Auntie SparkNotes: I Want to Start a Family

Auntie,

I’m at a bit of personal crossroads, so to speak. I am 22 years old, and for the past year I have been enjoying life after college at a new apartment (with my boyfriend), a new job, new everything. The entire notion of being out of school is still very unfamiliar and strange for me, and I have been struggling a bit to come up with what my identity or purpose in life should be at this point. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying my new life with newly found freedoms as well as limitations. However, lately I’ve been feeling like I am ready to take on something more and infinitely bigger than just life with myself in the center—ready to maybe start a family. Now, up until the last half a year or so I would be the person to loudly proclaim that I don’t want to marry or have babies until my thirties, that I don’t want anything to do with being a young mother, that “settling” early on for a family instead of working full-throttle towards your future is extremely anti-feminist. But lately I’ve been feeling like there’s this unspoken need to start a family somewhere deep within my chest, and the thought of it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, like a teenager’s first crush.

I love my boyfriend of two years very much, and I know that I’m with the right person. The thing is, that I also know that he is not in a place in life right now where he wants to start a family. He often talks about going back to school to continue his education, of seeking out a better job, of bettering himself. We have briefly discussed the topic of starting a family on several occasions, but usually we end up in agreement that we want to wait until we are both at a more “stable” point in our lives. He says he definitely wants a family with me, just not right now. I’ve never really pressed him on the topic, but my thing about it- don’t they say that there’s never really going to be a “perfect” time to have a kid, unless you are a billionaire? Won’t there always be troubles waiting around the corner, both personal and financial? I feel comfortable with where I am financially in life right now, and I completely respect my boyfriend’s desire to wait. However, in the meantime I feel in a way incomplete, especially every time I find out that former classmate got engaged or is having a baby. I really don’t know what to do with myself at this point, short of getting 20 cats to fill “the void” and becoming the neighborhood cat lady. I know this is not the kind of thing that you want to push a person into, unless they are ready, but is there anything at all I could do about this situation?

Oh, definitely get the cats. Or at least, a cat, singular. (Although you know what they say about cats and potato chips: You can’t eat just one! …Wait, that’s not right.)

And in all seriousness, Sparkler, getting a cat might actually be a pretty good cure for what ails you, if what ails you is the lack of a creature in your life who’s entirely dependent on you to meet its basic needs. Caring for a pet doesn’t fulfill you in all the same ways as having a baby, but there’s certainly overlap there—and if you’re not in a position to do the latter (be it because of financial concerns or a partner who’s not yet ready or whatever else), you might find the former gives you a lot of what you’re looking for.

With that said, I don’t actually know for sure that having a baby is the itch you’re looking to scratch, and more importantly, I don’t think you do, either. Those warm-and-fuzzies you get when you think about starting a family could be about maternal yearning, yes, but they could also be about something much simpler: the yearning to know what comes next. That adrift feeling you’re experiencing, where you’re not sure who you are or what you should do? That is so incredibly normal for someone your age and in your position. One year out of college is when all that initial novelty of having your own place, making your own living, paying your own bills, and generally doing your own thing finally wears off—and you start thinking about the next thing, only to realize there isn’t one. For the first time in your life, there’s no final exam week or graduation or other benchmark for achievement looming ahead that you can expect to reach in x amount of time. (Unless you count your birthdays, but I bet those don’t seem like quite such a big deal these days, right? WELCOME TO GETTING OLD.)

And it’s easy, when you’re having this crisis of oh-my-god-what-is-my-purpose, to get caught up in the idea of milestones: marriage, house, baby, etc. So when you say you feel a pang when you hear about friends getting married or having kids, I want you to ask yourself: is it because you yourself really want marriage, or kids, specifically, right now? Or is it just that you want to know, as they do, what comes next for you?

I’ll tell you right now, darling, that this may be a really difficult question to answer. It can be so tough to tease out the difference between the desire to achieve a specific milestone and the desire to simply have a milestone, any milestone, on the horizon, so that you’ve got something to look forward to. But it’s important that you try—especially because it sounds like your boyfriend has his own next things that he’s trying to achieve, and those things probably aren’t compatible with the all-encompassing shift in focus that is having a kid. (There may never be a “perfect” time to do that, per se, but there are certainly times at which it’s a better idea than others—and if your boyfriend is dissatisfied with his current options to the point where he’s thinking about going back to school, how do you see a baby fitting into that scenario?)

Of course, if after some thought you’re still sure that you’ve got a hole in your life that can only be filled by progeny, then that’s something you’ll want to let your boyfriend know about, as in, “I know we’ve talked about waiting to have kids, but I’m starting to feel like it’s something I want to do sooner rather than later, and I’d like to know how you feel about that.” There’s nothing wrong with starting that conversation, and seeing where you’re both at.

But if, by any chance, this turns out to be more about you feeling at sea and in need of direction, then there are a million ways to do that beyond the marriage-and-kids route. There’s your career, of course—but that’s just one place of many where you can find purpose. You can travel, or volunteer, or train for a 5k. You can learn a new language or skill. You can make lists—of books you want to read, or movies you want to see, or highways you want to drive down before you die—and check items off them one by one. You can adopt a dog or mentor a teen. You can plant a garden, literally or figuratively, and settle into the rhythms of it. And whether or not you end up starting a family somewhere in there, you should do some of these things, too. Life is long, so make yours full—full of things you hope to achieve, full of interests that reward you, full of ideas to think on when things get quiet.

Or, hey, make it full of cats. You are your own master.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
Want more info about how this column works? Check out the Auntie SparkNotes FAQ.