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The next five years were mostly uneventful. I was single, dating casually, trying to finish my PhD, thinking about my career, and figuring out my next steps. Having a baby always felt years ahead of me because there were so many steps before that even becomes relevant.
I would need to meet someone we would need to spend time together, we would need to fall in love, we would need to move in together, we would need to plan a wedding, we would need to get married
Parenthood lived far, far down the line. It wasn’t on my mind.
My friends felt the same — or so I thought. Anytime kids came up, the response was some version of “eww, hard pass.” We’d laugh about how we couldn’t imagine being parents at that time. It felt like we were all aligned, all making the same choice. Until we weren’t.
Soon, one close friend from my PhD program got married and had a baby. I was blindsided — not because she shouldn’t have a baby, but because this was someone I had regularly talked with about not imagining ourselves as parents. But okay. Life evolves. No big deal.
Then another friend got married and announced she was pregnant. And again, I felt that jolt of confusion, because wait, “I thought we didn’t want to do this.”
And what I had to realize is that while I was (unintentionally) making matter-of-fact statements, they were making circumstantial ones. They were saying,
- “I can’t imagine being a mother right now.”
- “I can’t imagine having a baby while in a PhD program.”
- “I can’t imagine being a mother before 30.”
- “I can’t imagine being a mother before I’m married.”
And I was saying, “I don’t know if I want to be a mother at all.”
And so very quickly, I realized more of my friends were moving toward motherhood — and I was the outlier.
This repeated itself for me again in my mid-30s and with new friends who were a little bit older, often between 37 and 40. We’d talk about uncertainty, share podcasts, and weigh pros and cons. It felt like familiar terrain: thoughtful, reflective, honest conversations with women who seemed to be in the same place as me.
But again, one by one, as these friends inched closer to 40, many of them chose parenthood. And again, I felt that familiar flicker of abandonment — not because they were choosing something wrong, but because I assumed we were standing in the same place. I didn’t realize that, although we were all standing in the middle of the road, I was looking in the child-free direction and seeing it as the desirable option for my life. They were choosing the direction towards parenting as the desirable option for their life.
The uncertainty we shared was not the same uncertainty. Their hesitation was practical. Mine was existential.
So when they moved, I was shocked. But really, I just hadn’t realized we were never looking at the same future.
Reflection:
- Have you ever realized you and someone else were using the same words but meant completely different things?
- Have you experienced a moment when you thought you were aligned with others, only to learn you were choosing differently?
- What assumptions have you made about what others want for their lives? And what assumptions have others made about you?
