Most people are interested in having children, at least one day, and of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong if you’d prefer to remain child-free either. However, deciding to be one or the other, well, it’s a topic that can be difficult to approach. First, it’s always best to find a loving partner you can grow with, and enjoy a stable household with predictable finances before you get started.
But life isn’t always so predictable. Sure, some children might not be planned, but that doesn’t mean you love them any less. It also doesn’t mean you need the perfect life to start a wonderful family. Moreover, with treatments from reliable fertility clinics, it may be that your initial difficulty in trying for a baby can be overcome.
But what helps you make the final decision to start a family? Are there qualifiers worth considering? Or should you just leave it up to chance, instead of over-intellectualizing your new chapter? Let’s consider some advice with that in mind:
Your Free Time
Having a family requires free time to manage and plan your household and the welfare of the people within it. Does that mean you can’t have a family if you both work jobs? Not at all, but it does mean being able to plan and share the duties amongst one another, or to enlist those in your family to help, like your parents, when you need it. Ultimately, having the mental, emotional and scheduling space in your life for a family is important before you start one, otherwise spinning plates can feel exhausting, not just tiring.
Fertility Advice
Sometimes, starting a family proceeds as expected. But that’s not something to take for granted, because the same outcomes aren’t necessarily provided to everyone. But with a helpful fertility pathway, you can provide the kind of predictability and care you’ve been hoping for. If you know this is a route you can take, then odds are you’ll feel less apprehensive about even starting. In some cases, this can also help you avoid swearing off the entire endeavor, which you may have without the kind of help you deserve.
Discuss Parenting Styles & Expectations
It’s important to agree on how you’ll raise your family over time, not just if you want to start one. That doesn’t mean you need to outline the entire life of your child from day one, but it does mean agreeing on some principles. Perhaps to you, faith is important, but to your partner, they would prefer a strictly secular upbringing. Squaring that circle might take a little time to achieve, but with care and attention, agreeing on principles like baptism but no regular church attendance, you can agree even with different positions starting out. It’s good to have these conversations now, especially about matters that are important to you, rather than finding out about them later on down the line.
With this advice, we hope you feel more confident than ever to start your family or to save its management for another day.
