To Be or Not To Be a Mother

A little pumpkin is on her way! 🥳 And I am embarking on a new journey in life!

Making this decision to have a baby, to intentionally bring a human into this world and then to take up everything that comes with raising a child, did not seem as straightforward to me. I was constantly seeking a decision making framework. There’s no denying that there exists a natural biological instinct but the analyst in me just wouldn’t let nature take over.

“How to decide whether to have children?”

Nature vs deliberate choice Biological clock and its limits Will I regret it if I don’t have a baby? What kind of world will my kid grow up in?

I had a huge list of questions! In fact, I never had so many questions while choosing a career path or picking a life partner.

Surprisingly, there was also an element of selfishness to this new decision I was making. What will I be sacrificing if I decide to be a parent? Mothers often sacrifice whole careers and identities. You are told there is joy in child rearing and kids make your life more meaningful, but there’s joy in many other things and you can make your life meaningful in many other ways. Just like with house buying, there seemed to be an unwritten social contract. In the invisible list of personal milestones, once you are financially independent, you marry, then you buy a home and then you populate it.

Both Ravi and I arrived at this decision independently. Two pieces of literature stood out to us. For me it was an essay by Paul Graham. It’s called “Having Kids” and I have read it at least ten times. It has this one line which did it for me - “what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won’t survive having kids?” For Ravi, it was Bryan Caplan’s “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think”.

Here I am - 8 months pregnant, basking in all the love and attention, eating to my heart’s content and surfing for baby clothes on Facebook Buy Nothing groups. Everyone around me is eagerly waiting for the baby to arrive. If only I could push this delivery date a bit! To next quarter perhaps, or should I say, trimester! 😂