Dear Prudence
Prudie replies to readers’ comments and suggestions.
Advice by
Jenée Desmond-Harris
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April 17, 202610:07 AM
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Slate, LysenkoAlexander/iStock/Getty Images Plus, Pattaree Srisoontorn/Getty Images Plus and Haris Mustofa/iStock/Getty Images Plus.
Each week, Prudence asks readers for their thoughts on the letters she’s received. Her reply will be available every Friday.
Hey Prudence,
Re Not Kidding: It’s absolutely the worst feeling to have a smaller family than the one you wanted because you waited for “X” to happen. Wanting all the dominoes to be perfectly set is a nice goal, but it’s banking on a future that may never happen. It’s assuming there won’t be fertility problems, that the jobs you’re going to school for will still exist. The fact is, life is messy and chaotic in ways you can’t always plan.
I love my kids, but if I could time travel, I would have married earlier, so I could have started having kids earlier, so I could have the size family I wanted. Now I have the means to have more than two kids, but not the energy levels. My mom had kids young, and she phrased it best the other day: You either have energy with little kids or you have money with little kids. Unless you’re lucky, you rarely have both energy and money.
Just engage in the hypotheticals, and what would it look like if you considered starting. Is there somewhere between “when everything is perfect” and now that you might be willing to consider?
—There’s No Perfect Time to Have a Baby
I generally agree that there’s no perfect time to have a baby, but I also believe there’s no perfect way to give advice about parenting decisions, because parenting—and whether it’s enjoyable, miserable, or just fine but later leads to regrets— is not just one thing. It’s different for everyone because everyone has their own individual blend of personality, energy, values, tolerance for being broke, tolerance for being tired, support from family, culture, mental health stuff, and children’s temperaments and personalities.
So while you may look back and think you would have been just fine and perfectly content having children when you were less financially stable, the letter writer might know something about himself and his life that tells him he’d be a wreck and miss out on the enjoyment of small children because of the struggle to survive. So I want to trust him when he says this is an experience he doesn’t want—and that his wife didn’t want before her mom started pressuring her.
Please keep questions short (150 words),