Feature image from E+ Collection / FatCamera via Getty Images
When I planned this roundtable, I did not imagine the week we would have (though to clarify, I’m not surprised), and all the different meanings publishing something like this could hold at this specific point in time. Nonetheless, the team responded to the prompt generously and, especially, courageously. And I don’t use that word lightly because so many of these answers are deeply vulnerable. My prompt was very general. I asked my colleagues to tell me about whether they want kids, or not, or whether they have kids — and then to include any and all feelings they want to on the topic.
You know, if it’s one thing I love about this space, it’s being able to learn about the ways individual queer people shape their lives and the reasons behind those choices. I’m always grateful and, at the same time, never surprised by how thoughtful my colleagues and this community (you!) wind up being, including when it comes to nurturing and parenting young humans. So, A+ member, are you a parent, thinking of becoming one, child-free on purpose, anywhere in between? What are your thoughts on queer parenting? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!
xoxo,
Nicole
i love children, admire the shit out of the brave souls who raise them, and could not have a more visceral aversion to even the briefest contemplation of being a parent. HARD NOPE FROM ME. but i will be a delighted queer auntie to any and all kids who want one!
thank you all for such beautiful thoughts on this particularly hard and timely question.
I want to finish reading this, but before I do I want to throw out there: Adoption is not rescuing a child. You are not a hero for adopting a child. Adoption is not inherently better than birthing especially b/c the adoption industry IS highly problematic.
I didn’t grow up with the majority of my bio family and the people who helped me out were not heroes, they were just people. People who may have tried, but got a lot of shit wrong. I hope to be able to speak more eloquently on the topic one day, but adoption is not some morally superior high ground. Maybe before colonization. I really want that to be touched upon when we talk about adoption.
If we wanted to be morally superior than fostering with the intent to reunite would be morally superior, but I never see that mentioned. Only people talking about adopting with undertones of “rescuing a child.”
I am so happy there is adoption, but I want potential adopters to recognized the pain that comes with adoption. Me and mother mother have never really been able to gel into our bio families and that pain that comes with that has been unbearable for me at times. Especially as a non white person. Years of Indigenous teachings missed.
I’m not trying to fight anyone, I already got some whiffs of “adoption is morally better.” I don’t think folks realize it, I think people should be able to express themselves, this is just what I see. My partner had that rhetoric and we had to have multiple conversations about it. Thank you for reading.
Thank you so much for this response! As the editor on this, I did leave responses open to individual thoughts, feelings and perspectives because this is such a deeply personal topic and so what you’re reading here are those — and I also limited the word count, so I imagine that people did not feel like they could dig too deeply into as complex a topic as adoption in their responses here, and I appreciate you starting a dialogue about it in the comments! Thank you for sharing your perspective and I hope that folks read it along with the roundtable responses and add their own experiences with adoption/the foster care system, if they want to, as well.
thank you for sharing – that is such a critical context, and i really appreciate your giving of this experience here.
I think about this often. Foster care is also loaded – even if the goal is to reunite, the separation (and policing, and surveillance) happened in the first place. I am interested in fostering one day, but it’s hard to grapple with the harm and oppression and colonial legacies that are embedded throughout all of those systems. What we really need is a better world with real social safety nets and community support so that fewer families had to endure that separation. FWIW I would love to read an Autostraddle article about fostering, foster parenting, being a former foster child etc. to get more perspectives on this and ways to engage with those systems in a more ethical way.
As a current foster parent, I would also love to see this content!
Several years ago someone from Australia, I believe, posted about their system for supporting families, and it was so helpful to see another option that minimizes removal of children from their families, recognizing the inherent trauma of the separation.
The system we have in the US is highly problematic, for sure. As a foster parent one of my main goals is to support bio parents, to be a cheerleader for them. When talking to others about foster parenting, I always highlight supporting bio parents as one of the main goals.
Omg would 10000% love love love to see AS content on adoption and fostering (I’m not trying to lump them together fwiw, I understand they’re different with discrete goals). My partner and I are talking about if/when/how to make a family and while adoption is theoretically something we would consider, we are acutely aware of how deeply unethical it can be. We might also make pretty rad foster parents but, again, so so much to navigate and so much info on both is geared toward straight cis people. Living in a red state just makes it all the more daunting! So yes tldr would love a million more articles on these deeply complex topics on this site. And thank you to the poster of this comment for pointing out the issues with adoption!!
This is so real and so appreciated.
Thank you so much for posting this.
yes! completely agree with you Kayla. My dad was adopted and he has talked to me about how damaging the idea of adoptive parents as heroes can be. Especially because with adoption a child is being removed from their family and often their culture to be raised in another family, without much regard for the loss and grief they have experienced. Would definitely recommend that people interested in adoption read up on adoptee perspectives to get a better understanding of the issues.
always luv 2 be punched in the heart by laneia’s words
SAME
This is truly the only description for that feeling, and I love it so much.
!!! 💛💛💛
UGH same
came here 2 say this
I have late teen/young adult kids.
ONE OF THEM CAME OUT TO ME LAST WEEK AND I AM SO HAPPY!!! 🏳️🌈 ❤️ 🏳️🌈
Congrats to your kid!! ❤❤❤
he is so great and I love him so much!
Abeni, I’m not saying this to persuade you (choosing to be child-free is a great and valid choice and trying to talk people into having kids is obnoxious) but I just wanted to let you know my wife is also an introvert who needs a lot of alone time and she turned out to be 100x better at parenting than me.
whoa word????? lol thank you for this perspective
Hey Abeni,
Also not here to persuade or guilt-trip but I am a major introvert myself AND I’m a kickass parent. Yes, the stage of playing the same thing over and over and over and OVER AND OVER is … rough. And yes while it’s going on it feels like it’s lasting forEVER and you spend some time gritting your teeth and smiling pleasantly and not snarling “no I do NOT want to play doggies AGAIN, darling.” But that stage does end. Now I have a kiddo who loves to spend hours reading and whose mind it’s fascinating to watch work. We have great conversations while we walk to the park AND we don’t spend every moment together.
The thing that made the biggest difference for me was having an all-in partner. He’s also an introvert, so especially during those earlier years we made an explicit point of spelling each other as primary parent to make sure each of us got time away to decompress. That was vital to our own mental health, which was vital to the quality of our parenting.
Should you have kids? I have no idea! But if in considering everything else, you decide the answer is yes, don’t let being an introvert stop you. Just consider what it means you need to be a successful parent, whether that’s an all-in partner or other support, an older kid already past the repetitive-play stage, or what. And if the answer is no, I’ll second all the other parents saying we LOVE and value anyone who wants to love and value our children. Queer aunties are the best.
This is also my fear as an introvert so thank you for saying this!
No one really touched on this, but I struggle with sitting on the fence for more existential/philosophical reasons. Existence is the biggest blessing and the biggest curse. I am plagued often with fears of mortality, questioning, crushing depression, confusion, and more. Being able to bring life into the world could be the greatest thing that I do, but I will die and so will any children. And they will have to grapple with that long after I am gone.
This is apart from all the more typical concerns— how would I be as parent, responsibility, money, physical health and mental health.
Some say that having a child gave their life meaning, but I want to make meaning for myself first.
I feel this very hard. I didn’t mention it in my answer to the roundtable, but I have struggled with mental health and SI; I would never want to have a kid and then have a mental health crisis and “abandon” them.
Even though I’m in such a better mental health place now than I’ve ever been, I am still not 100% convinced I will never struggle with SI in the future. And I don’t think I want to have a kid if I think that’s still a possibility.
The existential concerns are real, but because I 100% agree with your desire to have meaning in your own life not dependent on your children, I’ll argue they don’t have to play a role in your decision about kids. I guess the basic question you have to decide is: is the existence of a human worth the pain they’re guaranteed to go through? And if the answer is yes, how do you want to respond to that? It *could* be by having your own kid(s), but it doesn’t have to be. It could be by striving to make your own existence as worth-the-pain as possible, whatever that means for you – as happy? As meaningful? As impactful? It could be by working to make others’ existence as worth-the-pain as possible. Queer-auntying your friends’/siblings’ kids, volunteering at local schools, policy activism, etc. It could be more than one of these!
Yes, you’re going to die. Yes, so will any children you might have, and any friends and family you know, and everyone else. We’re temporary collections of atoms, and we’re the patterns of meaning we create in our own consciousness and the minds of our families and friends. Yes, some of your life has been/will be painful and difficult, and same for any children. But when I start thinking too much about this stuff, I go outside and look up on a clear night (or go troll the apod.nasa.gov archives on cloudy nights lol) and think about the percentage of the universe, in time and in volume, that’s hospitable to life. It’s ridiculously close to zero. The fact that any life exists at all, much less that some of it has become conscious and capable of art and science and kindness? That fact that you and I, specifically, exist? Wildly, ridiculously, preposterously unlikely. Fucking amazing. Even if exactly the same life forms are also capable of cruelty and ignorance. My job isn’t to be a perfect human or raise my kiddo to be one, or to have a life without pain. It’s to do all I can to help the art-science-kindness-amazingness side outweigh the ignorance-etc. side.
My dad died 21 years ago. I still miss him. But I’m so grateful that he existed and his life had meaning (regardless of my own existence). I have no idea whether or not you should have kids, but if the answer is otherwise yes, fear of your children’s grief at your death doesn’t have to be a reason not to. There are family-medical-history reasons why I worry about dying young enough that my kiddo would still be too young (what’s the “right” age anyway, but never mind), but I’ve channeled that into taking the best care of myself that I can and doing everything I can to raise her with the social/emotional support, honesty and resilience to help her get through it if it happens.
OK, enough heavy stuff, time for a ridiculous-face-making contest with said kiddo. Best of luck with your own decision, clearly it will be a thoughtful one!
Thank you for this beautiful reply!
Wow thank you for this thoughtful reply! 💗
I want so badly for people to stop universalizing their personal desire not to have children into this rhetoric that Having Kids Is Bad And Selfish, Actually, Because In Case You Haven’t Heard The World Is Ending – I see it so much among queers my age in the Gen Z/Millennial sector and truly, truly all it does is make people like Vanessa feel guilty for making the life choices they want to make. (To be clear, I don’t think anyone in this roundtable is doing this, and of course I super sympathize with anyone who personally chooses to be child-free because dealing with our hellworld is a full-time job already.)
But like, setting aside the eugenic subtext that the argument takes on if you follow it to its natural conclusion – other folks have pointed this out in other AS comment sections and I’m grateful to them – the fact is that the world has never been a “good” “place” to raise children. The urge to have kids is not and has never been about, like, calculating where we currently sit on the arc of the moral universe. Ask anyone in history with the privilege to choose parenthood why they want kids, and I don’t think a single one would answer “Well, the world is just such a wonderful place and I feel so confident that I could give a child a perfect life that it would be irresponsible of me NOT to procreate!!”
If you want to have a kid and love them and give them the best life you possibly can and fight to make the world a better place for them to be in once you’re gone, that’s a beautiful thing. The world is not ending. It is going to keep getting demonstrably worse to live in for a while, yes. But people are going to keep loving each other and babies are going to keep being born and there is always going to be beauty and kindness and community and hope to keep living for.
(Sorry for the giant, like, Tumblr post. This is mostly self-talk given the week we’ve all had)
Thank you for this comment. I literally couldn’t agree more.
Thank you so much for saying this, I’ll say more in my own comment but I also have felt frustrated with the narrative that having kids is bad given current events. There has never been an ideal time to have a child and ultimately being a parent is an incredibly personal decision. I think some of us are so used to getting the message that you MUST have children that we go the other direction and it puts stress on people still trying to figure out whether they want to have kids.
Thanks for this! I’ve felt in the past that I needed to justify my ambivalence toward having kids, and I’ve definitely used the “the world is too screwed up to bring a kid into it” excuse. I’ve leaned more toward “being a parent just doesn’t interest me, but that could change” in recent years, but I really appreciate you spelling out why the former is so problematic. Your framing is actually something that helps me a lot in general with climate and political anxiety in general. Yeah the world sucks, but it has always been scary to be a person and that doesn’t mean life isn’t worth living.
I loved reading this. Thank you all for your vulnerability. I’m sitting here 36 weeks pregnant — on the teetering edge of becoming a parent — how wild! I loved especially reading the answers from parents of teens and young adults. Wow, I can’t wait to be endlessly humbled by this experience.
Thank you so much for reading and !!!!!! congrats!!!
babe! mazel tov! i can’t believe we met so many years ago when we were just BABIES ourselves and now you’re pregnant and almost a parent and hopefully in the next couple of years i will be too. just feeling emotional and happy for you. <3 <3 <3
Mareika, congratulations! You will be humbled but also uplifted, fascinated, uproariously amused, and totally gobsmacked by how much you grow to love your little person. Rooting for you! :)
Going to try to not cry while I write this! Vanessa, I just wanted to thank you for so perfectly articulating my feelings on having children while struggling with existential dread about the climate crisis and political events in the US. I also felt pretty certain for much of my life that I would always be a parent and have had many people tell me that I would make a good mother (I didn’t believe them for so long because of my own mommy issues but I’ve come around). And then the last few years happened! And I don’t know. That certainty is gone and I just feel lost. I don’t think it’s selfish to have children, but then I try to imagine what my life will look like the next 20 years and I don’t know. The future is already so murky because of what’s happening in the world, things are changing so quickly, I don’t have a model for what being a parent will look like in 5, 10 years. Or will I even be able to be a parent the way I want to be a parent in a potentially fascist state?
Mostly I’m just furious every day that we have to think about this and that the people who want children can’t just have children. I hate that previous generations rarely considered the ramifications of their actions, and that people who probably didn’t want children still had to have them because of society. I described it the other day as feeling like I’m walking down a hallway that used to be full of open doors, and slowly more and more of those doors are closed off to me.
But I also think about Parable of the Sower, which I just read, and how even in the worst moments of apocalypse people are still having children and communities come together to raise those children! And how the message of that book is one of hope and future. Anyway, I’ll stop now because I’m rambling and clearly need to process this elsewhere haha. Thank you all for sharing your stories and giving us this space to share our own.
I love my kid and the relationship I have with my kid, who is just my very favorite human being. Kids are awesome. Parenting culture is.. very boring. I did not anticipate this when I was pregnant or in the baby days, but a decade later, “parent” is so far down on the list of identities that are important to me. I am a pretty damn good parent, but it’s not a nexus of connection with other people that I especially enjoy, it’s not a topic I enjoy reading or talking about. My recent ex would sometimes talk about how sweet it would be to have a baby together, and I just. Nope. Not going back, not starting over. I have no regrets, wouldn’t change a thing.. and I find the non-parent parts of my self and life so much more interesting and rewarding.
I agree 100%! Before we had a kid I had one lesbian mom tell me I’d have more in common with parents than non-parents and my days would be filled talking about the best chicken nuggets. I was like, no way. That will NOT be me. And you know what? It’s not me. I didn’t enjoying hanging out with other parents at my kid’s school and was always drawn to the other snarky parents. When I hang out with my friends who also happen to be parents if the topic of conversation stays on parenting for too long I say, “Time to change the subject — drugs or porn?” I LOVE my kid but, “parent” is not my primary identity.
Shit. Uh. This maybe just kicked a couple doors down in my brain. So thank you for that. I worry a lot about getting lost in motherhood and parenting if I go that route and somehow hearing “parenting culture is boring and I found cooler ways to spend my time, also my kid rules” is a thing nobody has EVER said and also feels very liberating??? Sorry I’m ranting but WOW thanks.
Thank you for sharing all of your doubts, hesitations, and vulnerabilities here. My wife and I have a 3 year old and have a 2nd on the way and it really is a daily balancing act to hold some energy for the things I want and need to do, while keeping some for a kid. And yes, there are the tedious hours of reading the same book again and again or feigning interest in their current obsession. But it still somehow seems to be evened out by the unexpected and hilarious comments and observations that kids can have. And the snuggles! And times when they actually tell you they love you!
All that being said, I am really nervous for the extreme endurance that having second child is going to require. Right now we still get to rest during kid #1’s naps… would love to hear others tips for how you get enjoyment out of the first few years with #2.
It is unquestionably true that nobody should shame someone for their personal choice to have kids, but I hope this discourse also doesn’t start to veer too far towards silencing people for talking about their rationale behind their own choices. I don’t personally think you can compare our situation today with eras in history, because our population is exponentially bigger than it has ever been, and if it keeps up there will unavoidably be a point where we will outgrow our available resources. This happens to be one of the many factors in my own decision to remain childfree.
I would never try to force my views onto other people when I know they’re considering having kids, and I don’t actually believe it’s morally wrong to decide to have them. But I do think it’s important to be able to talk about these realities in general, and certainly within the context of someone’s reasoning for their own choices. I get a bit frustrated when I see any hint of this topic dismissed as “eugenics” because like, I’m literally talking about not having kids my own self, and I believe that people in my own demographics are probably the ones causing most of the problems regarding consumption of resources, contribution to climate change etc. I think there is more nuance to this conversation than either side usually allows for.
I’ve been on both sides of this in terms of my own actions: we had one bio-kid and I’m happy we did; and we chose not to have a second, partly for reasons of our own exhaustion/mental health but also very much for climate change/resource use reasons. I think the fairest, most justice/compassion-based and least toxic way to approach it on a policy level is to support women’s/LGBTQ rights & reproductive freedom. Too lazy to go googling right now but isn’t it well established that reproductive rate tends to go down when women have legal rights, economic freedom, and control of their reproductive choices?
Yes, definitely! Reproductive rights for all so that everyone can make the best choice and be supported in their decision, whatever it may be. And I really mean it about this not being a question of morality – it’s pretty clear that procreation is a fundamental biological drive, and shaming people for it is no better than shaming people for other biological drives like having sex or craving certain kinds of food. That doesn’t solve anything. I would just like us all to also be able to have frank discussions about the real problems we are facing as a species, and for people like me to feel empowered to say we’re not having kids due to those problems, in the face of huge social pressure (outside of spaces like these) to have them.
i don’t have the energy/brain space to respond to every comment here, but i just want to thank everyone who is sharing their perspectives. i could’ve written a 20 page essay about this subject (actually i did, it’s in my mfa thesis collection, lol) but i tried to keep it concise for the sake of this roundtable, AND, i fucking love reading everyone’s thoughts and could continue doing so for forever! thank you thank you thank you to everyone who is sharing here, staff and commenters alike. grateful for ALL these perspectives to mull over, sincerely. <3
I am so grateful for all of your perspectives!!!!
Thank you for this roundtable! I have 3 kids and honestly could not relate to Laneia’s response more. It is so strange to have made it through the nursing and sleepless nights and potty training and to now just be able to fully feel the heartbreaking feeling of loving these humans so much and being so worried about them all the time and not knowing if we’re doing this right and on and on. Anyhow thank you for articulating that feeling so well!
I’m not having kids for many reasons, but the biggest one is I have c-ptsd from being raised by a person with untreated mental illness.. like I get that some people are able to heal and get a grasp on their mental health in a way that allows them to be healthy parents. And that’s great. But I haven’t, and I don’t really see that happening and the fear of subjecting an innocent unformed mind to my neurosis is just too much. Like the adults in my life can make their own decisions and walk away when they need to but kids don’t have that power and I know too well the powerlessness of being trapped in that kind of situation. Like Nicole said, I’m choosing to break the cycle of transgenerational trauma in my own way. And honestly, I’m ok with that. I don’t feel any sadness about not having kids. I know I’m making the right decision. And anyway, after losing most of my youth to trauma and mental illness I do not at ALL feel guilty about prioritizing myself and my wants and needs later in life.
I hope you find the healing you need and deserve.
💗💗💗 Sending you so much love RM!
I just wanted to take a moment, though I did it in the intro, to thank everyone for their contributions to this roundtable. The team was SO VULNERABLE and it takes a ton to put your guts out there, next to your name, on the internet, especially about a topic that can get really emotional for a lot of people.
Thank you also, to all the commenters! You are all, always welcome to write as much as you like in the comments and I think that is what makes them such a special place around here <3 That being said, I just want to include a little reminder that we respect each other's autonomy in this space and that we stay away from dictating what anyone else should think or feel — I haven't seen anyone doing that quite yet, but I know that sometimes when things get heightened, it can go there, so I just wanted to be sure to say something up front. Thank you all for keeping this space as safe and respectful as we can make it. And a SUPER SERIOUS thank you to everyone who's gotten vulnerable in the comments yourselves. Sending you love💗
I will NOT cry at my desk over this but also… yeah I might cry a little at my desk over this.
Thank you Vanessa for bringing up climate change. I struggle a lot with bringing babies into a burning world – but then I also think – if the fucking Duggars can have 1500 Quiverfull kids – maybe it’s ok for me to have one cool queerby.
We plan to adopt once we qualify (age, living space, income); I’d like to see if we could adopt or longterm foster older queer kids. I’d like to give them a place with people who might know what resources and supports they need. I have a lot of complicated feelings about the role that adoption/foster plays in punishing poor people & people of colour, though, so I have yet to fully be comfortable with adoption and tend to lean towards longterm fostering. But that’s all future stuff and the now of kids for me is… raggedy.
My husband and I have been trying for the last year. Because he’s trans, we’ve been using donor banks and the queer tax is… exhausting. We’re nearing the point where we have to figure out if something medical is not working on my end, and it’s just… a lot. This is our first month on meds and they made me feel absolutely unhinged which… was not cute!
We’ve been advised to start considering IVF and to be perfectly honest… I don’t know how many rounds of that I have in me. I don’t even know how many more rounds of this med I have in me.
But I do want kids. Biological, adopted, fostered – I want to spend my time with them. I like taking care of people, and helping people process their feelings, and I want to spend my time taking care of small humans and helping them have a less fucking harrowing time than me and my husband did.
All that say – I am very grateful for queer contextual places like this. I am very grateful to have the chance to ask myself if I do want this. I am also sad that I do still want this, because TBH – I fucking hate trying to get pregnant. Which makes me even sadder because I really thought it would be different.
Thank you so much for sharing this 💗
I have been very ambivalent about having kids for basically all of my life. Yeah I played house as a child and my Lego characters all had big families, but I never understood that desperate urge to procreate that Callie Torres had. So I always said that if I ended up with someone who wanted kids, I’d be fine with that, and if I ended up with someone who didn’t want kids, I’d be fine with that too. My current partner very much does NOT want kids, so we’re not having kids.
I also think that parenthood is such an enormous undertaking which, more than I think literally anything else, really requires a wholehearted commitment, NOT ambivalence. So to my mind, the fact that I’m ambivalent about kids really means I should not have kids.
But like many of y’all, I’m super excited about being the cool queer aunt. I’m very close with my aunt, who is childless (though not queer) and I can’t think of anything better than being to my sister’s future kids what she has been to me.
Cool queer aunts and auncles and uncles unite!
Hello queer darlings, I just wanted to leave a comment for all of you that desperately want kids and have not been able to have them. I know conversations like this make it seem like whomever so chooses can be a parent and the biggest decision in the process will be at the beginning/whether to begin at all. It feels lonely as hell to feel like you are the only person not able to make that choice, but I promise you, you are not.
I am the mum of a dead baby and I have been doing IVF for five years. I choose parenthood constantly, yet here I am, without a living child.
I also believe adoption is largely unethical, and is often thrown about lightly as some sort of climate friendly option for having a family (just take someone else’s!). In Australia, it’s also practically impossible. As awful and discriminatory as our care and protection system is, restoration remains at its heart. My mum (who has worked in said system most of my life) always says: fostering is for children who need families, not families who need children.
Anyway, love to all of you navigating the horrible and heartbreaking path of infertility, you’re not alone ♥️
♥️
I’m so sorry you lost the one baby and have had such a hard path to parenthood. To add to your comments on adoption, I learned some things I hadn’t known from this article responding to Amy Coney Barrett’s “just let them eat cake – uh, give up their unwanted babies for adoption” comment: https://www.salon.com/2022/05/03/adoption-makes-abortion-unnecessary-claims-the-right-thats-even-worse-than-it-sounds/
I’m so sorry for your loss and also thank you, sincerely, for sharing your experiences here. 💗💗💗
@Gem, I remember your comment from some time back (which I referenced above) and thank you again for sharing! It really stuck with me. We can learn so much from cross cultural discussions!
When my ex and I went through IVF and it was unsuccessful, I was the most depressed I have ever been. I can’t imagine the pain of your loss.
i sent a message a while back asking for more content like this so thank you thank you thank you to everyone on the team who shared!! and to the best comment section on the internet ofc
i’ve loved kids since i was one- i used to leave the after school daycare classroom to go hang out with the toddlers and help the teachers. i babysat through high school, added tutoring in undergrad, then spent three years working as a preschool teacher before starting grad school…where i immediately came back to preschool as a part time special ed TA. so clearly, children will be a part of my life whether they’re mine or not. that being said, i’ve also wanted kids for a long time. i want to be pregnant, which is weird as an increasingly genderqueer person, and the more i learn about my own health and disabilities the more i grapple with that.
is it ethical to give my genes to a person knowing they’ll likely get a disability along with it? if i decide it’s not, am i complicit in the eugenics that affect my community? on the other hand, i’m better prepared to parent a disabled kid than many other people! i def want to foster and like a few other ppl have said specifically foster older kids and queer kids and disabled kids.
also only mildly related but i’ve started having recurring dreams about a little boy who has my brother’s curls and calls my dad papa, which is what i called my grandfather, which is making the baby fever worse lol
oh no, not the dreams!! thank you, Caitlin for being so vulnerable here 💗
Same on the wanting to work with little kids! When I was 16 I wrote in my journal about having two little girls. It took quite a while, but I have my two and then some! I love parenting!
As a note on fostering, I have found learning about trauma and trauma responses to be incredibly helpful. Currently I’m taking a training Trust Based Relational Interventions that has lots of great insights and strategies for working with kids from hard places.
OK first off my brain is trying to tell me I am taking up too much space in these comments, having already responded to a number of you, but: stuff it, brain! I am a queer-ass parent and I have Things to Contribute! Right.
OK, next: I tell my kiddo that deciding to propose to her daddy was the best decision I ever made on my own, and deciding to try to have a kid was the best decision I ever made with someone else. She’s 11 and every single day of her life, even the roughest ones of new parenthood, has included at least one moment of being bowled over by how amazing she is and how much I love her. So I love encouraging people past their fears *IF* having a kid is what they really want to do, or would be if not for said fears. But by the same token, my experience is profoundly shaped by my kid being wanted, by my having an all-in 100% coparent, by the freedom I had to choose when and with whom to reproduce, by having adequate financial resources, etc. etc. etc. So I’m absolutely not equipped to judge whether or not someone else should have kids. Hubby and I were complete individuals with meaningful lives and a happy marriage before Kiddo came along, and if we’d chosen not to try for her or been unable to have her, that still would have been true. Your life is valuable whether or not you have a kid. You can still have kids in your life – I would freaking love to have a battalion of queer-aunty friends, the more people who love my kid the better – but your life is valuable whether you directly contribute to any kids’ lives or not.
I do struggle with worrying about the world Kiddo is growing up in and with this or that parenting decision, but hasn’t that been true of every good parent since forever?
Time to go sing the goodnight song!
I’m 52 years old and child free by choice. And it took me about 10 years to make that choice.
When I married my spouse, at age 31, I thought I wanted to have kids. But every time we talked about actually trying to get pregnant, I freaked out. By the time I was 39 I started to realize that maybe I didn’t want to have kids after all.
I occasionally have a twinge of regret about not having children but I also feel that we made the right decision for us, and I made the right decision for me. And I like the life that I have.
Hey, I’m 52 too! Match!
It’s nice to hear that, as ageism is so real out there in this world!
I find myself saying my age and naming my era for context more and more. “Well, I was raised in the 70’s and…” or “I came out in 1988 and back then…”
Happy middle age!
My peri-menopause is nuts! One day each month when I cry for no reason! Unpredictable bleeding patterns! I miss my wonderful vaginal smell because now my vaginal smell is different and I do t like it and that makes me feel so sad and ashamed! I don’t know if straight women experience that the same way. I always have loved my genitals and vagina and cervix and anus and been very comfortable w my body and sex positive thanks to lesbian and feminist work to support that. Now I’m always around lots of cis straight women working in schools and their culture is not as self-loving. It’s weird to be aging not around other dykes.
And do you find it challenging to evolve your language sometimes? My daughter is 15 and came out, went to a school LBGTQAI+ club and then taught me a lot about trans issues and trans-friendly language and etiquette and I am so pro-trans and A and pan and all identities but I’m nervous that I will say the wrong thing and hurt someone. Like even saying lesbian or feminist seems like it could hurt someone these days and I just want to love and support everyone.
Anyway, thanks for listening, and I hope my words are a positive thing for you and not negative. I crave connection and so I often put myself out there in an attempt to share common experiences or just to feel heard. Sometimes that doesn’t go as positively as I intend though…
I just realized that I made the assumption that you are a uterus owner. I’m sorry about that. I am learning to stop assuming gender and orientation and body realities.
Laneia 😭💖!!
Also – as someone who has always wanted kids and is getting married this summer and life is all feeling very *real* and full of DECISIONS…..I appreciate the honesty this whole round table so much
Thank you thank you thank you autostraddle staff for your vulnerability and words! This is exactly the roundtable my heart has been hungry for. And thank you everyone in the comments (and Nicole for your caring moderation reminders <3) — another reason I love this community.
I have an almost three year old and am currently trying for child number two. Right now I have a super solid queer community who is extremely helpful at caring for the kid when needed (parenting has taught me a LOT about asking for help!), but I don't actually know many other queer parents IRL. Sometimes when my mutual aid crew all goes to lunch together or I'm invited to a late night party, I feel a deep pang of jealousy and grief at the freedom I used to have.
But then I come home from my elementary teaching job, eyebrows furrowed in stress about state tests, and my kiddo reaches up, touches my face, and traces the lines along my forehead, saying, "I love when you make these ribbons!" It's hilarious and humbling and such a gift to see this fucked up world through the eyes of someone who refers to forehead stress wrinkles as "ribbons."
Two unexpected challenges I've experienced with parenting are the stress it put on my polyamorous relationships (one-on-one quality time became extremely scarce), and connected to that — my libido is almost completely gone. I'm learning to accept this season (new identity?) of asexuality, and I still mourn how sex used to feel for me.
Finally, I sometimes find myself getting defensive on multiple sides of the parenting + climate change/existential/eugenics/etc convo, and I'm trying to learn new ways of holding other people's stories without perceiving that some how mine is threatened. I'm not exactly sure how to articulate this, but I don't think my cultures (including queer culture in here) have prepared me to understand that someone else's life choice doesn't equate a judgment on me, nor does it necessarily represent an ideology on their end that the whole world "should" follow their same thought process. If you have tips on how to navigate this, please share!
Thank you for articulating what you did in the last paragraph of your comment! I think that’s one of the things that get’s so contentious, especially when people talk about parenting / kids, is that there is such a multiplicity of ways to feel and to act — but so many of us were taught somewhere along the way that someone else making a completely different choice somehow reflects on our own, when that just isn’t true! That was a choice they made for themselves! As for tips? I feel like affirmations and self-talk and even talking through that out loud with a trusted person is helpful, at least in managing any of these thoughts in my own mind.
I too am raising kids and working with kids. I love kids! I could talk to kids all day long! It’s a lot, though. Do you ever feel bad about giving so much of yourself to kids at work and not having enough to give the same or more to your own?
I had a midlife post-kid grad school and career change to a career in social work so I could work with kids, and it’s been 9 years of adjustment to the challenges of career and parenting. I’m finally starting to feel more ease in my career but school environments are so overwhelming and there is so much need!
Honestly I think it’s understandable to feel defensive, because truly there are people on both sides of this who can be really pushy about their stances. For me it helps to realize that even that pushiness itself usually comes from defensiveness, because pretty much everyone gets criticized for their choice no matter what it is – “selfishness” in particular is leveled constantly at both childfree people and those who opt to have kids. That doesn’t excuse the resulting obnoxious behaviour, but it helps me to understand why it happens and let go of taking it personally.
I think it’s also important to understand that most of the extreme stances you see on the internet aren’t really widely held irl, at least not in my experience. Most people I’ve talked to in person about being childfree are like me – we have friends we admire raising kids we cherish; we celebrate our loved ones’ joy when they conceive a wanted child; we want a better world for all of us, and we view our personal childfree choice as our way to contribute to that future, knowing that others can find different ways to contribute (for example, raising their kids to be better stewards of the earth, or advocating for better reproductive rights so people who don’t want kids aren’t forced into it, etc.) Ultimately the aim here is to make things better for humanity, which means some people do indeed need to keep humanity going.
I never really spent time thinking about having kids, but when I was falling for someone in my early twenties who absolutely wanted kids, I thought, maybe I’ll be into that when I’m a bit older. I spent some time thinking about it and concluded I was ambivalent and might be happy either way. That was good enough for her, and we spent six wonderful years together and got engaged before I recognized I was feeling increasing dread about becoming a parent, as it got closer and more real. I spent another year hoping the dread was just because of the pandemic, just cause I’d become depressed/anxious, just something temporary that would change into being as excited about having kids as the woman I loved. I really wanted to stay with her and make her happy. But I came to accept that I simply don’t have the desire to be a parent. So we had to let each other go – it’s devastating but also a huge relief. I hope she gets to create a wonderful family that fits her vision. And I hope I can stay in better touch with my desires and enjoy the freedom of this next phase of my life.
That was a loving and generous decision on your part.
As a cis woman for whom even the abstract concept of being pregnant is just the absolute pinnacle of body horror, having a kid is a definite nope never gonna happen for me. Even before I realized that, I knew I’d never want kids. Adults are exhausting enough to me (another giant introvert here) and I have the option of just saying “nah I’m done interacting now” with them that you can never really have with kids. And even before I realized *that*, I still knew I’d never want kids, lol. The desire has just never ever been there and honestly my mind just blue screens when I try to understand why anyone ever does. Like, no judgment, obviously people do and I’m happy for them when they build their family, I just cannot wrap my head around it.
I like to explain it to people like, “it’s not that I don’t want kids, it’s that I want to not have kids.” I don’t even want to be a queer auntie to someone else’s kids – see the thing above about absolute exhaustion. I dated a woman for two years who had two youngish kids and the handful of times I spent with them being a queer auntie type, while fine (nobody cried or died, so, a win), was something that just gave me a lot of anxiety and used up all my energy for the week in just a few hours, and my gut response whenever the topic of watching them for a while came up was always basically “god please no.” Definitely not fair to them, or even to me. No kids will ever be in my life and I’m 100% fine with that.
I spent most of my life being really apathetic towards the idea of having kids. Similar to Heather, I sort of didn’t realize there was another option until my best friend in college got tipsy one night and talked about how deeply she desired to be pregnant. (I was like WHAT that is a thing you can WANT?!)
I have been solidly on the fence of “I don’t desperately want to be a mom, but would consider a family one day” for years and my fiancée and I have had a lot of conversations about that. She describes how our relationship has opened up the desire to be pregnant with our child (a desire I still don’t have) while also being terrified about what that would mean in the state of the world. She watches gentle parenting TikToks. She reads articles on early childhood education. I think there is a lot of shaming around being someone who is sort of “eh?” About kids, but I’ve done a lot of self-compassion work to be okay with the fact that it is a future I am open to but one that I definitely needed to be with someone who is ecstatic about it to even consider it. We recently visited a friend and her one month old baby and I watched my partner sing Rihanna to her while she fell asleep which was so lovely. But we also talked to my friend about how challenging the last 10 months have been and left knowing that it is definitely something we aren’t ready for any time soon.
I really loved reading everyone’s perspectives on this subject, both from the team and in the comments. And, as usual, Laneia’s writing just punched me in the heart. (Thank you to Kayla for that accurate description.) My oldest also just turned 13, so Tracey’s contribution got me as well. (I will take any and all advice about parenting a teenager!)
I have two kids, and to be very honest I was kind of ambivalent about having them until my partner and I made the decision to start trying. I always just kind of assumed that I’d be a mom eventually but it wasn’t something I thought about a lot or deeply desired. But my wife really wanted kids and after we’d been together for a few years we started seriously talking about it, and I decided that yes I did want to have kids with her. And yes there were a lot of hard parts but I wouldn’t give up my kids for anything in the world.
One thing I would love to see in a future post is some thoughts/discussion from other non-bio moms. Originally the plan was for my wife to carry our first child, because she’s older, and I would carry the second. But after the first one my wife really wanted to be pregnant again and I did NOT want to be pregnant, so she carried the 2nd one too. Personally I was/am totally happy with that decision but there were some legal hoops and also just feelings things around being the non-bio mom in a two mom family.
ANYWAY. I really like this format for queer parenting content, because everyone’s experiences and perspectives are so different, it’s nice to hear from more than one person. And it encourages great discussion in the comments!
What an incredible and important conversation, thanks to all the contributors and commenters! I’ve been having so much trouble over the past few days on our parenting journey. My partner and I are pursuing domestic infant adoption, and the whole process has been fraught given how mismatched our goals, values, and ideas about family are with the (deeply fucked up) US-based adoption industry. We do not see this as a “morally superior” family option (as one commenter noted above), just the right path for our family. But DAMN if that isn’t the way the agency and other adopting families we’ve interacted with talk about things. The extreme racism, classism, ableism, and general condescension towards birth parents has been overwhelming. We consider them family, too!
But the way adoption has been politically weaponized as an anti-abortion tactic in the latest Roe fights is gutting. I dream of a world where abortion is safe, free, and accessible to all, where adoption is part of broader community-oriented systems of support so kids, adoptive families, birth families, and all others involved are connected and supported in all of their needs. I dream of a pro-choice, abolitionist adoption that goes well beyond current framings of “open adoption,” which still seem to view kids as a kind of parental property (🤮). I am so excited to raise a human, it’s always been a dream of mine, but moments like this are heartbreaking as we face the world our kids will grow up in. Special thanks and love to all the commenters who have brought their perspectives on adoption to the table.
What a beautiful conversation. Great thanks and warm hugs to the AS team for your incredible honesty and each of your personal insights and story.
I am in the camp that being a mother has been single greatest joy of my life. I love children (I am just a big child myself even though, I am old enough to be a grandmother to a lot of you) and I love how our son has focused and made my life better than I could have ever imagined.
But I also have incredible respect and admiration for people who choose not to have children. There is a lot of societal pressure to have children and not to give into that pressure but follow your own path is courageous and a sign of great inner strength.
Just one shout out, Laneia wrote an essay, last year about life work balance that was both gut wrenching in its brutal honesty and beautiful in its insights especially from her two incredible boys. It’s a beautiful peice of writing and worth going back to read if you haven’t already. I don’t know if I ever shed so many tears over an article as I did for that one.
thank you christina 💛💛
Thank you for this article!
This is not a comment which is in any way directed against some of the persons in the team who contributed to this piece and the commenters who said that they are great moms, as I do not know you nor your parenting skills.
It is just that it sometimes makes me really uncomfortable when parents state how good parents they are. This is rooted in my experience. My mom believes that she is a great mom, and all my siblings and I disagree. I know she meant well and did the best that she could, but it was not good for us.
My partner’s parents also think that they are awesome parents and my partner would not agree because of everything that went on in their lives. The same goes for various uncles and aunts that I have who are convinced they did a wonderful job at being parents, yet my cousins do not feel this way.
From my experience, there is a huge discrepancy in what the parents believe about themselves, and how the kids receive it.
And I think it is important for kids to grow up and be independent from their parents to speak their mind about it. As a child, I probably would have said that I had the best mom in the world. I did not know any other way and I was highly dependent in a dysfunctional home.
Sometimes, I just want to say: “Let your kid be the one to decide whether or not you were an awesome parent… when it does not need you any more in order to survive.”
I’m not sure how well I was able to bring across what I wanted to say… And again, it is not meant as an attack against anyone here who spoke their mind.
Excellent point re parents claiming to be good parents. I’ll try to incorporate that into my habits of language.
I noticed that when persons say: “I don’t want to have kids” it is frequently followed by “I love/like kids/am good with kids…” Not just in this article, but in many others on this website and a number of books and articles in which women and non-binary people who are read as women speak about being and wanting to be child-free.
It is my impression that oftentimes, it is such a taboo for saying “I don’t want kids” when one could theoretically give birth that one needs to protect oneself to say “Look, but kids are great, it’s just not for me.” As if saying “I don’t want kids” has to be followed by “but I don’t hate them!”
It seems that if a person (particularly a woman or a person who is supposed to be a woman in the eyes of dominant society) actually does not like kids, the person is regarded to be a monster. And people/especially women are attacked enough for not wanting kids, so I have the impression it is almost like a reflex to follow up immediately with “But I like kids!”
A friend of mine who is a mother said that people assume she has to love children because she is a mother. And I feel that it is with kids as it is with adults – some I like, some I don’t. With some I connect, and not with others. I think it should be okay to not want kids and also not like kids. Not liking kids does not mean that a person abuses kids. I think it is *statistically* more likely for people who have kids to abuse them (not attacking parents per se here. Only *statistically*, the family is the most dangerous place for a kid to be).
This is not a criticism against people who are saying “I don’t want kids but love them” – I just posted this comment because I feel that point is often times absent from the conversation.
Edit: The friend of mine I mentioned (who is a mother) loved her child very much, but not children in general. She felt people’s assumption that she had to just like/love children as a whole because of her motherhood.
I think that’s an interesting point about how ppl feel they have to establish that they like kids even if they don’t want them because so often they are attacked for not wanting to have kids. It reminds me how back in the 80’s lesbians felt the need to say they didn’t hate men because they’d often get attacked – and physically attacked too – for not wanting to have sex or romantic love with men. It shows how much women are shamed, judged and attacked for not conforming to the societal expectations of the female gender role. Like the alarms go off when a woman steps out of the box she was put in.
Thank you so much for this article, it was incredibly beautiful to read all different kinds of experiences and thoughts and dreams (and maybe even some nightmares) for the future.
It had me thinking a lot about my own moment of relief around the time when I first came out – I was with my mom and grandmother talking about my Aunt’s struggles raising her kid as a single mom, and it hit me “PHEW I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about that anymore!”. Looking back, I can understand my complaisance as deeply dependent on compulsory heterosexuality…I had assumed it was something I had to do as I got older. Now being very gay and in a committed long term partnership, we’re exploring the idea of kids more seriously and thankfully are on a very similar happy-being-childfree-unless-something-really-changes-for-us path.
Ro, Em and Tracy’s contributions in particular really resonated with me, especially about fears over being a parent, what the good and the bad of it could look like, and also the benefits of having queer families and kids in our lives in more of an Aunt/Auncle capacity than as a Parent with a capital P. Understanding our own capacity for including (or not including) children in our lives, and what we’re able to give and provide and nourish is so essential. I’m so glad that element showed up in these conversations in a way that did not shame those for realizing they cannot or simply do not want to support a child. At the same time, I LOVED reading about alternate parenting possibilities, like adopting queer kids/teens later in life. That was revolutionary for me to read – I never considered anything beyond IVF or adopting younger kids before. I think that’s so rad that there are so many options, and that we can really create the life we want outside of traditional societal expectations.
Reading these were so helpful in exploring my own thoughts and feelings and experiences surrounding parenthood and assumed motherhood. Thank you so much for this offering!
Thank you everyone for this amazing discussion! It’s great to read all different feelings and perspectives in a safe space! This topic can be so filled with emotion in so many ways.
I especially loved the wisdom that adoption is for kids who need families, not for families who need kids. That will stay with me forever. I’ve worked in the child welfare and foster care system a bit as a therapist/counselor and I love the kids that I met so much! They need us, and there are so many older kids and teens and even adults who’ve aged out who really need living support. LBGTQAI+ kids are over represented in that system and they need adults who can love and support them. I had a very dear client who is a grownup woman by now and AMAB so she really suffered a lot in congregate care after such a harrowing childhood. Because of her I researched a lot about LBGTQAI+ kids who are in the child welfare system and it’s terrible what our society is doing to them and they need so much support and deserve better.
I always wanted to raise kids but was afraid of the pain and loss of control of childbirth so that was one reason I waited. I also needed to heal from severe childhood sexual trauma and that was my priority over everything else in life all throughout my 20’s.
Many things healed for me and although there is no finish line for healing from trauma, I got to a point where I felt ready for a child when I was 34.
I was in a very solid and wonderful relationship since the age of 28 with my surprise soulmate, a cishet man. I had met him at 28 after living as a lesbian for ten years. Bisexual plot twist!
It took one round of fertility treatments, which are invasive, painful, expensive, and awful for the uterus owner and embarrassing but jerk-off-in-a-cup-and-yer-done for the sperm owning partner. It didn’t work and we took a break from injecting my belly and arm with hormones – my belly was so sore and bruised and my husbian (my made-up word for a mostly-lesbian’s cishet husband) has to give me daily injections IN THE SAME SPOT! The clinic was clear on that and it was awful. But we took a 2 week trip to Spain together and had fun and I came back pregnant. I am so lucky and privileged to have had it relatively easy in the mid 30’s pregnancy fertility treatment department. I know ppl who had multiple miscarriages and couldn’t have a baby or couldn’t have a second one.
I had pretty easy pregnancies for my 2 kids and planned the spacing for about 3 years apart so I didn’t have to chase a 2 year old while holding a newborn.
My amazing OBGYN, who reached into my friend’s cervix to turn her breach baby around (building and birthing babies is so grisly, folks) to avoid a c-section, told me my pelvis doesn’t open wide enough for a baby’s head and I would need a c-section so I believed her and it was a relief to have planned pain in my abdomen incision site’s recovery instead of uncontrollable unbearable labor pain in my genitals and cervix that would last for an unknowable number of hours or even days and would get worse and worse until an entire human would have to come through there somehow.
For a survivor of severe childhood sexual trauma which included a lot of incidents of rape, the fear of childbirth is very enormous. A c-section eased that fear so much! And c-sections are still scary (spinal tap, surgery while awake, you feel tugging but no pain, they strap you arms down on table wings, you might vomit, you hear everything) painful (mostly the recovery), and you can’t hold your baby for a long while afterwards. In fact, I waited in a step-down ward until I could wiggle my toes. For hours I would think I was wiggling them and the nurse would be like, nope!
Then breastfeeding was challenging but we got help and it got easy. Then I loved it and it actually helped me heal even more from sexual trauma, which surprised me. It is a wonderful way to bond with your baby.
But raising kids goes on and on and is 24-7 and relentless and now the kids are both teenagers and it it still really challenging a lot of the time.
I am very happy I chose to be a birth parent and I am very happy with the way I made each step along that path. For one thing, I did all my primary trauma recovery work before I even met my husbian. Then we worked on our relationship and bought a house and made it the way we wanted. That is a huge privilege that most people on Earth do not have, and I am grateful for all the resources that we had and have that made it possible. For me as a trauma survivor, I needed to feel safe in every possible way before taking on the challenge of parenthood, and I always knew I’d feel safest if I owned my own home and was no longer vulnerable to landlords and rising rents, etc. Again, privilege. We both grew up middle class and got college paid for by family and even though I cut off my family for 14 years, I still had the white middle class privilege from my family of origin that made it easier to get jobs, find apartment shares and roommates, etc. I was broke for a few years but always safer than if I didn’t have the privileges I had.
I went back to college right before having my first baby, and finished my BA when baby was 18 months. Then I stayed at my dead-end but easy job until my second kid started pre-K and I quit and went to social work school.
Now I have 2 teens and a real career. It’s a lot to handle and sometimes when work or family stress is overwhelming I feel like I took on too much with a social work career. But I love raising kids and I love working with kids and I’ve always loved working with kids.
One thing I learned is that despite watching “Super Nanny” as prep and talking a lot, my husbian and I are not as aligned as we thought when it comes to certain parenting priorities. That has led to many arguments and anger and some problems that drive each of us nuts in a different way. We were both raised in the 70’s and both spanked as punishment. We didn’t want to spank our kids and Super Nanny Jo Frost’s show taught us a better system of discipline. She gets granular about how to use time outs and succeed with them.
I recommend working on your system of discipline before trying to acquire a child. Once a child is in your home, you won’t have time, energy or mental space to make conscious choices and it’s harder to avoid repeating what your own upbringing was like. Because no matter how much you try to prepare, you won’t be prepared for everything. It’s just hard. From before you acquire a child until you die, is what I’ve concluded. Parents never stop worrying about children they’ve raised.
I commend everyone who chooses not to raise children. That is wise, strong, honest, and has so much integrity. You are making a huge contribution to the world by deciding that taking on the challenge without the desire to do it is a bad idea. It totally is a bad idea and yet so many ppl pressure others to do it. That’s so wrong to me. Parenting is so hard and done badly so much of the time and often done well but never perfectly. To undertake it without the desire to do it is so punishing for the parent and the child and can cause so much frustration and unhappiness for both.
The amount of power and control that adults have over children in our world is very bad. Kids have no recourse.
For myself, I think of parenting as similar to a career choice. Some have the calling and the skill and can prepare. Others don’t, and no one should force them into that job. Of course, it’s only my privilege that allows me to treat parenthood as a choice.
Anyone who raises kids without all these privileges and choice and calling and skill and resources and prep is basically a superhero level amazing hard-working human who is undoubtedly making huge sacrifices all the time to make sure their kids are safe and well and getting what they need.
I never even mentioned all the sacrifices! Sleep, art, leisure time, travel, hobbies, grownup activities, education, career, lifestyle, money, time, energy, food, location of home, brain space, I just can’t even list all of the sacrifices families have to make all the time to be able to raise kids.
Another reason it’s great to choose not to raise kids. Life is full of sacrifices already, and raising kids just piles on so many more of them.
I obviously have so much to say about this, because raising kids for 15 years is such an all-encompassing part of my life. Raising kids is all-encompassing. I like to say:
It’s the toughest job you’ll ever love.