A time to be born

No, no, no, not now, not now, now, Now, NOW! - never.  They say surfing is all about timing and in a sense so too is child bearing, with one important distinction; if you have a kid you’re in for the ride ready or not.

The modern world has a lot to answer for and I truly believe one of its biggest mixed blessings is choice.  100 types of breakfast cereal to 1,000 men on Tinder.  How can you ever be satisfied with the choice you have made when there are countless alternative options mocking your maladroit selection.  How even are you supposed to make a decision at all.

Agency is anxiety when you lack confidence and sometimes what you’re really looking for is a set of instructions.  Nowhere is agency more illusory than when it comes to starting a family.  Making an intended baby requires two very important things that we have some agency over and one essential thing over which we have none.

We need to find somebody to have a baby with and we have to decide to have a baby.  We also need luck.  I had my child at 36.  That is 6 years later than I had always insouciantly assumed from youth that I would.   As my 30s have progressed I have noted a dismaying depletion in my physical energy.  The vigor I enjoyed at 30 will almost certainly be replaced with Viagra at 40.

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have a child at 18 (definitely the first No).  Technically an adult but still full of the presumptuous certainty of adolescence.  I could have matched that child shot for shot on the tennis court, they would be in the midst of university, months away from flying the nest.  But what meagre nest could I have provided.  Would university even have been a possibility.

I also look at friends (men, for biology will enforce this inequality for some time to come) who have had children in their 50s and wonder how they scoop a screaming toddler from the floor when even rising from an armchair elicits a heavy sigh.

Musing on timing I suppose I am left with an equivocal thought.  If you can love your child, which ultimately is all it really needs, there will be times when no time will seem the right time but also any time can be the right time if you so choose.