How Do You Decide To Have A Child... Or Not?

CW: In this podcast, we discuss pregnancy and having children, and our own personal experiences with those topics. We know these are difficult topics for many people. If you’re struggling with infertility, or have suffered miscarriage, or have lost children, we know that questions around pregnancy and “choosing” to have children can be particularly painful. If this is the case for you, this may be a good episode to skip.A couple of months ago, we asked our wonderful listeners for questions and suggested topics for a discussion on motherhood/non-motherhood — and received a deluge of outstanding submissions. This week, we finally got around to answering some of them! In this episode, we focused on questions about deciding whether, when, and how to prepare for having kids; choosing not to be a parent; the experience of pregnancy and childbirth; and the logistics of having kids while working and living in the city. Many of these questions are profoundly personal, and really have no “right” or universal answer. We tried to balance speaking honestly about our own experiences and feelings with trying to circle some broader takeaways, despite the fact that everyone’s experiences and feelings on these topics are unique and can’t be distilled into simple rules. Doing these episodes on the motherhood question have been nothing if not a challenge to examine where our own emotions and beliefs about having kids took root — the values we grew up with, the examples we were shown, our own personality quirks, the lucky and unlucky breaks we’ve gotten along the way — and to reflect on how we really decide what to do with our lives. We hope you enjoy, and stay tuned — we’ll have more coming soon, with questions about money, working motherhood, how having/not having kids can affect friendships and your relationship with yourself, and advice!If you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireandemma.substack.com/subscribe