Pressures to become parents are suffocating

I’m getting ready to go to another social gathering and I’m already preparing my firm responses – ‘no, we won’t be the next to have children’, ‘no, we’re not thinking about children yet’, and ‘yes, we’re definitely sure . . . anyway, how good is this buffet?’.

Myself and my partner have been engaged for a year now, and it seems like we’d only decided to tie the knot for a hot minute before our nearest and dearest began to ask the dreaded question: ‘so, when are you having kids?’.

While I’ve just started to become excited over white veils, seating arrangements and extortionately-priced photographers, it seems some of our loved ones are already picking out strollers, cuddly toys and christening gowns.

When I tell them to put down the muslin squares, and that it’s just something we’ve not discussed yet, the responses are always the same.

We’re told that we’ve been together a while and our friends have children already. I’m assured that I’m bound to change my mind and want kids any day now. We get to hear that it will be the best thing that will ever happen to us.

I know they mean well, but this pressure bestowed upon us is nothing short of infuriating. We can’t discuss our wedding without choice individuals quickly turning the conversation to our non-existent offspring, and it constantly makes us question whether we’re in the wrong for not having the next 50 years mapped out.

I’m not the only person in our social circle that experiences this enforcement.

There’s couples that have been together years who are badgered about their marital status, singletons who are constantly asked about their hunt for a partner, and married couples who are having the property ladder thrown their way at every opportunity.

In a modern world where we embrace breaking down social stereotypes and gender boundaries, it still seems as if we live in a society where we are born to marry, have children, buy a house and live in it until we become old and wrinkly.

In TV, film and every tabloid newspaper it’s regularly enforced that first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a screaming infant in a VERY expensive carriage. What is even more frustrating to me is how these couples are portrayed, with their lovely homes, perfect marriage, instant return to fabulous bodies after childbirth, lack of financial stress, and perfect children - which is far from realistic.

But in reality there are also couples out there that cannot have children, and those that have lost their little ones and other halves; so where does this leave them? Can they never be happy?

Aside from this, there are people who are simply content on their own. They don’t need a partner or a sprog to make them feel complete – they just love their own company. And why should they be made to feel as if their life is inadequate because it doesn’t live up to someone else’s expectations?

We are fortunate to live in a society that truly allows us to choose: whether this is to parent or not, to marry or not, what career to go into, and where to live.

So I can’t wrap my head around a mortgage just yet, and my parents will only have furry grandchildren for the time being, but they can dress the pooches up and cuddle them until I decide if parenthood is for me.