I am 41, recently married and have three children under 10. I would like another child but my husband doesn’t want one. Our lives are full, we have demanding jobs (I work part-time) and are hands-on parents, we share pretty much everything and have quite high standards about maximising family time as a unit, spending time with the children individually, and as a couple.
I dread my youngest starting school in September. I also have a creeping sense of regret that the last 10 years have flown by and a chapter is closing and I can’t bear it to be over; that I haven’t appreciated what I’ve had when I had it. I love being pregnant, having babies, small children, big children, being part of a chaotic family bundle.
But my other half doesn’t want to go again. He says he doesn’t have time for the children he has; he is conscious that he only has a limited period left with our older son before he becomes independent and he doesn’t want to be shackled with another baby during the next few years. He says he is enjoying this phase of our life.
It isn’t about money or space – if anything, it comes down to a shortage of time. And it’s a fundamental black and white disagreement. We are both very strong willed. We weren’t together long before our first son came along and had to get to know each other with a small baby in tow (and exiting other relationships to be together) so have had our fair share of struggle. I think my husband is enjoying what is probably the least challenging period of our lives together, and I do get that.
We got married a few months ago, and for me now there is only one thing on my mind. I know my husband doesn’t want to upset me and he just goes silent when I mention it. I have tried all tacks but the best I get is “not now”. At 41 I haven’t got years to wait.
I can’t give up without a fight. I can’t move on, accept it or think about anything else.
I thought there were contradictions in your letter between what you want and why you want it. You feel the last 10 years have passed in a blur, yet you want to add to the busyness; you feel you haven’t appreciated what you had, yet want to do something that will, at least at times, distract from the family you already have.
It made me wonder if what underpins your dilemma is fear, not so much of not having another baby, but of something else.
Christopher Mills, a psychotherapist who specialises in family and couple mediation, honed in on this right away: “I suspect this is quite a scary junction for both you and your husband. This hurly burly [of the last decade] is what you know, where you feel safe and, quite possibly, where you feel valuable and needed.”
You seem very good at forward motion, but not so much (relatively) standing still. Mills thinks it is interesting that you have only just married and wondered why you had left it so long. I was left with a feeling that you like a to-do list and now the wedding is ticked off, you are wondering “what next?”.
Your youngest starting school in September seems, understandably, a big focus for you, almost as if you will stop being a mother at that point. Having very young children can make people feel young themselves – still part of that “young family” crowd.
“Like the rest of us,” explains Mills, “you fear loss and are unwilling to accept that even the healthiest, happiest family life requires renunciation and the grief that goes with it. What scares your husband is probably not just the prospect of another baby, but also the question of how to communicate with you over your different preferences. It’s not unusual for women to feel as you do at your stage of life. The kind of intense single-mindedness that your emotional drive gives you can be frightening to a man because it feels irrational and possibly unconnected to any need other than the woman’s own. In this case your husband may be polarising into a super-rational position – something men frequently do when they’re scared – which then feels equally alienating to you.”
I know you feel time isn’t on your side, but Mills and I came to the conclusion that if you could “park” your decision, just for a while, and work on a better and deeper communication between you and your husband (which would involve you listening and not just talking) then, as Mills says “the ultimate decision over the new baby stands a better chance of being the right one”.
I keep coming back to the idea of you waiting until after September (using the time between then and now to work on the communication between you and your husband, as Mills suggests), facing this big thing you fear – your youngest starting school – seeing how you feel, and then re-assessing?
Incidentally, how do your other children feel about another baby?
Your problems solved
Contact Annalisa Barbieri, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU or email annalisa.barbieri@mac.com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.
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