Intentional Family Planning

As I've said to many people, you know, if you're not sure about having children, don't. If you don't really want a child, there's plenty of children on the planet, so it's not something that we have to do. And there's lots of ways to have a meaningful life without children. But, of course, for people who do have children, many of us find that the relationships we have with those people, regardless of how they came into our family, are the most meaningful and challenging. A lot of times, relationships in our lives and the experiences that we have are wonderful, but there's lots of other ways to create a meaningful life as well. Hi. Welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lisenberry Christensen. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they really want in bed and in life. Together, we navigate the tensions between our desire and our devotions, between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease pleasure, and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here. Hello. Today we're talking about having kids, planning to have kids, having another kid. How do we decide whether to have children or not? What do we do if one of us wants a child and the other one's not sure or doesn't? I get so many questions about this. I thought I would do an episode that rounds up a lot of different thoughts around children and their effect on relationship. So let's dive in. One question I get is, how do we know if we want a child? And I think it's a great question because there's so much societal pressure and tax incentive and assumptions from parents. A lot of times that you will have children. If you're together and you plan to stay together, why don't you have kids yet? We certainly got asked that. Kurt and I were married for seven years before we had Cooper. And, you know, some members in our family were like, come on already. But if you're not sure or you don't feel ready, that makes sense, too. And one of the things that I've coached a number of men through is this thing that I really admire in a lot of men, which is that they take the commitment to having a child very seriously. And not that women don't, of course, but there is a way that I Think good. Men think about providing for their children and being there for them and being devoted to them. That has it feel like a really high bar. And frankly, a lot of women tend to think about the joys of having a child more than the commitment that they're making. They think about what they want. And of course what they want is to be committed to that child and to care for that child and have a deep mutual relationship. But men tend to think in terms of like, okay, so for the next child, 20 plus years, I'm going to spend a lot of time with this person and earning money to pay for things for this person. And they take those commitments very seriously. So if you're with a male partner who has some reticence around conceiving a child, whether it's your first or not, consider that their reticence may really have to do with taking the commitment very, very seriously. And that that's an admirable thing. It's not just a, a resistance to having a child. And it's probably not about not loving you or wanting to have a child with you. It's really being concerned about their capacity. But the thing that I've learned, and I would say this to anyone who's feeling that way, like, whoa, having a kid is a big deal. I'm not sure I'm ready, is that they make us ready to the extent that they do. And they also tolerate our humanity. You know, everyone who's on earth today was birthed into and raised in a family that wasn't quite ready for them. And of course, gross incompetence or negligence or not readiness, not that that's a word on the part of parents, can have disastrous outcomes. But probably if you're thinking about this and concerned about it, you're not in that category. Your humanity, your very ambivalence, is a mark of your thoughtfulness and you're going to do just fine. There's so many things I wish I knew back when our 14 year old son was first born that I have learned in the intervening 14 years. But it's okay. It's okay that we grow up alongside our children. And I think it's part of the human design that as we're raising a child, we are simultaneously reparenting the part of ourselves that is the same age as that child. And we're able to review and go back through some of the hungers that were unmet when we were that age or the losses that we suffered when we were that age. And we get to love ourselves through that kind of almost like adopt our younger selves and raise ourselves up just as we're raising our own children. A lot of times in the conversation about whether to have a child or when one person is more enthusiastic than the other. And the best medicine for this gap in desire level or urgency level is listening, just really staying curious about where the other person is and what's urgent in them, either toward having a child or having a child now, or away from having a child or having them now. Just really deeply listen to each other and look for the meanings. You know, in all negotiation, focusing on interests rather than positions is fruitful and is the way to creating the best agreement. So don't start with I'm a yes and you're a no, or I'm a now and you're a later. Really look at what are the interests, what are the values, what are the concerns, the fears, the hopes, the dreams? Get really curious and take your time with each other around those questions and. And you will find deeper understanding. Even if you don't wind up on exactly the same page, you'll have a lot more room to reassure one another, make concessions, and find something that feels comfortable for you both. Then there are couples who are considering family size and how do we decide whether to have another child or how many children to have? And I think these are really valuable questions, especially if you value your aliveness. And I think we've all known people who had a whole bunch of kids and it took a lot of energy. And I've known people who had a whole bunch of energy and had what it took to raise all those children. I remember right after our daughter was born, I saw a picture of a family with three children and I just went, oh my gosh. It hadn't sort of occurred to me that I had that option that there's another child in there, you know, in our gene pool, there's another person that is biologically similar to the two that I have and yet unique, right? And it sort of broke my heart that I wouldn't ever meet that person. But I also knew that the way that I went into a valley for years, you know, about two to three years after each baby, I didn't have another valley in me. It just wasn't going to be a good life for my two existing children. For me to go back in after I had my daughter at 38, to try again for another baby, that was more than I could do. And I coach people who have different numbers of children and some who've chosen to just have one. I see the way that they get sort of out of the woods. You know, you get out of diapers, and then your child gets into school. And just shepherding one person through their growing up is pretty workable and leaves you time for your own interests, for your relationship. There's a real balance to it. And so if you really want to retain that time and money and other resources, having one child is a really viable option. So I want to be an advocate for that if that's what you choose. And as I've said to many people, you know, if you're not sure about having children, don't. You know, if you don't really want a child, there's plenty of children on the planet. So. So it's not something that we have to do. And there's lots of ways to have a meaningful life without children. But of course, for people who do have children, many of us find that the relationships we have with those people, regardless of how they came into our family, are the most meaningful and challenging. A lot of times, relationships in our lives and the experiences that we have are wonderful, but there's lots of other ways to create meaningful life as well. Then people will ask me, what do we do? Given that our relationship is difficult, I'm not sure that we will always be married and we want a child. We're trying to decide if we should have another child. It feels like the clock is ticking. I do want a baby. I just don't know about my partner. That's a really challenging situation because sometimes people live to regret having had children with the person that they had children with. Because once you do have children with somebody, they're in your life forever. Forever. You're the parent of someone whose other parent is this person. And if you wouldn't choose to be tied to them forever, then creating deeper ties to them results in further tethering yourself that way. On the other hand, I remember that feeling. Kurt and I had difficulties early in our marriage. And I remember thinking, hey, you know, I was over 30, and for better or worse, there were times when I thought, oh, I don't know if I could deal with him. And on the other hand, I don't know if I can find somebody else in time to have babies. The motivation to have children is very strong and was in me. And I know it is for a lot of people, and for women in particular, who have a limited number of years of biological viability, that can be a lot of pressure. So I would say if you've got a lot of that pressure, certainly freezing eggs or doing things to preserve your fertility may be a good path forward. But I also think that sort of spiritually or energetically, a difficult relationship can be one of the greatest catalysts for personal growth and spiritual growth. So that's certainly been so with me. And this may be an invitation to dig in and do your work and heal together and individually with that desire to have children together as the catalyst. And I've seen lots of people do it concurrently. I've seen lots of people have the baby and then realize like, whoa, we really gotta work on this because we have a kid now and this is serious, whatever order it comes in. I think that a lot of people are together for a long time before they really dig in and roll up their sleeves and do the healing work that they need to do to be truly nourishing to one another and as individuals to really be happy and sustainable. So all that to say, now's as good a time as any to do that work. And very seldom do I run into somebody who's just with a horrible person who nobody should be with. It's really that our relationships are difficult in a two way street kind of way. Not that we are equally difficult to be with. You know, one of you may be doing more hurtful things to the other one, but the two of you have a dynamic together that, that creates the situation, that perpetuates that cycle of hurt. And you get to work together to heal that, if that's what you choose. Another question I get is what should we consider when we think about the timing of having children and, you know, thoughts that arise for me and what I've observed is that it's wonderful to have adventures together before you have children. And Kurt and I kind of took that route. But on the other hand, it's great to not be too old by the time you're done with the active parenting chapter. I have friends from high school who had children fairly early, and now they're leaning toward grandparent years and they're my age. So Kurt and I feel like it was good for us to wait because us grown up a little bit more made for better parents than the us that would have had them earlier. We're more mature and healed and connected to each other than we were early in our relationship. But we're going to be really old grandparents, and I'm kind of sad about that. On the other hand, that really motivates us to take good care of ourselves, to take good care of our health and our balance and our upper body strength so that we can be mentally with it and be physically capable grandparents. So that if our children happen to want children, then we'll be able to be there and be engaged and helpful to our kids and our grandkids. So there's lots to consider. But I just celebrate that you're endeavoring to be conscious about it because a lot of people are not particularly planful about the timing and just kind of luck of the draw. So another question is, how do children affect your relationship? You know, they. Children are maybe kind of like remodels. I remember Kurt saying of the house that we remodeled, which is the house we used to live in, we built it, we kind of took off the roof and went out back and up and over and almost tripled this house in 2004. And it took us a couple years to do it. And he said, well, it shows us what we're made of, you know, so on the rough days, it showed us the fault lines and most days it showed us that we love creating together and dreaming and working hard and it was cool. But kids are the same way. They show you what you're made of. And a friend once told me after her divorce that she thinks every relationship has a certain number of children that is capable of holding. And she said for us that number was less than 1. And I really got that, that it was like the shared project of parenting showed them that their relationship wasn't viable. And maybe it could have been if they hadn't had had that level of demand in their life. But with a child, they couldn't make it as a couple. And I think that for other people, as individuals or as a couple, you know, it's two children or three children that could break the back of their partnership. So it's worth looking at. And you can't really anticipate exactly what a given child will need or what their temperament will be or how that's going to affect you as individuals or as a couple. But it is worth considering what you can predict looking at who you each are and who you are as a relationship and talking a lot about your values and your needs and your self care requirements. And I think this is one of the most baffling things about parenting is you cannot adequately anticipate it like what the effects are going to be. We spent so much time and energy when we were pregnant with Cooper, our first child, thinking about delivery and having a newborn and you know, even the newborn phase, let's say the first year only lasted a year and the delivery Only lasted a day. And what lasts a lot longer than that is the day in day out of parenting and going through all of these chapters with a child and adding parenting and school and all of their interests and life as a family on top of the relationship and trying to have intimacy and having your own friendships and hobbies and your career and managing money and all the things that we do. And I think it's really challenging to anticipate the effect that children have on our priorities. I remember when I first had Cooper, I took a few months off. I was blessed to have paid maternity leave because I was the co founder of an executive coaching firm at that time and my partner and our team kept working while I took care of my baby. So I will forever be grateful for that. But after I went back to work, I had just sort of assumed that I would want to work all the time the way that I had before. You know, I loved my work and was super excited to do it. And I got a nanny and I did take Fridays off and I kind of made it all work in four days a week so that I could spend one day taking him to little classes and hanging out with him. But I just thought that nothing would change. I thought I knew what I wanted. But then after I had him, it hurt to leave him and I did anyway because that was what the business needed from me. But then after we dissolved our partnership a couple years later and I had another baby, I didn't have paid maternity leave that time and I cut my work back to spend more time with my baby daughter and my preschool age son. So it changed our finances and I also had more flexibility to spend time with my children. So in none of those situations, you know, the going back to work, the cutting my hours, the change in my income, in none of those could I accurately anticipate what I needed. I always grossly miscalculated what the experience would be. So I would advise my past self. And I tend to advise couples who ask me, don't assume you will know what you want after your first child or subsequent children. One of my dear friends had a condo that she felt like was not going to be big enough for she and her husband and a child. And they needed a house when she was pregnant. And I encouraged her, like, don't buy a house now. That will dramatically increase your overhead. Keep it simple. I knew that they could easily afford their condo with one income, let alone the two that they still had. And she did go back to work after her daughter was born, but then she was able to do a job, share and still be fine financially because she lived in condo and hadn't saddled herself with a huge mortgage which was what she had assumed she needed for this child. And there's so many things that we presume we're going to want or need or have to have or you know, like we gotta live here or we gotta drive this and we just don't know. So keeping our options open and really listening deeply to ourselves is a great recipe for not having regrets and for taking good care of both our children and our marriage and ourselves. And I just wanna say, like, we are all wired differently. We cannot presume that we will thrive going back to work because we may just miss our child miserably. And we cannot presume that we will thrive being an at home parent because we may be bored out of our skulls, miss our work miserably. And there's nothing wrong with any of those. You are okay, you are right and good. Regardless of where your body feels great and feels like you belong. There is no moral content to being happy working as a parent or being home as a parent. All of those beliefs that we have or stories that we have are social constructs and they don't serve individual parents well at all. So you know, they tend to serve our culture and its strictures. You know, restrictions generally on women, placing women in lesser positions, keeping them busy. So listen to yourself, trust yourself and honor your personal truth in that. So those are some of the questions I've gotten most often about family planning and deciding when and how many kids to have and, and how to take care of your relationship. Well, I'll say a little bit more about taking care of the relationship once you have children. Some of the best things I learned before we had children were from the workshop Bringing Baby Home from John and Julie Gottman. They certify other people to teach this workshop and it's available in many places. And their book and Baby Makes Three is the basis for that workshop. If you want to just pick up the book, that's a great starting place. One of the best things I took from that training was that if I wanted a partner, I had to let him be a partner. I couldn't have a partner and a minion at the same time. I had to share the responsibility and the authority. So I couldn't tell him how to do everything. I couldn't presume that I was the expert on all things baby, even though I was the person who gestated the baby and breastfed and spent a lot of physical time with the baby, with the things that Kurt did for the baby, I had to let him do them his way and honor that it was just as good as my way, even if it was different. So I really encourage you to look at that that way as a sort of foundational piece of taking care of the relationship as you become parents. Another thing that we did right from the beginning, religiously, that I think was really valuable was making sure that we had date nights. Because a date, especially when you have a baby, you're underslept and overtouched and everything's going on. Having time alone together, that is just relaxing. We did a lot of dinners out and a lot of going to the movies, which are not the most exciting dates on the planet, but they were vacations. They were an escape from the constant emotional demands. And of course, there are emotional rewards. I don't mean to be complaining about having a small child, but if you're in the middle of it, you know, it asks a lot of you. And having that little like three hour vacation with my husband, you know, a lot of times I wanted. I would have been just as happy to be alone. And I hear that from a lot of people. But making sure that it was together kept us tight. You know, getting to relax with each other really affirmed our love. As distinct from the only time I get to relax is when he gives me a break so that I can go with a friend or on my own that has a whole different vibe. And over those really intense years, it's really valuable to be putting coins into the bank of us rather than just the bank of me time. So I really encourage that, that you establish that as a priority. And for us, it was a financial priority. You know, we were paying 20 bucks an hour for a sitter early on, and as our kids got older, we used younger sitters. And it wasn't quite as expensive, but definitely a meaningful commitment. It's a pricey movie when you've got good childcare and little bitty kids. But worth it. Absolutely worth it if you have the means. And if you don't have the financial means, then look for other ways. You know, trade with other couples, ask for family support. There are always ways to be resourceful and get that time alone together. And then the other thing that I would really encourage, and again, this requires resources and reveals my privilege. But I started individual therapy when I was pregnant with Cooper just to support that transition to motherhood, because it's a huge identity shift, and I knew it and I got good advice on that front. And so having an established relationship, when your child arrives and you walk through that threshold as a couple and as a person is strongly advised and really, really helpful. So I'd encourage you to work on that. If you've got a baby coming, now's a good time to to create a therapy relationship or a coaching relationship that can support you through that transition into entering parenthood or having another child and navigating your relationship in the interim. And of course, I love helping couples who are making that transition to parenthood or have made the transition and are now ready to up their game and get on the same page about how they share labor, make things really fair and equitable, if not 50 50, which, you know, that's seldom actually what's fair and equitable, but a resentment free allocation of the emotional labor and the invisible labor and all the things that go into running your family. And then of course, cultivating the deep intimacy and erotic connection that are so hard to come by a lot of times, no pun intended, but you know, that are challenging to nurture as you've got lots of kids and lots of moving parts in your life, but so worthwhile. It's such a gift to your children to cultivate the kind of marriage that you would want for them so that they get to witness it. And you know, children sort of swim in the environment created by the love their parents share. And so if you can cultivate a hot, sweet, deep relationship that pays endless dividends in your children's future lives. And I love to help couples cultivate that. So please let me know what other questions you have about intentional family planning and let me know how these ones land. I look forward to hearing from you. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My free Conscious Couples Circle is the place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions, and get more actionable ideas for creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. It's all happening@society.lizenberry.com that link is in the Show Notes for you. You know, new listeners need to hear what you're taking away too. Podcast reviews are what really help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thank you in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app while you're thinking of it. Before you forget, with just a few words about what this show gives you. And hey, have you subscribed to the podcast you're going to want to so you never miss an episode. Please go to the app where you listen, hit that subscribe button, and then you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michelle Lisenberry Christensen, and this has been Sex Love Power. I will see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.