phrases like men and women, boys and girls, kings and queens, etc, yet the pattern is conveniently reversed for mothers and fathers…). But motherhood is only one piece of who we are as women. And we think that all women should have permission to at least consider what kind of role it should play in their own lives.

As we saw above, choosing to be a parent is a huge decision with major potential impacts on your career, financial stability, family, and health. But it often feels like we’re not supposed to be weighing those factors, at least not out loud. Other times, it feels as if we’ve become desensitized to the incredible feat that women put themselves through to bring children into the world. We see pregnant women going about their lives and rarely stop to appreciate all they are experiencing, juggling, and enduring in doing so. And at the same time, we might also subconsciously think less of the women who’ve made the decision that, for potentially a myriad of reasons, motherhood is not right for them. These are things we should not be afraid to talk about with each other.

Two Takes

In the spirit of talking, we figured the only reasonable and honest next step would be for the two of us to share how we each think about the potential role of motherhood in our futures. So, here it goes:

[S]: For me personally, I’ve never felt like my life’s sole purpose was to be a mother. I haven’t often feared I’d be deeply unfulfilled if I never had children of my own. I’ve rarely dreamt of motherhood as the most magical experience in my life. I have often found myself focusing on and looking towards goals within my career more than I prioritized putting myself on a path to become a parent. At the same time, though, I do want to build a family throughout my life, to create and be a part of a unit with those I love. And for me, it is that desire for family more than the desire for motherhood itself that underlies why I hope to one day have children. If for some reason, life does not shake out such that I find and marry a partner to spend my life and raise children with, I also have confidence that I would be able to live a happy and fulfilled life without being a mother. Growing up, I often worried it was a bad thing that I didn’t identify with dreaming of being a mother since my own birth. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that I’m anything but alone in having these feelings. And because they are feelings that many other women also share, it’s all the more important that we continue to teach young girls that it’s okay for dreams of their future to include aspirations other than motherhood, even if they still include motherhood, too.

[J]: Despite being incredibly career-focused, something that sometimes surprises people who don’t know me personally is that I’ve known since I was a toddler that I was meant to be a mom. I secretly played with baby dolls far longer than was appropriate, I was changing diapers and giving babies bottles as a mother’s helper starting at age 10, and I built up a legitimate babysitting business as a teen. While I met my life partner at age 16 and will thus most likely have a partner to raise kids with, I also know if my circumstances were different, I’d do it alone. Ironically, this is something that I sometimes struggle with because I wonder if it discounts my work ethic and career goals. I worry that people who know this might think I’m somehow less driven or take me less seriously professionally. But in recent years, as I’ve dedicated my career to the maternal health space and learned more about what motherhood entails, I’ve realized it’s the opposite. Wanting to be a mom and a career woman doesn’t make me more or less driven than women who choose a different path - it just makes me driven in multifaceted ways. My friend who also happens to be a new mom recently texted me that even with a supportive partner, the majority of the work still falls on her. She ended the message with “Superior species proven once again 🤗.” And isn’t that right? Being a mom is HARD. I do not wish it on anyone who doesn’t want it because it’s inconvenient, expensive, physically and emotionally burdensome, and potentially has negative impacts on your career and thus wealth-building trajectory. I am all about giving women more choice - whether it’s with their careers, their bodies, or their life decisions. Just because I want to be a mom doesn’t mean you have to be. You do you, girl. 

So, now you know where we fall out on this. Maybe one of our perspectives resonates with you, or maybe not (and if not, we hope you’ll share what does resonate with you in the comments). If anything, we just hope this gives you confidence to think and talk about what motherhood might look like in your life, and to do so without judging yourself or those around you for the way in which we make that decision. After all, it’s one of the most deeply personal decisions we’ll ever get the chance to make.

💃 The girls have spoken

Last week, as we explored the semi-uncomfy question So….why do we make ourselves so small?, we also asked you in which ways you feel you “shrink” yourself. The results were pretty balanced. 42% of us minimize our needs if they might inconvenience someone else, 29% downplay our accomplishments to avoid sounding self-absorbed, and 21% don’t share our opinions because we feel like others will probably have better things to say. And your comments covered everything from shrinking yourself at work, in your relationships, and even in your social lives - demonstrating that we’re really not alone. But one reader provided a silver lining: “I also think we should encourage young boys to be more thoughtful like girls…it’s not just changing girls or boys but knowing they both have strengths and weaknesses and encouraging everyone to increase their confidence but also to increase their emotional intelligence and awareness of other people’s feelings!”. We love this because oftentimes, more female-leaning traits are considered a negative. And in a male-dominated society, they are. But another way to consider things isn’t “how should women change?” but also, “how should men change?”. As future parents, leaders, etc. we do have some power. We can choose to celebrate different values, socialize our kids to exhibit different behaviors, and build cultures that celebrate both the inherent and learned behaviors of men and women. 

💌 Up Next

That’s all for today! If you liked this edition of Not That Personal, we think one of your friends probably will too – refer one (or two or three) below. ;)

Have something to say? We’d love to hear it – reply to this email or leave an anonymous comment here :) 

Up next: So…can you actually manifest your life?

💖 S & J