Let’s start with this: We love our kids. We really do. But does that mean we think everyone should want to raise children?

Parenting is the biggest commitment a human being can make. After all, nothing changes your life more than adding another one to it—and one you’re responsible for, no less.

It’s not a decision that should be taken lightly, but the messages in society strongly lean towards growing a family. Those who don’t often get labelled “selfish” and “immature.”

A lot of the conversations on remaining childless come from folks without kids, and those perspectives are valuable. But we wanted to add our two cents to the mix. With eight kids and decades of highs and lows in raising them between us, we think you might want to hear our perspectives, too.

Want more of Lara and Rowan?

Rowan is available for speaking engagements, and Lara also shares a lot of her art on Instagram.

Transcript

(please note, transcripts are not edited for accuracy or spelling)

[00:00:00] Rowan: I would be lying if I said that every single moment of parenthood has been a wonderful experience and magical, and that I would sing. Its praises to anyone who asks because. I won’t, don’t regret any of my choices.

[00:00:42] Lara: Welcome to unboxing it. I’m Lara.

[00:00:44] Rowan: And

I’m Rowan

[00:00:46] Lara: and I am gonna start off by just talking about the fact that I am a mother of three teenagers and I think that the only thing that I ever really knew about myself is that I wanted to have children. That is where I’m gonna start.

[00:01:02] Rowan: Oh, there’s a big but coming.

[00:01:06] Lara: But, and this is what we’re gonna talk about today, I don’t think that being a parent is the end all and be all, and that society should keep trying to tell everybody that they should want to have kids. And so that’s what we’re gonna talk about today.

[00:01:22] Rowan: I’m really excited about this topic because we’re seeing that a lot.

We’re Canadian and we’re seeing this idea of the traditional family, and I’m using air quotes here because traditional family, depending on where you live in the world, looks very different. But the traditional westernized idea of a family that is coming up again and again and again south of the border where.

The idea of a man marrying a woman and then having children, the whole point of this is to procreate and bring children into the world and carry on the next generation for whatever reason. Sometimes political, sometimes religious, whatever it is. Sometimes just because this is just what the media has taught us from the beginning.

This is coming up more and more and more. So I have five children. I’m a trans man. I gave birth to three children. Adopted one when she was a teenager, and my partner also has a child. So between us we have five. So I have always wanted to be a parent that is something just like you, Lara, that is something that I’ve always dreamed of.

The idea of having kids fill me with joy. The idea of a life without children. Made me really sad. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome and had a difficult time conceiving and that broke my heart. And you know, we had pregnancy losses and all, kinds of things and, I am very happy I had children.

But, but it’s not for everyone. And I would be lying if I said that every single moment of parenthood has been a wonderful experience and magical, and that I would sing. Its praises to anyone who asks because. I won’t, don’t regret any of my choices. I love my children and they’re amazing. They’re all adults now.

All of our kids are 18 and up. They are fantastic human beings, all five of them. I’m so proud of them. And also truly, and know everyone says this, but I really mean it from the bottom of my heart, and I’ve done a lot of difficult things. Raising kids is the hardest thing I have ever done.

[00:03:49] Lara: Yep.

Period.

[00:03:51] Rowan: You should see Lara’s face right now. It says a lot more than that Yep.

[00:03:57] Lara: Yeah,

I think that. One of the reasons I think this topic is so interesting is that for years, and you know, admittedly I haven’t been in spaces as often where I hear this as much anymore, but I think it’s still around, which is this idea of people who say they don’t want to have children, and then other people saying, you’ll regret that.

Oh, you’ll see when you’re older, you’re gonna change your mind. Oh, no, no, no. It’s the best thing you could ever do. And I think that while it can be amazing. That if somebody does not want children, they should not have children because I wanted children more than anything, which meant that I was all in, right?

Like I am all in on whatever it takes to do the thing. And I struggled really hard quite a lot of the time. And so imagine if you didn’t really wanna do the thing in the first place, how miserable you’d be

like, eugh.

[00:04:53] Rowan: I’m going to admit something here.

I got pregnant at 19. And we were like, okay, well I guess we’re doing this. We decided we’re gonna do this. We’re gonna have this baby. He’s now 28 years old. He’s a wonderful human being. He’s so kind and thoughtful and smart, and I could just go on and on about him. I love this kid.

He’s just a amazing, so truly a great decision. But also I became a parent at 20 years old and. I felt a lot of judgment because a lot of people are not parents at that age, and a lot of times when parents are that age, there is an assumption of who we are as people. And it’s not a good assumption.

It’s never a good assumption. And so I walked around very worried about what other people thought of my choices, and I would get comments, and they would hit extra hard. If anyone had any criticisms of my parenting, it hit me extra hard back then because. It just felt like it was reinforcing the idea that I was going to be a terrible parent and I doubled down.

I decided that I was going to be the best damn parent you have ever seen in your entire life, which is impossible, by the way. What a standard to live up to. There’s no such thing, and also I became staunch. In my belief that everybody should have children. And that had nothing to do with anybody else.

But when we talk about the person who you say to them, I never wanna have children, and. Their first thought is, oh, you’re really gonna regret that when you’re older. What a mistake that’s going to be. I used to think that way, but it had nothing to do with the other people. It had everything to do with trying to justify my own choices and my own insecurities around those choices to myself, and I think that’s what happens sometimes now, sometimes somebody is just so enamored with being a parent.

But they can’t imagine not being a parent. And I get that right, I understand because that love is so strong and those highs are so high, and sometimes we forget that those lows are so, so low too. It’s quite the rollercoaster, but I do think that there are people who feel like once they have children.

This should be the greatest thing they’ve ever done, and they should be really happy about it pretty much all the time. And when it doesn’t live up to that standard, they get like me and they go, well, I have to justify it to myself. It has to be the best thing ever. So I’m gonna. have to believe that and then force that on everybody else.

I swear , that’s what I did. I’m not saying everyone does that truly, I wanna really say that, but I do think there’s an element of that in society.

[00:08:00] Lara: Yeah, there are different facets to that. One being like we need to justify it to ourselves. One is that we don’t even let ourselves consider anything different.

So we’ve talked about this. When it comes to other things, education, career, right? It comes up, but there’s like a path that society has said you’re supposed to go on. And if you followed the path without. Asking yourself if you wanted it, but because you were supposed to, then you don’t want to consider that you shouldn’t have done that and therefore you are never gonna consider that a different path is the right one to be on.

Like, we should all go through it. So there’s the one where it’s just huge blinders to even. Just like how you’re doing, right? It’s just like, this is how you do it, this is how you do it, this is how you do it. And then there I think is the part where I’m sure it comes up like, I did it. If I had to do it, why don’t you have to do it?

And that comes through in again, work. It’s like people who I think insist that the only way that effective workers can do their job is by being in the office. I think there just has to be a part of it like I had to go to the office every day.

[00:09:11] Rowan: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

[00:09:13] Lara: you are just gonna not have to do that?

That’s not fair. so I think that there’s all those kinds of things like it’s. Just simply so taught that the next step after, getting yourself settled, quote unquote, and like, it’s a whole deeper, bigger discussion now with the fact that it’s really hard to have enough money to be settled now, but that once you’re there, you should be having children because that is your job to repopulate the world or whatnot, and it’s clearly important.

To governments and such, like, I’m always like, why don’t we just have less people? I don’t think we need more people, but in order for the economy to keep going, capitalism, I don’t know. , There’s clearly reasons that make people scared when suddenly people are having less children. Whereas I was like, Hey, maybe less people would be easier to manage, but I don’t know.

Yeah. The government wants us to repopulate the earth. I don’t understand why.

[00:10:11] Rowan: Exactly. Exactly.

This comes down

to the same energy that I get from some cisgender people when they talk about transgender people and say that we don’t exist. This can’t possibly be a real thing. we have to be mentally ill , to think that we are not the gender we were assigned at birth, et cetera. And it’s the same energy that a lot of gay people have to face when they tell people they’re gay.

And they’re like, well, no, you mean I, that’s weird. I’m not gay. So you can’t be gay. I’m not trans. So you can’t be trans. I want kids. You can’t not want kids. You can’t not feel different from me because. This is the norm, this is the baseline. So anything outside of that is wrong.

And we do ourselves a disservice as human beings when we expect conformity. Conformity in any way, frankly. I mean, obviously we need to have some rules and regulations to keep society functioning, but this idea that everybody has to want the same things, live the same life experience, the same.

Contentment from that. Life is counterintuitive because as humans, the way that we innovate and grow and survive as a species is by having different brains, different bodies, different wants, different needs. If we all did the exact same thing and felt the exact same way about it, I think we would just be ants.

And you know, ants are cool, but we’re not ants. This should be the quote for this podcast.

[00:11:53] Lara: We’re not ants.

[00:11:54] Rowan: Ants are cool, but we’re not ants. Sometimes I think I need to drink more coffee before we start these.

[00:12:02] Lara: Or maybe you just are fun and all of these things are interesting and great to say no matter what,

[00:12:09] Rowan: this is why I do a podcast with you.

’cause you stroke my ego. Thank you. Appreciate that.

[00:12:13] Lara: My pleasure.

I think it always comes back around to this, but there’s that whole, why is school the way it is? why are we given so many rules like it is. Easier and better for us to have been taught to live life a certain way, to not try to be too individualistic, to not try to go off wherever we wanna go.

And so we’re conditioned to think things are supposed to be a certain way. And it’s just like when I talk about there’s no one way to do a thing, there’s no one way that a brain is right. We did our brain episode because we’re all so different, but so much of what we’re taught. Is everybody is the same, so everybody should be on the same path, and it’s like a little production line kind of situation.

And so when we stop believing that one path. Is the best path idea. That can mean a difference in our career. It can mean a difference in where we wanna live, what kind of house we wanna live in, what kind of family structure we wanna have, whether or not we want to have children.

I don’t know if I’ve said this before on the podcast, but like the idea of the lost bigger community , that we have our families in very siloed situations now, I think is part of the problem and the idea of having, I don’t know what to call it. Other than, I’m gonna call it a community.

my husband likes to tease me that I’m like, ready to start a commune / cult. But I think that having a place where people can come together in community and share the load of things would be better. And our society is not set up that way. Like it’s not the way life is, right? Like people would be like, what are you doing? That’s not how we do life. It would require a lot of shifting of norms and doing things that people wouldn’t expect in order to create a community like that. And so when a society teaches us to be a certain way, it’s so that there aren’t all these outliers.

They’re like, just, just, just be good. Be ants. Like we want you to be,

[00:14:10] Rowan: Be ants!

[00:14:11] Lara: We may not be ants, but they kind of want us to be. And so when we’re like, actually we’re not ants. What do we want? It is, something that some people are not gonna want us to do. And so we haven’t been taught to do it naturally and all of that to say, whether I’m talking about your career, your housing, Where you live or whether or not you wanna have children, like all of these things come up and you get to stop and say, what would suit me best? And then you get to trust yourself. Right? The people who come back and say you’re gonna regret it later are trying to make you not trust yourself. Like, I don’t want kids.

Oh, but what if I do regret it later? But like so many people I know when they’re like, I don’t want kids. Like, I have no question marks around that. But people are still trying to make them doubt themselves.

[00:14:58] Rowan: Yeah. And yet, quite often it does not happen in reverse unless you are maybe talking to a whole bunch of friends who are childless by choice and you say, I want to have a baby.

And then at that point, you might get some pushback and you might not. But for the most part, when somebody says. I want to have children. It is never questioned, In society because of course you wanna have children. Of course you do. It is the same thing as straight. People never have to come out as straight, right?

Because of course you’re straight. That’s the default. The default is straight. So you have to come out as something else, right? You know? You don’t have to come out as straight and I think that we do a disservice when. We expect everyone else to be just like us, and we also sometimes do a disservice to our own children in expecting that everyone else has children.

I’m gonna give you a couple of anecdotal examples. I know a teacher and she is honestly one of the best teachers she taught two of my children. One of the best teachers my children have ever had. She does not have children, and I have never asked her, ’cause none of my business, whether she just chose not to have children or she couldn’t have children.

Regardless. What she has told me before is one of the gifts of not having children of her own. Is she dedicates all of her energy into the children She teaches, right? So she gets to go home and recoup. So she spends all day in a classroom. She’s helping lots of kids. Some of those kids have, various needs that, need extra attention and care, and she’s able to give it all because when she goes home, her only responsibility is her cat.

And everything else in her life is she watches the shows she wants to watch, she goes on the vacation, she wants to take, she sees the friends, she wants to see, and she doesn’t have that extra responsibility of then having to go home and take care of other children.

Now, I also know a lot of really wonderful teachers who have children, so I’m not saying that that’s like the key to being a great teacher, but in her words. That is what she’s able to do in her opinion, a little bit better than if she had children. I also know, my partner and I have a friend who is a, woman who has been adamant from day one.

She never wanted children. She also has lots of money. She comes from money. She has made a lot of money, and she lives the life that she wants to live. She also has a nephew who she spoils rotten and she has taken him on tours of Europe and she has had him over to her house to do all kinds of cool things.

And she’s always there for him as he gets older and he needs an adult to talk to who isn’t his parents. and she’s able to give something different than his parents give him. That compliments what they’re doing. If she had her own children, she probably wouldn’t be able to give as much.

And she has made the decision in her life like she loves kids. She just doesn’t want any of her own. And I think that’s also the fallacy that a lot of us believe that if you don’t want children, it’s because you don’t like them. That’s not true a lot of the time. Maybe you don’t relate to them super well.

In some cases. I’ve seen that and I have seen that a handful of people have been like, I don’t like kids. Which frankly for me is a big red flag. If somebody does not like someone based on the age of that, someone. Across the board, like I don’t think it’s good to make generalizations about an entire age group of people, you know, or to just write them all off as like, you know, not worth your time.

But. Most of the people I know who don’t have kids, get along with kids quite well, have children in their lives to one extent or another. They just don’t want to take on the responsibility of caring for them 24 7, which is fair, good on you. And it gives them the time and the space to be around kids in a way that works for them.

And often that works really well for the children.

[00:19:24] Lara: Yes. You’ve said a lot of things and I wanna try to come back to a couple of them. One, I wanna talk about the whole, I don’t like kids thing because I think that can be a combination of things. One is I don’t know what to do with them. Right? Yeah. So it’s not necessarily, I don’t like kids ’cause they’re.

Terrible. They’re like, they make me uncomfortable. And I do not know how to relate. And I think that’s okay too.

[00:19:50] Rowan: Yeah, totally fair I think it’s the idea of like, I don’t like children. You know, when someone’s like, Ugh, I hate kids. That kind of thing really turns me off because I’m like,I don’t hate any group of people.

[00:20:02] Lara: And I bet that most of them-

[00:20:03] Rowan: White supremacists.

[00:20:05] Lara: What’s that?

[00:20:06] Rowan: White supremacists. I hate white supremacists. Okay. Anyway, other than that though,

[00:20:11] Lara: me too. That one. yeah. I just think that so many people when they say, I don’t like this or I hate this, a lot of it actually comes from discomfort and not knowing how to deal with things.

And I get that. Quickly. I was gonna say about the teacher thing. I would spend time thinking like how? How could somebody have kids at home and then go and deal with kids all day and then go home and have kids at home and then go deal with kids all day? I’ve always thought like, oh, that would be so hard.

But that’s probably ’cause I found parenting hard in a lot of ways in terms of, it taking away from my energy and working and doing other things was what gave me the energy to go back to it. So I’m sure that for me, that’s where that came from. So I might say, how could you ever want that?

But that’s me again, projecting my feelings and my own capacity on other people.

[00:21:01] Rowan: I mean for sure, but also as somebody who ran a daycare outta my home and also worked at a school, both in the daycare and in the classroom for a good while. It is exhausting. ’cause then you go home and then you have to deal with your own kids and, help them with their homework or pick them up from daycare or whatever it is you’re doing.

And like, they’re tired and they’re hungry and you just did this all day long. it is a different feeling. It is really tiring and I know tons of people who do it. Like having worked in the school system, I know a lot of. Teachers who are also parents and a lot of assistants and a lot of different people who, take care of kids during the day while raising their own hats off to you.

Because I didn’t do it as a career for a really long time and I felt pretty burned out at the end of it. So, mad, mad respect to you.

[00:21:53] Lara: Totally. Another thing that you said was, and I don’t know if she didn’t have children by choice or not, and it’s none of my business and I think that that’s an important piece here, right?

Number one, don’t ask people about whether or not they’re gonna have children all the time. There’s probably a lot of people you’ve encountered who don’t have children and they have been trying and it is going to be crushing to them to be reminded that they don’t have children. So that’s.

one thing, but also think about what insisting, having children being like the most wonderful thing you can do in your life would do to somebody who desperately wanted children and can’t have them. It really isn’t the only way to have a good life. You can have a great life without having children again.

I love my children. I’m so happy that I have them. Everything is great about that, but certainly I don’t think I would’ve had a terrible life without them.

[00:22:46] Rowan: Yeah, exactly, exactly. again, just more stories from my past, but I mentioned earlier I had polycystic ovarian syndrome and it made conceiving much harder. And I was on, this is where I’m gonna age myself, a web board.

A web board, by the way, called Soul Sisters, but sisters spelt. CYST, ERS, obviously,

[00:23:08] Lara: Right, obviously,

[00:23:10] Rowan: obviously. and more than once, I would say five or six times, easily, and I think I’m being very conservative here. There were people, women were the people who are on this board for the most part. Who had been trying to conceive because of their own fertility issues for a very long time.

Some of them eight, 10 years, and their wish came true. They were finally able to have a baby, and it didn’t live up to the hype. Because for that decade say they had been telling themselves a story about what parenthood was going to be like, if they could just get pregnant and have a child, then everything would be great and I would.

See pictures come in about, you know, the baby shower and the clothes they purchased for this baby and the beautiful room. and some of them had professionally decorated because they had a lot of money to do this. You know, they had been trying for a long time. They were both full-time professionals and they had everything going for them except they couldn’t have a child.

And then they finally are able to have a child and, I mean, that is amazing. Or they maybe adopted a child, but most of ’em were finally able to conceive. And then the depression set in. Now I had postpartum depression, so you can really get depressed from a hormone drop.

But what I was seeing over time, at least for the first little while until they were able to adjust to the reality of having a baby was that parenthood was a lot harder and a bit of a letdown for them because they had romanticized it for so long, and this is. What I really want people to, understand, and I think we’re doing a better job of this now, you and I, Lara, , we were bloggers at the time of like the mommy blog.

And the mommy blogs, as a general rule, were blogs that. Highlighted only the best of parenting there. There were very, very few, I would say, the Bloggess being one of them. and dare I say my own blog at the time, ’cause I was very honest about how hard parenting was, but there were very few blogs out there.

That actually talked about how challenging parenthood could be. So you would just see these highlight reels of, these are the crafts we made, and this is the museum that we went to, and this is the beautiful vacation we took. And you’re not seeing the meltdowns, mom crying in the bathroom after she finally gets her child to sleep.

You’re not seeing, you know. The kid throwing up on the plane, you’re not seeing any of that stuff. You’re only seeing how wonderful it is. So this is what these moms who were trying to conceive were witnessing and what they thought, I think from looking inward, what they thought they were getting. I really think we need to be, and we are starting to get there, thankfully, that there’s definitely a rise in this, but we need to be much more honest about how hard it is.

It is truly, like I said, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There were challenges. I was not expecting, and it’s not over. As soon as they turn 18, as soon as they’re adults, they still need you. So you are forever carrying that responsibility to one extent or another throughout their lives. This is a lifelong commitment.

If you do it, make sure you really wanna do it.

[00:26:40] Lara: Make sure you really wanna do it. Yeah. Don’t do it if you don’t. Really wanna do it. And I think you’re right. There’s a lot of things we never talked about, even like in pregnancy. So you’d hear about like, there’s morning sickness and then labor hurts, but like, what about all the people who struggled with so many things throughout pregnancy?

And I, I remember being pregnant, be like, nobody ever told me this was true. Nobody told me this would happen. And then with. Babies, like you hear about the sleepless nights and you hear about the trouble with teething. Toilet training and then that’s it. But there’s like a lot of other things, guys.

There’s a lot of other things

[00:27:18] Rowan: and there’s so much focus on the first like five years of a child’s life, forgetting that. Honestly, I think the hardest part, those teenage years are really tough. But also I would say like between 18 and 25 is really hard because they’re adults .You technically have no control anymore.

and they’re still figuring themselves out. And the world is not set up to support them right now. So there’s a lot of, I need some help with the rent or, I don’t know what to do for school because AI is taking all the jobs or there’s all these things that happen.

I can’t afford food. Relationship breakups, but relationships that were like two or three years long and they’re a big deal to break up. I mean, all these things are happening. Mental health struggles. maybe some other medical struggles, but you don’t have any control over that anymore because they’re adults.

And it is a lot of responsibility. And again, if my children are listening, but don’t worry, they never listen to my stuff. They don’t care what I do. They don’t, I’m just, I’m just their old dad. They don’t care. but I love. Being a dad, it’s awesome. there’s some things that I have gained and we should talk about that too, for sure.

But there’s some, insights, some wisdom that I have gained from parenthood that I’m not sure I would’ve gained any other way. but it is such a challenge too. And if you are not all in on it, don’t do it.

[00:28:45] Lara: Yeah, I think as we’re talking, I, I had a little bit being like, I need to say it again, but we really love our children.

Um, but we really love our children. Right.

[00:28:53] Rowan: By the way,

[00:28:54] Lara: by the way, but I think it’s important to just talk about it. My kids throughout their lives have heard me say, I changed my mind. They’re like, what? I was like, I don’t want children.

[00:29:07] Rowan: I’m sending you back.

[00:29:08] Lara: And they know I’m kidding and they feel loved , and it’s all good.

But like that is like a truth of a moment where you’re just like, I don’t wanna do this right now. And I think it’s important to know that, and I wanna acknowledge that because I think that so many people who didn’t have children by choice or who didn’t have children by not choice have. been just hammered their whole lives with how much they’ve lost and how bad of a decision there was.

I was telling you before we just hit record, that there had been a famous person who I’d recently seen and I went and looked it up and it’s Chappell Roan who said she didn’t wanna have children because everybody she knew who had children were not happy. And I can even see how I wouldn’t have seemed all that happy a lot of the time.

Right. Like It’s challenging in a lot of ways. It’s not, going to museums. Well, even if it is going to museums. Right? We went to museums and then the kids don’t like the snacks you brought or they don’t all wanna go to the same place and I remember leaving the mall once with.

Probably they were not quite 2-year-old twins having meltdowns, and I had one over my left shoulder and one under my right arm, and they were both screaming as I walked through the mall to get back to my car.

[00:30:22] Rowan: And you’re like, everyone thinks I’m the worst parent ever right now. You know, they’re not thinking you’re the worst parent.

They are sympathizing. They’re looking at that going, oh, that poor mother, that poor mother.

[00:30:32] Lara: Oh yeah. I’ve been there,

[00:30:34] Rowan: but at the time, I remember having to throw one over my shoulder and walk out of a Walmart as they were screaming. and he’s just pounding my back. He’s just so upset. He’s so beyond, and I’m like, I look like I’m abducting this child right now. I look like I am taking him away from his parents. And it is just, I’m like, who’s gonna come and stop me? weirdly nobody came and stop me,

[00:30:55] Lara: because they’ve all been there, the chances are much higher that this is a kid having a meltdown, than anything else but.

Yeah, I think it’s just very layered and I hope that the idea of this conversation was really just to say, Hey, there’s not one way to do life. You don’t have to do things the way other people did. You’re not missing out. If you go a different route, I mean, if anything, I’m missing out on being able to travel the world at the, drop of a hat. I’m missing out on some things.

[00:31:24] Rowan: Oh, I’m missing out on retirement savings.

That’s what I’m missing out on by the way.

[00:31:29] Lara: Yeah,

[00:31:30] Rowan: yeah. How am I gonna retire? I feel like with five kids, one of them’s gotta be rich.

[00:31:35] Lara: fingers crossed.

[00:31:39] Rowan: I do wanna touch before we end on. Some of the gifts that we’ve received from parenthood. ’cause I don’t want people to think like, wow, these two just got on and complained the whole time. I don’t feel negative about having children. I just feel, like it needs a realistic view. But for myself, I will say I learned a love that I did not think was possible.

It is such a profound. Love right to the core. Like no question I would stand in front of a train for any of my children. Like that’s , not even up for debate. I learned to put someone before myself, which I wasn’t able to do before. And I know we’ve talked a lot about people pleasing, and we’ve talked a lot about putting yourself first, and those things are really important.

I always put my needs first because I have to, it’s like putting that whole oxygen mask on yourself first before the person next to you on a plane, we’ve all been taught that, so my needs have always come before anything else, but my child’s needs have now come before my wants. And having that push me to be less self-centered than I was, I think has been really good. And that’s not the only way to learn this. I’m not saying that people who don’t have kids are all self-centered. That’s not the lesson here. What I’m saying is, as a dad. I have grown by leaps and bounds because that unconditional love has pushed me outside of my comfort zone time and time again, and I think has made me a better person, and I’m really grateful for that.

I had a moment a few weeks ago. Both my sons ended up for a variety of reasons. I won’t get into both of them. Ended up. Couch surfing at our place for a few weeks, in between places that they were living and in between school semesters and that sort of thing, and having them here. And my other child, my non-binary child who does live with us, with their partner, having them all there.

And then my sons had their partners over and they were all just kind of hanging out together. I saw. The comradery that they all have. I saw the nostalgia that they shared. I saw the love that they showed their partners and the really healthy relationships that they’re building. I saw them talk about their future and all the hopes and dreams they have.

I just felt so complete. Like that to me was a moment that I will take to my deathbed one day and hopefully remember as I go on to wherever we go next, because that level of fulfillment that weirdly to say as a dad, but as a dad who’s trans, as someone who grew these little beings inside of me and gave them the nourishment that they needed for the first few months of life and watched them grow up into these amazing young adults who are all so different and so remarkable.

I am proud in a way. I could never be proud of myself. I’m proud in a way. I could never be proud of anyone else. They are just the most amazing people, and that is the gift that parenting gave me.

[00:35:04] Lara: Yeah. There’s a lot of moments of delight and pride in seeing these children turn into.

Functional adults, right? Like the, or like having these personalities and just seeing how they grow and they change and how different they are and how they’re not like you, but they teach you about what it means to be not like you. Like I have learned. So much from my children and even from the struggles we’ve had, I have learned to understand the world more.

A lot of the things that I talk about in this podcast, in my book, in my work, comes from things I took the time to understand better when first sort of. Prompted by some of the things that happened with my kids. There’s a lot of good stuff. We love our kids, guys.

[00:35:53] Rowan: Guys. Really, really okay. Especially , the people who are listening who are related to us.

We love our children. No, but. There are a number of podcasts if you search this topic, about whether or not you should have children, and a lot of those podcasts are by people who are childless by choice, and I think that’s a fantastic. Viewpoint to take. Right? You do need people who’ve never had kids to say, Hey, you should really consider whether or not you want to have children.

And did you know there are options? You don’t hear it as often from people who have, between us eight children, right? We have eight kids between us.

clearly you can see how much we adore them. And also I think the perspective. Coming from the other side of it. Now, especially, you know, , in my case, where my children are all adults, it is good to hear from people who’ve had children that know if you don’t want children, that does not mean you’re going to regret that choice later.

That there are many ways to be in a child’s life without having a child yourself. And honestly, can I just say as somebody who fostered and then adopted a child from the foster care system, that there are many paths to parenthood later in life. Should you want to look at that idea again? You don’t have to have a child yourself.

There are other ways to be present in a child’s life. In a live in situation too, you can foster, you can adopt, you can be a mentor to children. There’s so many options out there, so no, please don’t listen to this idea that finding someone, getting married, making babies equals the only good life you can have.

As somebody who did that exact thing, and I’m happy I did. I also know a ton of people who didn’t do that, who are my age. I’m almost 50 or older, who are just as happy and maybe even happier than me. I don’t know. It’s hard to measure that, but certainly just as happy as me and made different choices.

[00:38:07] Lara: Yeah.

If you have a perspective on this topic that you wanna share with us, please . Come to our substack, send us an email. We wanna hear more and more ideas and different points of view. We love that we’re getting to the point where we’ve now had follow up topics, like we’re gonna talk some more about this stuff.

So come and talk to us and thank you for joining us today.

[00:38:30] Rowan: Thank you so much.

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