Tami Simon: Hello, friends. My name’s Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True. And I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge.
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In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Jordan Davidson. Jordan is an award-winning health journalist and reproductive health advocate whose work has appeared in media outlets such as Parents, Health, Prevention, Men’s Health, Teen Vogue, BuzzFeed, NBC Nightly News, and more. With Sounds True, Jordan Davidson is the author of a new book, So When Are You Having Kids: The Definitive Guide for Those Who Aren’t Sure If, When, or How They Want to Become Parents. Jordan is a gifted writer and researcher. She takes complex issues, and she breaks them down into their component parts so that we can appreciate the nuance of what she calls the “biggest decision” we might ever make in our lifetime, the decision to have or not have children. Here’s my conversation with the very intelligent and wise 31-year-old Jordan Davidson.
To begin with, Jordan, and as a way to introduce you to our listeners, tell us a bit about your journey to writing So When Are You Having Kids.
Jordan Davidson: I first got the idea for So When Are You Having Kids really from my own personal experience. I was trying to figure out for myself whether or not I wanted to have children. And in looking at the resources available to me at the time and speaking to friends and family, I felt really dissatisfied with the answers that I was getting, and it didn’t help me feel prepared. And I was really aching for something that would help me make what is, without a doubt, one of the most consequential decisions of your life. It wasn’t something that I felt like I could just go with my gut or not do research. I’ve always been a big fan of research; I’m a health journalist. I’ve done research professionally, and so I couldn’t just say, “Oh, I’ll go with my gut,” since my gut wasn’t telling me what to do especially.
And so I began the research for this book really on a personal level. The more that I dug into the research, it felt clear to me that it should be something written down for other people to benefit from as well. Because one thing that was clear to me in talking to others was how common this apprehension that I felt is. It’s why we see the birth rate decreasing year after year, decade after decade. And so, it felt really important to me to have something that was modern and inclusive that could help people really parse through their apprehension like I needed to.
Tami Simon: So just tracking back even further, what inspired you to be a health journalist in the first place?
Jordan Davidson: That’s a great question. I was really sick as a kid, and I had a lot of health challenges growing up. I was often in rooms where the adults didn’t have the answer. The adults in the room, they were supposed to be the smartest people in the room, and I was leaving a lot of rooms with questions unanswered and frustrations. This was before the Internet was really a thing, and my grandmother had an old Merck Manual. And so I, as a kid, liked doing research in her old Merck Manual, which was probably all outdated by the time I was reading it anyway. But I liked solving my own problems, I guess, even as a child.
And so doing that research and talking about health and writing about it and trying to create accessible resources—in the US, where I am from, health care is really inaccessible in part because it’s unaffordable for so many people, but because it’s also—there is a learning curve of having to understand all of this really complex information. You get 15 minutes with your doctor, they say a bunch of words that can be difficult to understand, and then people go home and they don’t know what to do with that. And so, it was really enticing for me to be able to put resources out into the world in print or on the Internet that could help people decipher the important things that they needed to live their healthiest lives.
Tami Simon: Now, I’m not just blowing smoke at you—and for people who have listened to Insights at the Edge for a while, they’ll know this is true—your book is really well written and really well put together. So I just want to start by congratulating you and to say that you’re very talented as a writer and researcher. You interviewed something like 300 people as you put this book together. Where did you find them, and how did you approach it? How did you approach the interviews? What was your like, “Here’s what I’m going for. Here’s my angle in”?
Jordan Davidson: Sure. When I started writing the book, one of the first things that I did—because writing a book had been a goal of mine for such a long time, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about, and then this idea hit me and I knew that this was the thing that I had to write about—and so in the process of deciding to write a book, I started talking about it and just putting it out there and telling people, “Oh, I’m writing a book.” I remember I was in an Uber and the Uber driver asked me what I do, and I told him I was writing a book, and this was really early days. He said, “What kind of book are you writing?” I said, “Oh, I’m writing a parenting book. A pre-parenting book, if you will.” He said, “Do you have kids?” I said, “No.” “Well, what do you know about parenting? What could you possibly know about parenting, then, if you don’t have kids?”
I think that that really guided a lot of, that comment—so shout-out to that Uber driver—that comment really guided a lot of how I did the research for the book, because I don’t want people reading the book or coming away from the book with the idea that I have some sort of agenda or that I want people to have kids or that I don’t want people to have kids. And so it was really important for me to interview a diverse population of people, of parents, of nonparents, of people who are child-free by choice, of people who are child-free not by choice, of people who don’t know if they want kids, that apprehensive middle group.
And so, I wanted it to really feel like a community effort. So that was the first thing that really stood out for me in trying to figure out, “OK, who am I interviewing for this book?,” was making sure that I had every perspective represented. Because I think too, even if I had children, that wouldn’t make me necessarily qualify to write a parenting book, because one parent’s perspective is just that—it’s one person’s perspective. And so I really wanted to try and fit as many perspectives into the book as possible, because even from, as I was saying at the start of this, from my own journey talking to other people, that wasn’t helpful for me personally, because it didn’t help me unpack all of the things that I needed to unpack. And so, I set out to say, “Oh, how many people could I possibly interview?”
And so I worked on a bunch of different surveys that asked people the same—I’ve been a journalist for over a decade now, so it was really the same way that I would do an interview over the phone or over video. I put that into survey forms, and then I asked people for, “If you’re interested in talking more, can I have your email?” And so from those surveys I had some follow-up videos and phone calls. Some of it was then over email, further questions, a lot of back-and-forth with people. But I would say that I had at least 100 phone conversations, and then there were about 250 survey responses on some of those and went on to phone conversations and things like that.
It was really just pushing out the surveys, sharing them in different places, finding different social communities. I feel like I messaged so many different Facebook moderators and social group moderators of child-free communities. There was even a group I messaged—it was like Boy Moms Unite. I was like, “Hi, boy moms, can you unite and take my survey?” And so, doing things like that to try and get a diverse representation. I have people in the book who were outside of the US, so I really tried to focus on US perspectives. I managed to get almost all 50 states. I think maybe I was missing like a Dakota and an Alaska, I want to say, but really trying to get as many perspectives as possible of people who had children early, people who had children later in life, again, with that idea that there is no one perspective that is going to be universally representative of every reader or every path to parenthood.
Tami Simon: You write towards the beginning of the book that even being able to ask this question, “Do I want to have kids or not?” is a certain type of privilege. Why do you say that? Why is it a privilege during this time, at this point in our human evolution, to be able to ask that question?
Jordan Davidson: The idea that having children, being able to pause and reflect and ask ourselves that question, being a privilege really has to do a lot with the apprehension that people feel nowadays. Because previously, having children was seen as a mandatory milestone in the path to adulthood. You met someone, you got married, you had kids, and that was the way that it went. In the ’60s and ’70s, with the advent of birth control, which introduced reproductive choice, and more women being able to be out in the workforce, that’s when the choice started to happen where we could sit back and think, “Is this what I want?” That didn’t happen before, because it was just assumed that everyone would have children. It was seen as deviant not to. Throughout history, there were all different terms lobbed at people who didn’t have children, because it was seen as bizarre if you didn’t, because it was just this innate thing that everyone was supposed to achieve.
And now, especially because the nuclear family has really been turned on its head where you don’t have one parent that can easily stay home, people are realizing that it’s not feasible in some cases or it’s not what they want or it’s not easy or it’s not mandatory. I think a lot of people still feel that pronatalist pressure that gets passed through society that says children are a milestone that you have to achieve or this pressure that gets passed down from families, but it doesn’t exist like it used to in the ’50s and in the generations prior to that where it was this mandatory step towards adulthood. A lot of those pressures people still feel, and they are present, but it’s not compulsory anymore.
Tami Simon: This term that you introduced, “pronatalist,” I think, for a lot of us, that’s a new word. I never heard that before until I read your book. What does that mean?
Jordan Davidson: Pronatalism is this idea that having children is the natural way of being. Societies that are pronatalist are ones that put parenthood on a pedestal and say that this is what we should aspire to, is parenthood. In the ’50s and the ’60s, when women started a little bit entering the workplace, the workplace was seen as this force of antinatalism, because the idea was make it difficult for women to enter the workplace so that being home and staying home and being a mother is more enticing. That was the idea of keeping society as a pronatalist society.
The irony is now that those exact same forces force people into this—what I’m trying to say is that society still views itself as pronatalist, but the society that we live in today is actually very antinatalist. But we call ourselves, and by “we” I don’t mean “me,” but the view in America is that society is still pronatalist in that it’s still encouraged that you have children. It’s still seen as this rite of passage and holding parents on a pedestal. When you hear a story in the news, someone says, “Oh, she was a mother. Oh, this terrible thing happened, and they have kids.” You always hear people framed around their identity as parents. And so pronatalism is what upholds parenthood as this primary identity, but the society that we live in today is actually quite antinatalist.
Tami Simon: What you mean by that is that we don’t provide support for parents across different socioeconomic categories, is that what you mean?
Jordan Davidson: Yes. We make it very hard for parents. There is no paid parental leave, no mandated paid parental leave, and there is no universal healthcare. There isn’t consistent financial support for parents. The systems that we have in place don’t really encourage people to become parents. On its face, we’re pronatalist, but in actuality, a very antinatalist society. Those conflicting forces, I feel like, play a lot into the apprehension that people face, because there’s this pressure to achieve this status symbol of parenthood, but none of the support there to help people, especially young people.
Tami Simon: Now, Jordan, just to bring myself forward a little in the conversation, and at a certain point I’m going to ask you too to bring yourself forward—although I heard you interviewed, and someone was asking more about your own personal journey with this topic, and you said, “Look, the book has 100,000 words, and only 1,000 of them are about me.” But people like to know the person.
But here, we’ll start with me here. I’m 60, and I’m happy to say I’m “child-free.” First of all, I really liked your introduction of that term. I had never heard it before, so I’d only heard of being “childless.” I noticed saying loud and proud that I’m child-free sounds a lot better. One of the gifts that your book gave me was feeling more settled in that. I think I’d had this thought somehow, I don’t know, “How much am I missing? How much am I missing?” Even though there was nothing in me ever that was actually drawn to being a biological mom myself, nothing ever in me—I mean, I don’t want to go too much into my personal story, but it was very clear, I’m not having a kid. I’m not raising a family. That’s not what I’m called to do in my life.
But I still have carried this huge grief with me. In reading your book, I thought, “First of all, no matter where we end up, we’re missing something. No matter where we end up in our life. If we go left, we didn’t go right. If we go right, we didn’t go left.” I just wonder what you think about that, the grief of no matter what path we take.
Jordan Davidson: I think tied to that grief is why so many people have this apprehension, because they’re afraid of regret. I think that the grief has a very similar tie to regret in that people who are on the fence—I think more people know where they want to land, but they’re afraid that if they have children, they will miss the life that they had previously. And if they don’t have children, they may regret that they didn’t have children. It’s really hard to put those feelings aside, because at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s possible to 100 percent feel decided. I think even the most decided person would maybe feel 99 percent decided and have an inkling in their brain or a small question of, “What would my life have looked like if I had children?” And so I think that that grief is just natural human curiosity of wondering what would’ve happened if you had chosen the other thing, even if you feel happy with the decision that you made.
But I think that that’s why so many people are afraid to decide, because that pressure of knowing that at a certain point… It’s not like you can be in your 60s or in your 70s and then say, “You know what? Now I’m going to have kids.” I mean, in some cases, yes, you can adopt or foster, but it’s incredibly difficult. Those things are not as easy as people like to say that they are. Of course, we’re all limited by our own biology. And so I think, because at some point the decision is definitive, and there are very few decisions in life which are definitive—you can get married later in life, you can go back to school later in life, you can buy a house with enough hard work and earning enough money—but you can’t undo biology later in life. And yes, maybe you can adopt—it’s challenging—or foster, but I think that that’s the apprehension that people face, is knowing that they have to make a definitive decision and one that they can’t take back. But I think it’s natural human curiosity to wonder, even if you are happy with your decision.
Tami Simon: This notion that this is the biggest decision you’ll ever make in your life—so I’m going to agree with you. I think it is. I really do. Thank you for just pointing that out in the book and naming it.
One of the questions I have for you is how, after everything you’ve learned from your research, can people get clear on the decision that’s coming from inside them instead of, as you mentioned, the pronatal forces of our culture, obligation, they think “I have to provide grandchildren” or “This is how I’m going to be respected and have status in the world” or the myth, and you pointed out as a myth, that “I’m going to have children who will take care of me when I’m old.” How do you get rid of all the nonsense to tune in to actually, “This is the biggest decision’s going to come from my heart and soul”?
Jordan Davidson: Mm-hmm. Well, I think part of the reason that I say it’s the biggest decision is because you’re making a decision also for another person. It’s not just a decision that you are making for yourself. If you decide to have children, you are bringing another person into this world, and you will be tasked for caring for them for at least 17, 18 years. And so it’s making a commitment for another person. It’s holding yourself accountable to take care of another person. And so, I think that when it comes to quieting out all of those other messages and not listening to your parents asking when are they getting another grandchild or feeling like being a mother is the be- and end-all, it’s really asking that, is this what you see for your life? Is this something that you feel that you want to do with your life, because you know, in some regard, what the next 18 years will look like? And do you feel that you can be there for another person who needs you?
I think that that’s one of the biggest things. And that’s really what the research shows in whether or not people are happy with the decision to become parents, is if you fully understand what you are committing to. When researchers in surveys ask people why they wanted to become parents, they tend to name very lighthearted things like the expansion of the self, feeling a greater connection through passing down your DNA, joy, and entertainment and things like having kids is fun. All of the fun things, that’s what draws people to parenthood. No one ever says they want to become a parent because they want to change diapers and do childcare and work a nine-hour day and then come home and make dinner.
And so, really, when it comes down to will you be happy with choosing parenthood, it’s asking, “Do you have a realistic expectation of what parenthood entails?” If you have that realistic expectation, knowing all of the challenges that come with raising kids and the demands of parenthood and how challenging it is, especially in modern times, and you want to have kids, then you’ll probably be prepared for them and you are less likely to experience regret. Similarly, if you look at your life and you feel happy and you don’t feel that things need to change, then you’ll probably be happy with your decision not to have children. I think this is pretty much the way that the researchers wrote the paper, and I found it funny as I was reading the paper because I thought, “This isn’t really helpful: if you can picture it, then you might be happy.”
But I think that that is the key challenge for people, is that you have to make the decision that is best for you, and you have to tune out all of the other voices, and you have to look at your life and how your life would change and understanding the demands of parenthood and not the fun things of, “What color am I going to paint the nursery?” or “What would we do for the gender reveal?” I feel like social media always paints parenthood and all of the fun things, and so people think, “It would be so cute to have a baby.” That was really something that struck me in the interviews that I did with people who were parents, were how many people said they didn’t realize it was going to be so difficult. I feel like maybe because I spoke to so many parents that I’m under no illusion of how difficult parenthood is. I’m like, “Yeah, that sounds really tough.” And so making a decision that is best for you really requires tuning out all of the noise and thinking about what do you want for your life and whether bringing another life into the world is something that seems enticing, that makes you feel excited.
Tami Simon: When you say having realistic expectations for what’s going to happen as a parent, in So When Are You Having Kids, you lay out, “This is how much it costs on average.” You lay out all the sacrifice that’s involved. What do you think are the most “reality sandwiches” people need to chew on a bit to really get a clear picture of what’s going to be involved?
Jordan Davidson: The biggest one, which is hard to quantify, is the loss of one’s self. I was speaking to someone the other day, and they said, “You don’t really realize how much your life changes when you have children. I still want to be seen as the person who I was before I had kids, but now I have all of these responsibilities. I’m not that person anymore. There’s parts of that person that are still there, but now I’m so-and-so’s mom, and that becomes your primary identity.” And so I think that that’s one of the realities of parenthood that can be hard for people to understand is that your needs become secondary to your child. And so a lot of your personality and your time and your energy and your resources, financial and even energy resources, get devoted to your child. But the things of not feeling like yourself, because you don’t have the time that you used to have—because any free time, if you are working especially, goes into your children.
I think that that’s really hard to imagine until you’re there. One of the things that I have in the book is a schedule of what newborn feeding looks like. And so, every two hours you’re doing a feeding. You can read that and say like, “Wow, that seems like a lot.” But obviously, you’re caring for a child beyond just the newborn phase, and you don’t realize how much attention and care and making sure that your child is occupied and has things to do. Now parents are worried about screen time. And so, all of the little tiny tasks that go into keeping another human occupied that takes away from the time that you have for yourself, for your partner, and it’s a huge commitment. And so going into that and deciding to have children is deciding to become secondary.
Tami Simon: Now, I mentioned that I was going to bring myself forward, and I did a little. I have to say, it was that section related to the feeding chart where I had a huge sigh of relief there. I couldn’t imagine that. But back here to you for a moment. I wonder, Jordan, if you’d be willing to share a little bit about your own journey around this question. So you want to have kids?
Jordan Davidson: Sure. When I was 24, my period had stopped. I wasn’t really concerned about it at first. I went to the doctor, and she wasn’t very concerned about it at first either. And then she had me come back a month later and did some more blood tests, did some tests, and then about a week after that she called me, and she said to me, she goes, “Do you want to have kids?” “I don’t know. I am 24.” I lived in New York City at the time, and in New York City, having children at 24 is akin to being a child bride, because most people there have children in their late 30s or early 40s. So I really wasn’t thinking about having children at 24. I was still paying off student loan debt. I lived in a fifth-floor walkup. She said to me, she’s like, “Well, if you think you want kids, you should probably have them now.”
My first thought was, really, how was I going to carry a baby carrier up a fifth-floor walkup? Because I could barely get my groceries up into my fifth-floor walkup. That was really the first thought, I was like, “Crap, crap. How am I carrying a baby up all these stairs?” She gave me the numbers for a bunch of fertility clinics, and that kick-started a lot of testing and apprehension and thinking about it. I think I always wanted kids, because I don’t think another option was present really. I didn’t really think about being child-free. I have a lot of child-free aunts and uncles in my family, so it wasn’t like in my family everyone has children. That pressure wasn’t put on. I just never really thought about, “Well, what if you don’t have kids?”
Living in New York City, I envisioned a very cosmopolitan version of myself, like Sex and the City, sitting around brunch with my friends and never having children. I always felt like I was trying to put myself as a character into a bunch of different stories. There was the Jordan as the character as the mother, the Jordan as the character at the boozy brunch in her 40s, and nothing that actually felt like what I wanted. It was just a bunch of roles that I could see myself playing. And so, given this kind of ultimatum by my doctor of like, “Well, if you want to, decide now.”
The thing that was clear to me was that I was not ready at 24. I’m 31 now, and I still don’t have children, although I have tried to have children. There is some regret around now having such a hard time. There is some regret around maybe I should have tried when I was 24. But also, I laugh when I think about that, not only for the reason of carrying the child five flights of stairs, but because I would’ve been a terrible mother at 24. I think I would be a great mother now, now having written this book and thought about this topic as much as I have. I feel prepared, and I would like to become a parent. My biology and I seem to have disagreement there. But it is still something I ask myself frequently, even as I’m at an IVF clinic and doing that and it is soul-sucking and horrible and I hate every second of it. Sometimes I think, “What if I just say I’m done, and then that’s it. Could I see a life for myself without children?” And the answer is yes. And could I see a life for myself with children? And the answer is yes.
I keep telling myself that I will know when the time is right to stop, and I haven’t gotten there yet. But it is challenging. I think that if I end up never having children, I think I’ll be fine. And if I have children, I think I’ll be a great mom. It’s hard to sit in between those two worlds and feel powerless, because the decision isn’t really something that I have much control over, which I feel like is so much part of the reason why I wanted to create this book, was because I wanted people to feel empowered in ways that I can’t, in ways that I won’t get to choose for myself.
Tami Simon: You used this phrase, “My biology and I have a disagreement about what we want right now.” It’s a powerful phrase, and it does seem that infertility and challenges with fertility are on the rise in the past decade. Why is that? What’s happening?
Jordan Davidson: It’s kind of a complicated relationship, because I think a lot of the times when we hear about IVF or fertility treatments, it is in older women. The older you get, the worse your egg quality is, which necessitates some need of fertility treatments. And so because people are putting off children and having children later in life, we are seeing an uptick in people looking at assisted reproductive technology. So that’s part of it, is people are delaying having children.
I think also we are getting better at identifying reproductive conditions like PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis. I have endometriosis. I was diagnosed when I was 12. Actually, I think—I had a lot of surgeries for it in my teens, and I think that that’s part of the reason that my ovaries are in such a rough shape is from all of those surgeries. And so, because we are getting better at identifying things and earlier, a lot of the times when doctors hear that you have a condition like PCOS or endometriosis or fibroids, there is this push of, “Get pregnant now or go see a reproductive endocrinologist or go seek out fertility treatments earlier.”
In the past, I mean, when I was first diagnosed with endometriosis, no one even knew what that was, and now thanks in part to a lot of celebrities coming out and saying they have endometriosis, a lot of people have heard the phrase. So because people are more aware of reproductive health conditions, they are seeking care for them earlier. I don’t know that necessarily endometriosis and fibroids and PCOS are becoming more common. I think it’s just that we have better awareness of them. And so we are diagnosing things earlier, and so more people are getting help.
One of the things that came up when I was researching the book was, in the past when you had people who were childless… So there’s the difference of the two terms. The “child-free” usually connotes people who made the choice, and “childless” is people for whom the choice was made for them. Prior to the ’70s and the ’80s, everyone was called “childless.” And then they started differentiating between childless and child-free. There are more people now using the terms “child-free by choice” and then “child-free by circumstance,” which is the newer version of “childless,” because I think a lot of people don’t like the old connotation associated with childlessness, which is kind of sad. It’s like sad, this person, the spinster type, the myth associated with that.
And so a lot of people—in the past there was—you didn’t talk about why people didn’t have children. People would say like, “Oh, the aunt who never had kids” or “The couple who lived down the block and never had children.” There was always an assumption in the past that people who didn’t have children couldn’t have children. And so, I think it’s hard to know whether or not the challenges that we’re seeing now are accurately representative of increased fertility issues, because of, who knows, modern society, we’re all probably like 50 percent plastic at this point.
Or is it really just that now people are opening up and saying, “No, I’m not just the aunt who doesn’t have kids. I’m the aunt who tried to have kids and couldn’t.” I think people are a lot more open now than they were in the past about why they aren’t having children, whether they’re proudly child-free or struggling to build their family. But I think in the past it was quiet. It was kind of a thing that you might have perceived but you didn’t talk about.
Tami Simon: It does seem like there’s still a stigma when it comes to talking about infertility challenges, and somehow you’re coming out in a certain way. There’s a shame potentially associated with it, and I’m curious how you view that.
Jordan Davidson: It’s interesting, because I feel like social media has really changed things. I see a lot of infertility communities online. I have really spent a lot of time for the book studying a lot of different communities, parenting communities, infertility communities, child-free communities, and they all have a very strong sense of identity. There’s a whole language of infertility. If you are on these boards or these forums, it’s almost like you have to speak another language. You’re like, “It’s five days post-transfer,” and all of these different terms that you learn. I am very quiet personally online about my own challenges, in part because that’s who I am as a person and also because it is disappointing. It’s disappointing to go through multiple IVF cycles and to not have a child. I don’t want to have the Internet on my own personal hellish roller-coaster.
And so I think that there are people who don’t share or who feel that it is stigmatizing to share, because they don’t want to share the bad news. And so a lot of times what I see in the infertility community is people see the community, and the community is very vibrant, and they do all of these posts, and they have their letter board of, “I’m doing my embryo transfer,” and then it fails. And then you kind of see people fall off as the disappointment grows, because you didn’t do IVF and then you get to go home with a baby. And so, I think that it is challenging for people. A lot of people will create pages and not share with their family, and they’ll have online personas because they want to talk about these things. But I think, in part, it feels embarrassing.
It feels embarrassing to not be able to do something that we consider a basic biological function. And so it can be difficult to say that you need help. There is definitely in the infertility community women far outnumber the men. When I was trying to find men with infertility for the book, it was a very big challenge. Men did not want to talk openly. When I did interview men, they asked that I change their names or they wouldn’t use a last name, and that wasn’t the case for women, because there is so much stigma around. For men, it’s not being seen as masculine. For women, it’s not fulfilling this purpose as a mother. But it is that you can’t do what feels like a very basic biological function. I think so many people, in their health education growing up, they hear, “If someone of the opposite sex looks at you the wrong way, you’ll get pregnant.” And now you’re at this point where you want to get pregnant and you’re doing all of these things and you can’t get pregnant.
And so I think that it’s part frustrating and part humiliating in so many ways. I know personally I have been so frustrated and seen people—I’ve had people not know of things that I’m going through, and they’ll be like, “Oh yeah, it took so long for us to get pregnant.” And I’m like, “Really? How long?” And they’re like, “Oh, five months.” “OK, oh, five months is not that long.” But challenges are different for people, and it can feel difficult to talk about because people see it as a personal failure. I think that that’s why I like to say that my biology and I are not agreeing on this topic, because I could write a book on the topic, I could nanny a million children, I could do all of these things to prepare myself for parenthood. And at the end of the day, if my ovaries don’t want to produce a viable egg, then that’s it. There’s nothing that I can do.
And so, for people, I think that that’s hard to admit. It feels deeply upsetting, because it feels like your life is being chosen for you, and it feels like you can’t do a very basic biological thing. That kind of, to go back to the beginning of all of this, goes back to the idea of pronatalism and that we say that being parents—and pressures from religion and society of, “That’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to reproduce and put out the next generation.” And when you can’t do it, it feels personal. It feels personal. “Why not me? What did I do wrong?” I like to make jokes about “Who did I piss off in an alternate life?” in the days where I’m feeling really annoyed about what’s going on with my body. So it’s hard to talk about, because you feel less than everyone else.
Tami Simon: What could someone say, or how could someone hold a loving space for someone who’s in the middle of an infertility challenge? You mentioned one thing that I heard on a video of yours that someone said to you something like, “Well, you can just adopt.” And you were like, “Look, adoption isn’t a cure for infertility.” I can imagine lots of people saying that to someone thinking they’re being comforting but actually pissing the person off every which way because that’s not what is in their heart. Anyway, maybe you could talk about that, but what could people say that would be healing, beneficial, warming?
Jordan Davidson: I think it’s so individual, because I’m trying to think of what are the things. I personally like space. I think I have some friends and some family members who would ask and be like, “How was your appointment?” And there are a few friends that stay along in that journey for me, but I get so tired of telling people bad news, and so I think one of the best things to do is to give people the space and let them come to you or even just preempting it with a, “I’m not not asking because I’m disinterested. I’m trying to give you space. I’m here for you and I want to talk and I want to help out in any way that I can, but I also don’t want you to feel pressure.” Because that goes back to this idea of feeling like a disappointment, is then disappointing other people, especially if it’s parents who want grandkids.
And so I think just giving the person space and really listening to what they’re telling you that they need. I mean, if you know someone who’s going through fertility treatments, they are taxing. They’re expensive. You are taking different hormones and medications, and that changes—and so really extending the person grace and being there for them and being a distraction. That’s honestly the best thing, for me, that someone could do, is distracting me from it. I don’t want to talk about it. That’s the challenge, I think for me personally, is friends will know that I withdraw when I’m going through something difficult. They’ll be like, “Well, I’m here if you want to talk.” I do not want to talk. That is the last thing I want to do. But if you want to go out and do something, or go and get dinner and tell me about the challenges that you’re having with the dating apps, I would love to listen. But talk about myself, no thank you.
And so really listening and not trying to problem-solve; it’s just about listening. So to go back to your comment, when I was first having challenges, a lot of people said to me, “Well, why don’t you just adopt?” or “You can adopt.” Like it is so easy. That’s really one of the things that I wanted to communicate in the book. I have the adoption chapter is child led, because typically you just hear from the adults. And really, when you dig into the adoption community, the adoption chapter was the hardest chapter of the book to write, because it is so difficult to talk about, because there are people who really want to have children. Either they can’t because of infertility, or they can’t because they’re in a same-sex relationship. And so it is very difficult to tell people who have a strong desire for children, “Well, if you can’t have them on your own, then you can’t have them.” I think a lot of people who do work to really discuss the injustices around the child welfare system don’t always know how to communicate it to the adults that are really hurting or longing for a child.
And so when I was writing that chapter, I wanted to try and do justice to both communities. Because the truth of adoption is this, is that people view it as children for adults, but it’s really about finding parents for a child. The child has to be the center of the unit there. It can’t be like, “Oh, here are two lovely people who want a child. Let’s just give them this child.” And that’s how when you say, “Oh, you can just adopt,” it’s like you could just pick up a child at Costco and now it’s yours. It doesn’t work like that. A lot of people who want children want babies. And that’s fine. It’s fine to say that you want a baby. When people have children naturally, they get a baby. It’s fine to say you also want a baby, but the waiting list for adopting an infant is 80–100 people waiting per infant. So the competition there is super fierce.
And then there are 400 children in foster care, and not all of those children are approved for adoption. Some of them will be reunified with their family; some of them are approved for adoption. The average age of a child in foster care is eight, so you’re not getting a baby; you’re getting a child with a history and a history of trauma. And that’s not fair to someone who wants what other people want. We consider it normal to say, “OK, me and my husband, me and my partner, we’re going to have a baby.” And if you can do that in the privacy of your own bedroom, no one questions it. But for people who can’t and then they’re like, “Well, I want a baby,” and it’s like, “Well, there’s all these children in foster care, why don’t you adopt someone from foster care?” It’s not the same type of parenting. You’re not getting a child who is a blank slate. And so you’re asking people to be these really self-aware, prepared parents to bring a child with a history of trauma into their home.
And that’s not fair. I was saying that maybe at baby showers or things like that then we should ask people, “Why aren’t you adopting?” Can you imagine going to a baby shower and saying like, “Oh, you had a baby? How selfish. Why didn’t you adopt?” That’s a lot of what people facing fertility challenges feel, is that they have this pressure to be these humans that are expected to do all of these things when these systems are not easy.
A baby born through your own DNA is not the same as adopting a child. That child has a whole history, and you can’t just override it because you want to. And so it’s very naive to suggest that as an option for couples dealing with infertility. It’s upsetting not only for the couple dealing with infertility, but it’s upsetting for the child too. Because if you are going to adopt or you are going to foster, you should do that because you want to, because you want to be a parent for a child who needs parents in that instance. And also, talking about supporting reunification and all of the systems that are broken in the child welfare system, I mean, we could be here for the next four hours talking about all of those challenges, but it’s not a replacement. You can’t just say, “Oh, if I don’t have kids through my own biology, then I’m just going to go to the store and get a baby.” It’s not that easy, and that’s how people phrase it, so it’s not helpful.
Tami Simon: One of the things, Jordan, that surprised me was that you dedicated a section of the book to one of the reasons people are choosing not to have children today has to do with their concerns about climate change. I thought to myself, “Really? Is that a real reason people don’t have children?” But you heard it reported as a real reason. People don’t think, “I’m going to bring children in, and they’re going to be the scientists who are going to come up with the solutions. They’re going to create the carbon-absorbing buildings of the future.” They think, “No, I don’t want to have my kids face this terrible world.”
Jordan Davidson: The researcher who I interviewed for that section, who is a climate scientist, he had a sense of optimism seeing the work that is being done to try and curb global warming. I think his optimism is part of what prompted his decision to have a child in the face of climate change. As you were saying that, I was like, “Oh, he’s maybe someone who thinks his child will be the scientist to further his father’s legacy and fight against climate change.” But I think that it’s especially common in young people, usually college educated or higher graduate degrees, people who are looking at the science and seeing that we are failing some of the milestones or not hitting where we’re supposed to be projected in terms of curbing climate change, and then living through it.
I interviewed someone for the book, and this didn’t make it in the book, but she was on the fence about having children, and part of that reason was climate change. It had only really hit her recently when there was a heat wave in her area, which never had heat waves. And so a lot of times when people hear of global warming or, “If we don’t do this by 2050, then by 2100…” And that sounds so far away. I keep seeing all these jokes when people are like, “1980 was 20 years ago. What do you mean it was 40 years ago?,” where we have our own perceptions of time based on our childhoods, where time, I think, we think goes by much slower than it actually does.
And so people hear, “Oh, if we don’t make change, things will get bad by 2050.” Who can picture 2050? But then when these heat waves or weather anomalies we just had—I can’t remember the name of it now—but the temperatures were in the single digits, and they said it’s a once-in-a-generation-type storm. Well, I feel like every other week now we’re having these weather anomalies. And so people are thinking about it and saying, “Wow, OK, it’s not even 2050 yet. It’s not even 2100 yet. How am I supposed to brave these temperatures?” Or fires for people in California, especially, it was like, “How am I supposed to evacuate my home?” The person that that chapter is centered around lives in California, and that was one of the things that he shared with me was, “How am I supposed to evacuate my home in the case of wildfires with a baby? That seems horrible.”
And so I think young people in the face of so much uncertainty—especially around the state of the world, not just the climate but the general state of the world—are really thinking about what their children’s futures are going to look like and saying, “Wow, if the weather is already bad and I’m in my 30s… if the weather is already this bad, what’s it going to look like when my child is 18? Is that fair?” Because people really just want to give their children as good of a life or better than theirs. I think a lot of young people don’t feel like they can give their child as good of a life or better than theirs.
Tami Simon: And that would therefore be a reason not to have kids—
Jordan Davidson: Yes.
Tami Simon: —for some people.
Jordan Davidson: Mm-hmm.
Tami Simon: I think I hadn’t really processed that, that would actually be what would tip the scale for some people.
Jordan Davidson: I think it’s one. There were some people where climate was a leading factor. There’s very few people who are like, “I’m not going to have children for this one reason.” There’s not one particular reason. It’s usually a bunch of little reasons. And for some people, thinking about climate change was maybe in the top 10, and for other people it was in the top three. I’d say there were very few people that would’ve cited it as the number one reason, but I would say it makes it into the top three to five for quite a few people.
Tami Simon: This whole notion of I’m going to have my sheet with my pros over here on the left side and my cons on the right side, and that’s how I’m going to make this really important decision, seems to me, and maybe it’s just based on my own experience, that there’s something else that’s like a sense of… I don’t know what other word to use, but whether I’m “called” or not. Like if I met my children on the astral plane or something like that—this is just me, Tami, speaking—and they said, “Hi, Mom, we’re here,” I’d be like, “I have to do it.” But instead I had the opposite experience where every time I tried to visualize myself as pregnant, it was like, “No way. Done. Flat belly. No way.” And that there’s some other kind of process inside of us, like the dreaming part of us, that it doesn’t so much look at our spreadsheet, but it’s our inner dream. I wonder what you think about that.
Jordan Davidson: Pros and cons lists really are not the way to go, because, I think, when people try and do the positives and the negatives, they’re always really imbalanced. So if you look at a pros and cons list and you’re like, “I’ve got five things in the pros and four things in the cons, so I guess I’ll go with the pros,” a lot of times the pros are things like I get to name the baby, I can pick a cute name, and then the cons are like, but raising a child costs $300,000. Those aren’t equal. The cuteness of a baby doesn’t equal out the cons of the commitment. And so you can’t use a pros and cons list, because you would have to weight your pros and cons list. I’m sure that there are researchers that could come up with a system to help people weight it, but I don’t think that that’s going to answer the question either.
I do think a lot of it comes down to visualizing, but there are people who are just not good at visualizing. I can envision myself playing many characters and many different roles, but I don’t know that they ever feel organic to me. It was like when I was looking at colleges, I had all these friends who were like, “I went to this college, and I knew. I saw myself on this campus.” And so I went to 15 different schools, and I was waiting for that moment where I went onto the school and I was like, “Here’s where I’m…” And that never happened for me.
And so, I think that for people, some people just can’t picture or get excited about any sort of thing. It’s really easy to envision a child-free life, because if you don’t have children, that’s the life that you’re living. And it’s very difficult to envision a life with children because there isn’t really anything that can prepare you for that. I hear a lot of people going, “Oh, babysit. You’re so excited to give the kids over at the end of the night because they’re not your children.” It has a sense of novelty. It’s very hard to prepare for parenthood. So if you’re someone who can’t envision that, you’re someone that—there were a lot of people that I spoke to who were waiting for this gut feeling. I’ve heard from people like, “Oh, I always knew I wanted to have children. I felt it in my gut.” And then you have people say, “I don’t feel anything in my gut. Does that mean I don’t want children?”
I think it’s just because it’s so hard to envision what a life with children can look like, because you think of all the things like the runny noses and the sticky hands and the screaming and the toys and having to monitor screen time that you can’t really envision the things that parents, or especially parents that I spoke to, of “Oh, I know true love now” or “This feeling when my child smiles at me, my heart feels like it’s going to tear out of my chest.” How do you replicate that feeling, and does that feeling make up for all of the challenges? For some people it might, but for others it might not.
And so I think one of the best things that you can do is try to pretend like it’s happening, so reading a book like mine or other parenting books, taking parenting courses. A lot of things I took when I was writing the book. I took a birthing class. I wasn’t having a child at the time, but I sat there. It felt uncomfortable because the tone of the course was like, “You got this, mama,” and I was like… But immersing yourself in things, going to the store and walking through the baby aisles, or joining a parenting community or taking classes, taking an infant CPR class, doing all of these things that people assume that you can’t do it until you get pregnant or you’re in those places. And that’s really not the case. You can be there because you want to learn. Or talking to, if you have a partner and you are planning on having a child with this partner, asking yourself the difficult questions of, “How would we discipline our child? How were you raised? What do you like about the way you were raised?” and really trying to put forward all of those scenarios that you would face as a parent.
And then the last thing, which is one of the examples that’s highlighted in the book, which I stand by, and I think people will have opinions about this, but foster, foster an animal. Don’t foster a child to test out parenthood, because children need consistent love and care and that’s a huge commitment. But foster a cat or a dog. A puppy would be really great if you want to try and mimic the challenges of having a baby. But that is doing things where you are on the hook 24/7 for another being that needs your help and seeing how you and your partner would work together in that instance. I think that’s one of the best things that you can do. And that’s an example in the book of this couple who adopted a puppy and that was what made them decide to be child-free, was how much work went into raising that puppy and realizing that they didn’t want kids.
Tami Simon: I have to say, Jordan, for someone who’s just 31 years old, I’m so impressed by you, impressed by how you approach these complicated topics and really pull out all of the individual strands, the nuance. If I knew anyone, and I’m sure I do, who is considering, “Should I have kids, or should I not have kids?” this is the book I will choose to give them, So When Are You Having Kids: The Definitive Guide for Those Who Aren’t Sure If, When, or How They Want to Become Parents.
You mentioned in the beginning of our conversation this is the book that didn’t exist that you wished existed. You wrote the book that you wished was there on the shelf for you. What’s your hope for what people will get out of So When Are You Having Kids? What do you hope they’ll get out of the book?
Jordan Davidson: I want people to understand why they feel the way that they do. The book is really a tool to help you unpack. There’s everything from the fear of pregnancy to people who have a history of trauma, intergenerational trauma, and how that gets passed on to children. There are so many things that shape the decision why we want to have children or not have children, and so many things that we’re just not conscious of. And so writing the book was so helpful for me, because I said earlier I was not ready to have children, I would’ve been a terrible mother at 24, and I think I would be a great mother at 31, and so much of that is the work that I put into that book in really trying to understand how I feel.
You had made the comment about the interview that I did where I said the book isn’t about me, because it’s 100,000 words, and I maybe appear in 1,000 of them. I wanted to capture so many things and so many apprehensions. There were so many stories from so many different people about their fears and their desires and their hopes and their dreams and what they want from their life. And so what I hope that this book can do for people is help them figure out what they want for their life. It doesn’t have to be forever. That’s the thing about deciding intentions, is they can change. Unfortunately, there is often a point in which we have to decide by for the means of biology, but factors can change and things can be fluid. And so, so many times you feel this pressure to decide and to make a decision, but I think there’s also a beauty in not deciding and being content with the right now and agreeing to revisit that decision down the road and just trying to keep the anxiety at bay and to say, “You know what? I don’t know if I want to have kids, but I know I don’t want them right now” or “I’m not prepared right now and I’m going to revisit that,” and to try and take away some of the anxiety that people feel because we feel like we always need to know the answer.
And so I think that untangling all of these topics, all of these things from the history, from the history of society, from the history of your family, from your own biology, and really sitting and taking the time not to create a pros and cons list, but to do the work of, “What have I been taught about having children? What have I been taught about what it means to be a successful adult? What have I been taught about what makes a good life? And do I have realistic expectations of what parenthood entails and what it would take for me to be a good parent?” and then figuring out if underneath all of those messages that you have been fed, if you can figure out how you actually feel. And looking at your life the way that it is now and saying, “Are you satisfied? Or do you feel like there could be something more, and that that something more is that you want to take on this caregiving journey?” Which yes, will have rewards. And might have joys that you can’t feel until the sticky-faced child is smiling at you. But also knowing that your life can also be great, and will also be great, even if there isn’t a child in it, and that they don’t have to be in conflict with one another, that you can take the time to make the choice that works best for you.
Tami Simon: I’ve been speaking with Jordan Davidson, author of the new book So When Are You Having Kids: The Definitive Guide for Those Who Aren’t Sure If, When, or How They Want to Become Parents. If you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in after-the-show Q&A conversations with featured presenters and have the chance to ask your questions, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community that features premium shows, live classes, and community events. Let’s learn and grow together. Come join us at join.soundstrue.com. Sounds True: waking up the world.
