Help! We’re Watching Our Friends Make the Same Life-Altering Decision. It’s Making Us Rethink Everything.

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I’m a 28-year-old man watching some of my friends become parents for the first time. My oldest friend just had his first kid with his wife eight months ago, and recently, another friend announced they’re expecting. Now that our circle has a few more parents in it, the question of whether my long-time girlfriend and I should have kids has come up more than a few times.

We go back and forth on whether we want them. Some days, we think yes, definitely, especially when we spend time with our friend’s kid. Other days, the answer is less clear. I’m worried about making this life-altering decision and regretting it, at least for those first hard years. My girlfriend feels the same—we like our life as it is! But societal forces seem to naturally push us toward having kids and building a family. I’ve never felt a strong urge to be a father, but I also haven’t felt a strong desire not to be. How does anyone ever decide whether or not to do this?

—Father… to Be or Not to Be

Dear Prince of Denmark,

As a parent, I feel strongly about having children—namely, that people who don’t want kids shouldn’t have them. It’s hard enough to raise a child when you’re all-in, but doing it because you feel like it’s what other people want you to do is a recipe for disaster—not just for you, but more importantly, for the kids.

That said, it is a mistake to think that the right moment for having children will just announce itself, and one day you’ll wake up and realize there is a child-sized hole in your life waiting to be filled. You’re a grown adult with friends, a job, a partner, and a community—all things with which you could happily occupy your remaining days.

So here’s my suggestion: Look around and think about the things you do every day. Now imagine doing those things, or some evolution of them, when you’re 38 or 48. Is future you happy and fulfilled? Or is there something missing—a connection to something larger than yourself, a lifelong commitment you and your partner can take on together? You don’t need anyone to tell you how cute babies are, or how much work they can be. But beyond that, there’s a whole person you’re helping to bring into existence, one who will grow up to share your understanding of the world, and possibly challenge it as well. Everything looks different through your child’s eyes, from their first concert to their first heartbreak, and that alters the way you understand your own life, not just theirs. They’ll teach you things you never realized you didn’t know.

People sometimes warn you that having kids will change your life, but I think that’s kind of the point. Your whole life will change, in ways you can’t imagine or predict, and that can be a glorious and wonderful thing, as long as you’re ready to take what comes. Nothing will ever be the same, and that’s the best part.

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How do I convince my wife (36) that cleaning the kitchen is part of cooking? For the record, she’s a great cook and covers most meals in our house. But between us and our two kids (both of whom are picky eaters), she manages to use every pot and nearly every utensil. She won’t clean as she goes, and by the time she’s done bathing the kids and getting them to bed, she says she’s too tired and will just clean in the morning, which she does about 50 percent of the time. I was raised in a family where if you made a mess, it was your responsibility to clean up, and I’m trying to teach my kids the same thing, but I’m having some issues getting my wife on board. How can I phrase this so she’ll understand and not just get upset at me like she has in the past?

I have to admit I felt the urge to check the room for hidden cameras as I was reading your letter, because the answer is so obvious, I felt like I was being pranked. Your wife does most of the cooking, bathes the kids and puts them to bed every night, and you’re upset that she doesn’t do the dishes as well? Or even that she only does them the following morning after wearing herself out the night before? I’d say you’re lucky to still be married, but I think you’re lucky to be alive.

Here’s my question to you: While your wife is doing all these chores, what are you doing? I mean, besides standing in the kitchen and getting mad at a pile of pots and pans. Because your question doesn’t mention anything at all. Every couple divides household labor in their own way, and maybe there’s something else you don’t mention that’s keeping you occupied. But it sure sounds like you expect your wife to take on the majority, if not the entirety, of household chores, and then get irritated when she doesn’t do them on your timetable.

“Pick up after yourself” is a great rule for children, but adults can make tradeoffs. “I cook, you clean,” is a classic, and that would be a good place for you to start. But before that, you and your wife need to have a conversation about what’s fair and who does what. I suspect your wife has tried it before, but you need to commit yourself to that discussion body and soul, because whether you know it or not, your marriage depends on it. I lied above when I said you’re lucky. You’re not, because you’ve put yourself in a position where it’s impossible for you to be a full member of your own household. Your kids don’t just learn what you teach them; they learn what they see, and what they’re seeing right now is a wife doing all or most of the work, and a spouse who’s not pulling their weight. Try being the kind of partner you’d want them to have, and start scrubbing.

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I love my husband very much, but he has a particular habit that drives me nuts, and it is getting worse over time. He incessantly explains things to me. I don’t mean mansplaining—he respects my knowledge on topics I’m familiar with—just regular explaining! For example, he’ll watch a movie I tell him I have no interest in seeing and then spend 90 minutes monologuing the plot and his thoughts on all the performances to me. He’ll see a car while we’re out and about, and then go into great depth about the design philosophy of this particular make and how it changed from the late 2000s to today. In the past, we’ve implemented a “tech minute” or “gear minute” rule to give him the time to just get a thought about motorcycles out of his head, so he is aware that I don’t have unlimited patience for his speeches.

When I genuinely don’t have time for this, I have no problem telling him. But I really don’t want to hurt his feelings. He is somewhat reserved with other people, and prides himself on being a better listener than speaker with friends. But with me, he just unleashes all of his inner thoughts, and I find it excruciating. I love having conversations with him when we can have a true back and forth, but I can’t stand being talked at. I’m afraid that if I say the wrong thing, he’s going to jump to the conclusion that I don’t want to hear what he has to say at all! Overall, he is a great person, but he is sensitive to feedback and rejection, so I have to choose my words carefully with him, or he shuts down and takes a while to recover. Otherwise, our relationship is lovely, and he’s not nearly old enough to start worrying about cognitive issues. My obviously much older father does the same thing, and I used to watch my late mom nod off at the dinner table, listening to him drone on and on. I don’t want this to be our future!

—Not a Sounding Board

If I knew anything about cars, I might have double-checked with my wife to see if she’d written in under a pen name, so I’m coming at this more from the perspective of the ’splainer than the ’splainee. I’m fairly self-conscious about not talking people’s ears off—haunted by the smarmy hero of the Coen brothers’ Barton Fink, who peppers his lengthy tirades with the admission that he’s “spouting off again”—and yet I know sometimes my enthusiasms sometimes get the better of me. And it seems to me enthusiasm is at the heart of what’s going on here. Your husband has things he loves, things that set his brain on fire, and he wants to share them with you, whether you’re willing or not.

That last part is the sticky bit, obviously. Lecturing someone about why something is interesting rarely results in communicating that interest (having kids taught me that one in spades). Like Barbie’s guitar-playing Kens, he is communicating his passions at you, rather than to you. While he may not mean that to be hurtful, it is. Maybe there’s a way to get you interested in cars and movies, or maybe there isn’t, but just dumping out everything that’s in his head without pausing to see if you’re still following along is definitely not the way to do it. You say he’s more reserved and a better listener with friends, and that’s great, but that consideration shouldn’t go out the window with you just because you’re married.

It’s clear you love your husband, and not just because you say so. But it’s also clear you’ve been struggling with this for a long time, and improvised solutions like the “gear minute” aren’t doing the trick. This is a strain on your marriage, and it won’t fix itself. So you need to have a gentle but forthright talk about the fact that he’s driving you nuts, and it’s because you love him that he has to do something about this before it does real damage.

One other note: The fact that you bring up cognitive issues, even if it’s to say you’re not worried about them, suggests to me that you suspect there might be something deeper involved here. And while I don’t have the information or the expertise to speculate what that might be, if it feels right, you can float the idea of talking to a professional. He may hear this as a suggestion that there’s something “wrong” with him, especially if he’s sensitive to feedback, but there’s an analogy I’ve always found helpful. If your vision was blurry, you wouldn’t walk around bumping into things because you didn’t want to admit your eyes worked differently from other people’s. You’d just get glasses, because seeing the world more clearly makes your life easier.

It also sounds, to put it simply, like your guy needs some new friends. Not ones he feels he needs to curb himself around, but people he can nerd out about movies and cars and whatever else with. That won’t solve the problem that he wants you to care about this stuff as much as he does, but it might siphon off some of the pressure, so his monologues last 10 minutes instead of 90. No two partners are a perfect match—I’m sure there’s stuff you could bore the pants off him talking about if you let yourself go—and he’ll be happier once he understands that your limited interest in his obsessions isn’t a judgment of him.

Ten years ago, my sister died and left her four children orphans. I had a preteen stepdaughter and a toddler in a small three-bedroom house. My husband and I did the best we could. But the choice was either separate the kids or look into foster care. We couldn’t do that. My stepdaughter ended up giving up her room to my nieces and moved back full-time with her mother. My husband came to every dance recital and every game even when I couldn’t. Recently, my stepdaughter and her girlfriend came over. We thought they were going to announce their engagement. Instead, my husband and I were subjected to a pretty polished essay about how awful we were to my stepdaughter growing up…