Having children
Deciding to start a family is a major turning point in your relationship and it will change your lives forever. The love, attention, care and education that a child requires involve a lifelong commitment from you and it’s therefore important to ensure that you’re both ready for it.
Discuss your feelings openly and honestly with your partner before coming to any decision. If you rush into starting a family while one of you has doubts about entering into the world of parenthood, it could have disastrous consequences further down the line for both your relationship and your child.
Here are some useful areas for exploration with your partner:
• Discuss whether you are both ready and comfortable with the idea of having children. Try to visualise yourself as parents looking after another life. Can you picture yourselves in this role? Can you imagine what your lives will be like and do you think you want this change? If your partner isn’t ready, make sure you don’t put any pressure on them to change their minds. Allow them to come to the decision to become a parent in their own time. Parenthood is something that should only be entered into if you are both completely certain – if one of you isn’t, the cracks will start to show sooner or later. It’s natural to have anxieties, of course, about whether you will be good parents, but if your feelings or those of your partner amount to serious doubts, then you’re clearly not ready.
• Analyse your finances and work situation to work out whether you can afford to bring a child into the world, as well as your attitude towards work and childcare. Would you prefer your child to be brought up with one parent at home, and if so, can you afford to have a sole breadwinner in the family? If not, how will you juggle work and childcare between you?
• Agree on what roles you will take on as parents and how you will share the chores and responsibilities. Defining your roles at the outset will help to ensure that there are no misunderstandings when your child comes along.
• Think about the impact a child will have on your social life and whether you are prepared to sacrifice the independence of being able to go on nights out whenever you want.
• Look at the network around you of family and friends and explore whether you will have enough support to help you bring up your child or whether just the two of you would be able to cope if necessary.
• Share your thoughts on how you would want your child to be brought up. This is particularly important for couples who come from different religious or cultural backgrounds as their beliefs and traditions may be at odds with one another.
• Consider how you would feel if your found out your baby was disabled or had special needs. Can you agree on what you would do in such circumstances and how you would cope?
• We’re not all lucky enough to fall pregnant immediately – in fact it happens to very few of us. It can take a long time to conceive, sometimes years, even for healthy couples. With fertility problems on the increase too, it’s not uncommon for couples to be waiting for several years before their longed-for bundle of joy arrives. For couples who’ve been trying for a long time, it’s easy to fall into the trap of becoming obsessive about sex, fertility and monthly cycles until it starts to dominate their lives and relationship. The important advice here is to manage your expectations before you start trying so that conception doesn’t become an all-consuming issue for you both.
