cover of episode 204. Should we be thinking about kids in our 20s?

204. Should we be thinking about kids in our 20s?

Publish Date: 2024/6/14
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The Psychology of your 20s

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Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

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Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s. The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here. Back for another episode as we of course continue

Break down the psychology of our 20s. Today, let's talk about something that I don't think I have ever spoken about on the podcast before. Having kids, having babies, having children.

It might seem so far off for some of us and so adult, but for other people, it is right around the corner. It is part of their future two, five, ten year plan. And although I definitely think we've passed the days when we were kind of expected to have children by 22 or 23, it is definitely something that a lot of us still have.

start considering in our 20s whether children are part of our future, whether maybe we want to be younger parents or whether we want to focus on our careers and weight, regardless of your kind of preferences, regardless of what you want to do in your life. I do think that talking about children as a possibility, thinking about their role in our future is something that we really do need to start thinking about during this decade as we

as adult and mature as it seems. You know, I'm 24 at the moment, and I always, for the longest time, was convinced that I did not want kids. I didn't want a family of my own, especially when I was a teenager. I had these very huge, exaggerated fantasies of, like, being the archetype of the fun, drunk, single art, travelling around the world, like, collecting, I was going to say trophies, collecting trinkets, you know, this whole...

fabulous vision and people would always tell me that I would change my mind. I really resented that. I honestly still don't believe that everybody does change their mind. But let me tell you something. I turned 23 and it was like suddenly I was sure.

And I was sure that I wanted children. And it was like something had clicked in my brain that I wanted to be a mom someday. And it really startled me. And for the first time, it really had me considering things like parenting, things like fertility. And it brought a new lens to my health and who I was dating. And of course, when that happened, I turned to my friends about it because that is my main source of wisdom. And so many of them had experienced this.

something similar some of my friends who had always been very you know firm in their decision that they did not want children they remained firm others like me had like shifted entirely and you know it's like I turned 24 and suddenly I've had more conversations about egg freezing than I have ever had before and so many people are talking to me about fertility or starting to really care that their period is consistent or about what they're eating and their health and

And I want to talk about it. When do we really need to start thinking about kids? Do we need to start thinking about it in our 20s or at all? What are the factors that we need to consider? What about when it comes to our romantic life, the pressure to find somebody? Is it all too adult too soon? And should we kind of preserve our youth for as long as possible? You know, there are so many questions that come up around this. And it's so easy to kind of just like,

put it off. I'm going to make the argument for why thinking about it is actually going to give you more freedom and more choice than not thinking about it. And we also heard from a few listeners who have children who are expecting in their 20s about how they knew when they were ready and what we can learn from their experiences when it comes to family and future planning. So without further ado, it's a much different episode today, but one that I am so excited about.

Let's get into it. Having children is such a distinctively adult conversation, regardless of where you are at in your 20s. It is still so shocking to hear from my friends in their late 20s or early 30s that they're expecting children.

Because it's kind of like you've hit a strange fork in the road, like an intersection of sorts where people's life paths split. And children and I think also marriage to some extent, but that is where the split occurs. Some of us are still getting super drunk on the weekends. Some of us don't have a dollar in savings. But there are other people posting engagement announcements or jokes.

getting IVF or going to OBGYN appointments. Everyone's path is super different. But I think for many of us, we are in a few minds when it comes to whether it's even, you know, the time to consider whether kids are part of the plan, let alone start trying to have kids. If we aren't sure, do we need to decide now? Or can we, you know, it kind of feels like even thinking about it

pops the bubble a little bit. It pops the bubble of being carefree and young because once you do start considering it, some really big things come up, you know, especially not just in terms of like, do you want to start considering whether you should have kids now? It's even the question of like, do I want to consider whether I want kids at all and when I might want to start? And

What comes up with that is questions around like ethics and climate change and recession and like the world that we would be bringing children into. And it's almost like once you are like, yeah, maybe I do want children. Is that when you have to start making a plan? Is that when we kind of start to feel strapped down?

To a timeline. Because once we start thinking about kids. There is this acknowledgement. That there is a bit of a to do list. That comes with that you know.

You have to find a suitable partner or most people would prefer to have a partner with them to raise a child. You have to kind of get your finances sorted, get your life sorted before a window closes. And for women, obviously, that window is our biological clock. And, you know, typically I really hate that phrase because it very much connotes that like when the clock hits zero, we expire. We are past our worth. We've run out of time, you know, as if our lives don't continue, whether we have children or not.

But that is what we know it as colloquially. And we also know that there is like a deadline for reproduction. Not to make it sound so clinical, but around, you know, 30 to 35, our ability to have children declines and it continues on that kind of plane. It continues to decline before menopause. So knowing that, does that change how we live today?

our 20s even if we don't want to start having kids to our 30s knowing that it might be more difficult and the thing that I often hear from people is like if children are a certainty in my life plan why not do it in my 20s because there is a greater chance that I can have children naturally there's a greater chance that I'll be around longer and

And I might have more of that support system in my parents, in my grandparents, even, you know, some of us are so lucky to still have, you know, both sets of grandparents alive. I can bounce back from a career break easier. Like there are a lot of pros, but there are also a lot of

Cons, right? The loss of freedom. The quick change in life trajectory compared to all of our friends. The money. That's a huge one. The money. Children are so expensive. But also it's this like capacity and this lifestyle that we would be giving up. So that I think is the thing that really contributes to the decision to have kids in our 20s or to even...

consider it because even if you do want to have kids eventually in your 30s there is kind of an acknowledgement that there is a chapter that will close when that decision is made and of course there is a chapter for everything but I think the chapter that you are in without children is one of immense freedom it's being able to go out for drinks or out for dinner with your friends any night of the week it's you know coming home when you feel like it

It is having the freedom to travel where and when you would like. It is having the freedom to sleep in or, you know, to just actually be in control of your life. And

There is a brief window where we truly get that after we turn 18 to when we might, you know, have kids. Obviously, if you don't end up having kids, you literally, you win the lotto. You get to have that freedom for the rest of your life. Congratulations. But, you know, if you want to have kids at some point, like you're likely going to want to start trying before you're like 40. So that's like 22 years to like go.

get it all out of your system to travel where you want to do what you want like maybe max you might want to start trying early you might not want to have like a geriatric pregnancy when you like I'm obviously spiraling here but it's the case that when you start thinking about it you start thinking about how much this decision might impact other areas of your life it's not just around like yeah I want to have a baby it's work decisions it's

will you be able to have a career break do you want to climb the corporate ladder or not it's travel plans do I want to are there places that I wouldn't be able to go with kids that I want to go now are there experiences that I want to have that I know are going to become more difficult like solo traveling you obviously can't solo travel if you have a baby because the baby's got to be there big factor and then dating dating

Do you like how serious are you going to get? How quickly? And I think that when you have this acknowledgement of like, OK, no, eventually I do want kids and I know that it might be easier to try. Like in my late 20s or my early 30s, it might put a lot more pressure on the people that you are romantically attached.

interested in so i was speaking to a friend about this very component the other day and obviously we are you know in a day and age where it's not like a man and woman need to like get together at 22 and have babies by 25 otherwise like that's it you're not going to reproduce there are so many other options there is ivf there is adoption there is surrogacy so many things but

Sometimes the dream is to have somebody to do it all with, to have a partner to help raise your child, especially a partner that we love, that can feel so special. But it also ups the stakes if you haven't already kind of found that person and you're getting older. You're not just facing the stigma of a society that puts romantic love on a pedestal and pities singleness, but it's

It's also really confronting to realize that the key to unlocking your life plan rests in a stranger that you're yet to meet. And it's kind of like, how do you rush something that isn't always up to you? How do you take this off your list to make it sound super, super clinical? And I was speaking to a friend about that and how she is now.

in her kind of like early 30s and how stressful it is that it's no longer just about finding a connection because yes of course that that obviously is the most important thing but it's also about making sure that you're on the same page she said to me she was like when I decided that yes I did want kids it wasn't about that I wanted kids in my 20s I just wanted them eventually and

everything else became a lot more serious and she was like I realized that I'm getting to an age where I don't have the luxury of getting to know you like I don't have the luxury of like let's figure it out it was like no if I'm going to spend a year dating you or a couple of years I want to know that we are on the same page about kids or about family about values and

And the timeline for things really shifts. Not that you are rushing it. Hopefully you are not rushing it. But it's more that there is a directness and an intentionality. And it's more like you have to make calls about big things like kids earlier on and make sure that you're on the same page. And when you're 19 or 22, you know, you kind of have time to have your doubts. You can date people that

you probably don't think is going to be the one and it's not going to really hurt your long-term chances of creating the dream life with the kids or without the kids you can have those kind of fairy tale conversations about the future without needing to enact plans right away and

But that changes the order you get. And it definitely is probably going to give you a fairly large dose of milestone anxiety if you kind of wake up to the conclusion that children are part of your life plan and that part of getting there is finding somebody and you haven't done that yet. And the reason I say milestone anxiety specifically is because that really derives from a sense that you are not where you want to be in life or where you should be. It can still feel like there is this like key ingredient there.

that you are missing. And although milestone anxiety is typically applied to things like career or financial goals, when it does come to relationships, I think it's a lot more complicated because it's not like there is a formula for success or a correlation between effort and output. It is so influenced by things like chance and timing. And if you believe in it,

fate so I think it's really hard to not feel in control of something so significant for the life you dream of and even when I think everything goes according to plan right even if you are you know you've assessed your emotional preparedness you've assessed your financial preparedness your social preparedness the strength of your relationship you are in a relationship you're both ready to have kids you know and you've been like yeah I'm gonna start in my 20s I'm gonna I'm

This is what I want. I want to be a younger parent. This is just what feels right for me. Sometimes it doesn't always work out the way that we want it. You can be absolutely sure of your decision and life can still throw you curveballs. And a big one that I think a lot of us in our early 20s in particular don't think about is fertility. Not just like the biological clock, but also kind of whether we're able to even have kids, the state of all those other systems, right?

This is just not something that we think about when we are 20 or 21. But the older you get, you start to hear stories.

One of the stories was something that I was, it's not a story, it's somebody's, you know, lived experience. The experiences of a friend of mine who I think really woke me up to this a couple of years ago. She started having like these really weird symptoms and problems with like her period and with other things. And she went to the doctor and I'm not going to disclose exactly what she had, what happened, but basically they said to her that her chances of having like

and natural pregnancy were incredibly low. And that if she and her partner wanted to have kids, they had to kind of start trying before she was like 28, 29. Like she had to kind of get a wriggle on. That was essentially what the doctor suggested.

This was such a wake up call for her and for I would say the people around her as well where we were kind of all in this like bubble of like yeah let's just like fuck around and find out like we're having fun we're focused on like graduating uni and like yay like dating around and like partying and then it was suddenly like oh wait I actually you know I think about my future only as my career and I think about my future only as like oh meeting the love of my life and like

getting ahead and like buying a house but it's like no there is a part of this that is happening right now my fertility that I hadn't even considered and it really raised the question of is it better to be prepared now or to live in blissful ignorance is it worth bursting the bubble of not knowing and almost immediately fast forwarding your timeline if you do find out the news that she found out which is that it might actually end up being really hard if she doesn't start now

Or is it just like better to just get to that problem when you get to it? Here's the thing. If you've always known that you want to be a parent and that is a huge facet of your identity and your goals and your future, I do think that it's worth just knowing in your 20s if that is something that is possible for you. Even if you don't feel responsible yet, knowledge is power, especially as all the science starts to improve.

There was this episode of New Girl that I watched a while back in which like if you've watched New Girl like Cece goes in and like Jess and Cece go in and they assess like their ability to have children.

and it's meant to be this fun thing, you know, like, oh, goofy goo girl, when you take a pregnancy test, and you know it's going to be negative, and you see those movies where it ends up positive, it was just meant to be, it was very much like that, meant to be a funny thing, and Cece, it turns out, has very poor fertility, and is really unable, will be unable to conceive naturally, and in that scene, she kind of talks about wishing that she had a magical wand,

to like go back to early 20s and like tell herself, like be a little bit more serious. So even if it does seem weird to be thinking about it now, and even if it does seem pretty intense, I think especially if you're a woman, see, you know, see this questioning around your fertility and your future capacity or desire to have children as an investment in your health. The same way that you want to live a long, healthy life

the same way that you want to have a really successful career. And so you are making investments in that right now. If you do want kids, it's important to be thinking about it sooner rather than later.

And I think what I began to realize was that the pressure doesn't increase, but is reduced by being able to make future decisions with full information that might actually derive from a decision that you make right now. That is kind of like the appeal of egg freezing, right? Like I've been reading so much stuff about egg freezing recently. The premise is that you kind of store your good DNA from when you're like in your early mid 30s, 20s, sorry, for like later.

when you're in like your 30s or maybe even your 40s so that it's kind of like insurance. You have time. You can delay the inevitable. It brings control back into the situation. Even if like you end up not using those eggs, even if like it's not something that you end up deciding, actually no, like I don't want kids, like the climate crisis is too terrible. I just never met the right person. Like I'm happy without them. It is the sense that like the decisions you make now give you the freedom to

In the future. It's like science has allowed us to control something we were never able to control before, which is time and biology. So that is kind of my argument for why I think it's important to firstly consider whether you even want kids in your 20s.

And not in your 20s, like in your 20s, consider whether you want kids in the future. That's probably a better way to put it, because the decisions that you make around your health and your fertility now may actually come back to help you when you do decide in your 30s or 40s. And if you don't want kids, like, great, then you can, you know, start making a plan to live your life more the way that you want it to.

And I think the other component is like it's also important to think about whether you do want to have kids in your 20s. Right. Whether like this is a better time, whether you like my friend's example, the knowledge that maybe it will get harder as you get older.

As you age and the older that you get, it's better to start in this moment. So I also wanted to hear from you guys, people who chose to have kids in their 20s, what they would want us to know, whether you're just considering, whether you're decided or you're acting on it. Stay with us for more after the break.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, Unpacking the Toolbox, where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show. To officially unpack season three of Scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three. Mesmerizing. But also,

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Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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There is obviously a perspective to this that I can't bring. I don't have kids and as much as, you know, I was speaking about this weird maternal urge that suddenly popped up out of nowhere in the last year, I really don't plan on it for the next like five to ten years.

But I wanted to hear from people who have thought about it a lot, especially people in their 20s who have decided to have children perhaps earlier than what most of us would expect in this day and age. Or people who have had to make big decisions about fertility in their 20s that feel really adult and feel like they are something that should have, you know, that they could have delayed but then couldn't.

So I saw this actually really funny article before I read this first thing that having children in your 20s is now like punk, which is so funny. And that's kind of like, you know what I do? I kind of get it because yet again, when I hear about people having kids in their 20s, it's not that I feel any certain way about it. I'm just like, oh, that's different.

When actually it's not really, it's not. So I do want to hear about it. I do want to hear from people about it, about their decision, their timeline, when they started thinking about things and their fears. So here's the first person that messaged us and I really love her perspective.

I always knew I wanted to be a parent and had my baby girl at 23. I faced a lot of stigma that she was an accident. Oh my God. Sidebar. Why would you ever say that to somebody? That is so freaking rude. And yeah, back to this person. I was facing me that she was an accident when actually I'd been together with my now husband since we were 18 and it was part of our plan. I still lost friends who didn't get it and had people judge me, but she is now five and

And I like knowing that she will be 20 when I'm 43 and I can be a young parent as she grows up and keep up with her. See, that is the kind of perspective that I think we don't hear too often. People who, you know, had kids young and how that is different.

actually like a really valuable thing for them. I think a lot of the time, and I will speak for myself here, you see people who have had children young and you're like, well, that's a bit different. And you think about what they might be missing out because that wouldn't be your choice. But as this person said, like, no, she didn't. Yes, she may have missed out in the sense that she lost friends that sound like

They were never really her friends, but she gained so much. And I think when you are clear that that is going to be part of your plan and when you have really considered it and thought about it, you can actually choose when it's going to work best for you. And for her, it sounded like when she was younger, that was really what was aligned with how she wanted to raise her child and she's doing it. So I really liked that input. I thought that was really a perspective, a side of things that we don't always hear.

Here is another person who wrote in. I found out that I had half a uterus when I was 21 and that just put everything into perspective then and there. It felt like I aged out of my friend group immediately and no one could understand how my life felt different because suddenly I was thinking about decisions they didn't have to make for years.

That was three years ago. I still don't have a partner, but I feel more at peace with the fact that I'll be okay if it doesn't work out because I had time and more time to consider whether this was even for me. I'm glad I got to be okay with what could happen and not be really excited about it when I was 30 and married, then find out the hard way. Yes, it was hard, but now I know more about my values and priorities than I did before I found out about my uterus.

Why did I say it like that? Thank you. Thank you for sharing. It really comes back to that point. You know, kids aren't everything at the end of the day. You don't need to reproduce to have a purpose. But maybe to paraphrase what you're saying, it seems like at the end of the day, it's about having choice. That's what feels meaningful here. And choice also comes from knowledge and knowing more in your 20s, even if it might up the stakes, actually lets you

have time to consider things and to consider what you want in the long term and the alternatives to that ultimate choice. Let's hear from one more person. Hi, I'm so glad that you were talking about this because I feel like it is so weird amongst my group when I bring this up. People want to stay young. Thinking about kids feels old. I made the decision to freeze my eggs through work because I'm 28. I have a boyfriend and

slash life partner but we haven't decided whether we want to have children yet although we have definitely thought about it egg freezing just took the stress away and work paid for it for people thinking about it it does put a lot of strain on your body and it's costly so know that going in

Some part of me thought that if I went through that, I must know that I want kids because otherwise, why would I do it? Yes, it is important to think about kids in your 20s as a hypothetical, but I want to stress that you do not. I want to stress that you do have more time than you think. My mom had me at 38. Back then, she was so old. She told me she was never worried about it, though, because she loved her life and she would have had a full and wonderful life.

Whether I came around or not. And I love that philosophy. It is a big decision. But you can wait until you are 38 or older and still be successful.

Okay, sorry, I feel like I really fell over my words there. I really love this point and I think this is a really good one to end on though because it brings some nuance. As this person said, you know, she still made a huge decision about her fertility and she didn't know, but you do have time. Kids aren't everything. You can change your mind. You can start late.

And I think it's a good way to finish this up is to really articulate and express that science is coming a long way. Like this episode was not to sit down and stress us all out about, you know, go and get a scan right now. Go and find out if you can have kids like start on your family planning journey as young as possible, because that does sound very like the Handmaid's Tale. I understand it.

But I think that the whole philosophy that underlies this whole episode is that more information equals more choice. And if we...

Think about retirement in our 20s. If we think about our dream jobs in our 20s, if we think about finding the love of our life in our 20s, all these big things, right? We should, you know, all these big things that are the ingredients for our life plan and are the ingredients for our five and 10 year plan. We should also be thinking about children. And if you don't want them, that is honestly stupid.

And so, like, I don't feel like I need to say that, but yes, just stress it one more time. If you don't want them, great. Like you come to that decision, you come to that conclusion. And yes, you can change your mind. But it's also like if you do want kids, there are factors that are important to consider during this decade, whether that is your dating choices, whether that is your health, that we have more power by thinking about earlier. Yeah.

So I do hope that this episode has made you think or has just been entertaining, has helped you learn something. Thank you so much to the people who wrote in with questions.

their perspectives and their life experience. It was just something really that I've been thinking about a lot and I was interested to talk about. I would love to hear what you guys think. If you have a story, if you have an opinion, something else that you want to say, please DM me on Instagram at that psychology podcast. I would love to hear from you. And if there's somebody else who you think would be interested in this episode who wants to hear it,

please feel free to send it to them. Make sure you leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now and that you're following along for future episodes. And until next time, stay safe, be kind and be gentle to yourself. And we'll talk soon.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And we're the hosts of Unpacking the Toolbox, the Scandal Rewatch podcast where we're talking about all the best moments of the show. Mesmerizing. But also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for an even more behind-the-scenes Scandal.

stories with Unpacking the Toolbox. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life.

I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For 10 years, I've been obsessed with one of the most bizarre and audacious cons in rock and roll history. It's a tie.

We were all facing 20 years and all that good stuff. The lead singer tried to pull off an English accent, and they went on the road as the zombies. These guys are not going to get away with it. Zombies are too popular. Listen to the true story of the fake zombies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to know how to leverage culture to build a successful business? Then Butternomics is the podcast for you. I'm your host, Brandon Butler, founder and CEO of Butter ATL. And on Butternomics, we go deep with today's most influential entrepreneurs, innovators, and business leaders to peel back the layers on how they use culture as a driving force in their business. Butternomics will give you what you need to take your game to the next level. Listen to Butternomics on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.