The Negative Case for Having Kids

Parenthood has a PR problem. But the alternatives to having kids deserve scrutiny as well.

FOR THE RECORD, I’m not pro natal. Meaning, IDGAF whether other people have kids or not, provided it is their own choice.

Having kids is hard, as has been extensively documented, especially lately online. And I get why many people would just decide to have way more money and leisure time as an alternative.

BUT, I think we should acknowledge, parenting can also be fun and joyful. There’s a reason so many people still feel compelled to take on such a huge financial burden, and all the health and emotional risks that come with it. I like kids. Having little people who just radiate fun and happiness living with you is A+, imo.

My purpose here, however, is to NOT convince anyone to have kids NOR — and especially not — make anyone who wanted to have kids but couldn’t or didn’t feel worse about it. (That shit makes me furious.)

All that being said, I DO feel like the internet is a little too gloomy about children in a way that isn’t necessarily helpful to people trying to grapple with these serious decisions in a reasonable way.

Parenthood has a PR problem. I think this is partly because a lot of the famous writers and influencers have very young kids? And very young kids are pretty hard. Though even in those years, writers and influencers might have weird incentives to RAGE about this or that. We obviously don’t have a very supportive culture for parents in the U.S. and that contributes to the public angst. And that is real.

IDK I also feel like a negativity about children is sort of left-coded now. And if you want to have kids, you’re like a (gross! omg!) trad wife, in the weird parallel universe that is the internet. It’s sort of a problem how the internet takes the MOST NORMAL THING IN THE WORLD, having kids, and turns it into just another culture war battle. And if you’re going to be a cool lefty you have to poo poo having kids because you’re SO WORLDLY and SOPHISTICATED. Groan.

This is so annoying. We should be the party that sticks up for kids, who are disproportionately poor. But nothing makes sense anymore. The algorithm is the boss now.

Anyway, my kids are middle age now, seven and nine. And they are super fun. Don’t get me wrong, they drive me nuts frequently. My husband and I can barely keep up with the housework and everything involved with just doing basic, decent parent stuff. Keeping a calendar for a whole family alone is just like too much for me. Buying, preparing food for them, that they don’t even eat omg. It’s a 1,000 step process and I’m practically drowning in this kind of frustrating tedium daily.

Still though, it really does have intrinsic rewards. I feel like the rewards of parenting sort of don’t translate as easily into Instagram bragging as the kinds of rewards available to (well off) folks without kids. (Idk reasonable people can debate this I guess.)

For example, the other day, it was winter break. Snow had fallen in Cleveland and from the front room of my house, the view out the bay windows was pure Winter Wonderland. I made my daughter and I oatmeal, and sat with her and snuggled and watched cartoons. We didn’t have to rush anywhere because of winter break. So I just took a beat and watched with her.

Oatmeal, and cartoons on a snowy morning with your cute 7-year-old daughter, maybe it’s just me, but to me this is ZEN. It was just a normal morning and we were doing this very accessible thing. But I am overwhelmed by my good fortune in moments like that. I have this feeling when I’m with them a lot. Those kinds of things, those are the really good things in life, in my opinion. I don’t know how well it even translates here.

I wasn’t one of those people who sort of agonized over the decision to have kids. I always wanted to, knew I wanted kids, from the time I was a child. Especially, for whatever reason, a daughter.

But I didn’t have kids until my early 30s, so I got to experience dating as an adult, and a little bit of career development (although lol in my case) and some of the alternatives: travel, eating out etc. Although I never made a ton of money in my 20s so I was a tiny bit limited in some of these activities, but still.

I mentioned part of the motivation for me, with having kids, was intrinsic and instinctual, but I also had an opportunity to sort of grow bored with what seemed like the most available alternatives to child rearing. And I think these things are arguably over rated. My sort of ambivalence about all that was motivating for me in wanting to have kids as well.

Like…

Eating out

Eating out is cool. I miss getting to do it now that I don’t get to do it as much. And even though I love cooking, the amount of labor I do now in the kitchen is pretty intense and can be a real grind.

But also, eating out is not that cool. Even before I had kids, I’d get bored of it. Sometimes I’d be out to dinner or whatever with some friends and acquaintances and, I remember, they’d complain about “the service.” That is such a red flag for me. I used to be a waitress. Imagine sitting in a restaurant with friends and spending your time complaining about “the service".” Groan.

Around the time I had kids, there was a weird culture around dining out, especially in Cleveland, that was quasi religious and I think that has dissipated somewhat. Eating out all the time isn’t necessarily magical. It’s NEVER like that movie The Big Night (sadly!) It can be boring. It can be an exercise in conspicuous consumption at times. Now, when I do get a chance to do something like that, I feel like I appreciate it more.

Travel

This is really gonna get me cancelled, but I feel a little the same about travel. I’ve always liked traveling. I just wrote a piece rhapsodizing about traveling a little for work, which genuinely was mind-expanding and life affirming.

But I also feel like there’s this sort of arms race happening right now with travel, thanks to Instagram. There’s a lot of over tourism. I don’t really feel all that terrible about missing out on taking over this formerly quaint village in Italy in the summer, that is more or less a Disney theme park at this point, and fighting with other tourists for the best view at lunch.

Anymore, when I travel, purely for travel’s sake, I feel a bit adrift. I like traveling for work or to visit friends more, because at least then, you’re interacting with some locals and learning from their perspectives, idk.

Career

The biggest one for me though is this one. Some people don’t have kids so they can really go all in on their career. And work and careers… yuck, I’m sorry. I just think people take a big risk staking so much of their happiness on that.

Everyone is different. And maybe other people have more to offer employers and co-workers and so come away from this kind of transaction feeling affirmed. But that has not been my experience with work necessarily.

And listen, I have had a pretty cool career, all things considered. I wrote a book and then went on a five-year book tour, giving keynotes and that kind of thing. Who gets to do that? It’s insane. And I wrote a book that people kinda took seriously, and that contributed to some meaningful changes (at least I think so). So yeah, that was cool.

That being said, I’ve also had my share of career disappointments. I feel like so much of this is out of our control. It’s not always going to play out that whoever works the hardest, or sacrifices the most, gets whatever a certain career has determined is The Ultimate Prize.

A lot of work things are related to luck and timing and connections. Plenty of amazing, hard-working people never get the kind of recognition they probably deserve for their contributions.

This last one is really where I would caution people about putting all their apples in one basket, and where I feel increasingly grateful, as I get older, that I didn't (even though I have made sacrifices work wise because of family and it’s had an impact probably.)