Hey mums, have you been through the tussle of deciding when to have kids?

1. Am I financially Ready for Kids?

Lately, I find myself wavering about having kids. I want to have kids but I do not feel financially ready for them yet. Having children would take time away from my career, I rationalised. However, in 2022, I was nowhere close to hitting my career goals. This made me wonder if delaying having kids have removed the time pressure to achieve my financial goals.

2. By then, would it be too late to have Kids?

I am most tempted to have kids when I see most of my close friends transitioning into motherhood. I am fully aware that my biological clock is ticking. What if I face fertility issues by the time I am financially ready? Even though there is now more support for women facing fertility issues in Singapore, I still worry that I may have less energy for my children as I become older. 

3. Can I trust my Partner and myself to remain committed?

Also, with more marriages breaking apart among couples today, I find myself wondering if mine would work out as well.  As Nassim Telab wrote in his book entitled The Black Swan Theory, you can never conclude that all swans are black until you spot a black swan. Likewise, we cannot conclude that our spouses are faithful until they stray. Surprisingly, this wisdom was similarly passed down by my grandmother who had never gone to school. My grandmother used to remind her daughters that “老公只有踏进棺材了才是你的”, which broadly translates to “Your husband only belongs to you exclusively when he dies”.

4. Have I fulfilled all the dreams that I want to achieve when I was single?

Even if I am reasonably confident that my partner and I are both committed to safeguarding our relationship, I have dreams that I would like to fulfill before having kids. Solo traveling and building a start-up (that would bring pleasant surprises to 1 million people) are top on my agenda.

 

I am of the belief that our dreams should not take a back seat just because we met someone along the way with whom we want to spend more time together. When I find myself wavering about having kids even before I achieve my goals for the start-up, I felt slightly ashamed of myself.  To stop my self-belief from crumbling, here I am writing this article to think aloud.  

Woodrow Wilson, the 28th U.S. President, once said, “We grow great by dreams.” Is life only worth living if we pursue our dreams? Raising children is also one of my dreams but I am just not sure how important it is to me. I guess my actions in 2023 and beyond would shed some light on this mystery. 

5. Can Batch-working be applied to raising kids?

Ideally, I would like to have my kids one after another so that I could batch-raise them together. I would like to be financially self-sufficient to be a stay-at-home mum for at least 3 years.

I enjoy playing with children so much that I could not believe my luck that people are paying me to play with their kids when I first became a tutor.  At this moment, I plan to partially home-school my children so that I can play with them and they can also pick up some social skills in school. 

However, when I asked my friends who recently have kids, most of them advised that I should first have one child to see if I am able to cope with the physical demands of nursing a child. What do you think?

6. Will having kids later help to prolong my parents’ lives?

Another reason that I am convincing myself to delay having kids is to seed the desire to live longer in my parents’ brains. I want to give my parents a reason to live longer since it is their biggest wish to meet their grandchildren. 

Afterthoughts

What do you think? Am I overthinking? Should I be so rational about this decision? If you think you could help me unravel this question, I would love to hear from you in the comments below! If like me, you are also struggling with this question, I would like to leave you with some advice that I learned from YouTube. Would love to hear your thoughts on them too!

Some Advice on YouTube