Recently, some dear friends (double-income, no kids, politically centrist) were talking with my 23-year-old daughter and her husband when the subject of children came up.
“How many do you want?” they asked.
“Five or six,” my daughter answered.
My friends were stunned.
Not hostile. Impressed, actually. But understandably bewildered. As the viral AOC hormone-injection video illustrates, postponing marriage and childbearing is not only normal, but a hallmark of female empowerment in today’s culture.
None of their friends had more than two children and those children, some now adults, aren’t even thinking about marriage, much less babies. The idea that two 23-year-olds would be calmly and deliberately planning a large family was totally foreign to them.
“Is five or six even possible?” they wondered. “Could her body handle it?”
“Of course it’s possible. They’re starting early,” I replied.
And that’s the part our culture has forgotten.
For decades, young Americans have been handed a very specific order of operations: Get a degree. Get another degree. Get financially established. Pay off your debt. Travel. Discover yourself. Build a career. Maybe freeze your eggs so motherhood doesn’t stop you from making partner at the law firm. Buy a house. Then, once everything else is securely in place, think about getting married. And then maybe … have a baby.
We shouldn’t be surprised when that formula produces few grandchildren — or none at all.
Parents themselves are reinforcing these priorities. In Pew Research Center’s 2023 “Parenting in America Today” survey, roughly nine in ten parents said it was extremely or very important that their children become financially independent and have careers they enjoy. Forty-one percent prioritized earning a college degree.
How many said it was extremely or very important that their children eventually get married? Twenty-one percent. Become parents? Twenty percent.
That’s a recipe for no grandchildren, or only a handful that come so late you may not get to non-nursing home time with them.
Parents, you are the dominant influence in when and if your children have children. And much of it starts before you’re even talking about dating, marriage, and fertility.
At my nonprofit where we defend children’s right to their mother and father, I often say, “you become what you behold.” But that’s not just about children repeating the mistakes of their parents. It also has to do with modeling pathways for them to replicate.
When our four kids were little, my husband and I didn’t sit them down and tell them, “You need to marry young and give us lots of grandchildren.”
We just had lots of fun as a family.
We didn’t have much money. Lavish vacations weren’t happening. We were priced out of the Seattle zoo and aquarium. But there were Legos spread across the kitchen floor on Saturdays. Family walks for coffee or cookies. Raucous card games with a “Wrecking Ball,” and “Livin’ on a Prayer” soundtrack. Homemade pasta with Nacho Libre on the tablet. Our kids were our favorite people to be with.
They grew up knowing that children weren’t an interruption to the good life. Children were the good life.
That’s important in a culture that constantly portrays children as expensive, exhausting obstacles to adult fulfillment and motherhood as a drudgery. If that’s what children behold, why would we be surprised when they decide they don’t want to become fathers or mothers? Especially during the years when they are told they should just be having fun.
As our kids got older, coaching supplemented modeling.
We encouraged them to date well — not for thrilling, but for evaluating. Is this someone of character? Do you share a worldview? When times get hard do you want to run from them or to them?
College matters here too. Instead of treating those four years exclusively as career preparation, parents should recognize them as a prime spouse-finding window. Send your children somewhere they are likely to meet people who share their convictions. A spouse isn’t a distraction from the purpose of college. Finding the person with whom you’ll build the rest of your life may be one of the most consequential things that happens there.
At our church’s Senior Sunday, each graduate shared what came next. My 18-year-old son explained that he’d chosen his college because it had the major he wanted — and because, “I’m going to find a wife.”
For the last couple years, he’s also been sending me Instagram reels of dads doing goofy things with their toddlers. “I can’t wait to have kids.”
His 16-year-old brother doesn’t have specific plans yet. But when he talks about his future, it’s always when he has kids, not if.
Our daughters got the message too.
A couple years ago, an older lesbian asked my then 18-year-old second-born what she wanted to do after graduation.
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “Either work on immigration policy to protect kids crossing the border or marry a handsome man and have lots of babies!” Her questioner was horrified and warned her against becoming dependent on a man and ruining her career prospects.
That reaction captures another problem. We’ve spent decades teaching young women to regard their fertility as an adversary — something to suppress when they’re young then technologically retrieve later after they’ve accomplished more important things.
Our daughters deserve the truth: their fertility has a timeline.
That’s something that more and more young women, especially of the Christian variety, are embracing. My married-at-21 daughter recently told me none of her close friends are on hormonal birth control. They’re tracking their fertility, some with Oura rings, because they don’t want to interfere with their cycles and are prepared for babies soon after they marry.
Their parents have also messaged properly: Marriage shouldn’t be the capstone you finally place atop a completed adult life after the degrees, career, travel, debt payoff, and house.
Marriage is a cornerstone. Lay it early and build together. Cornerstones leave time for babies. Lots of them, if that’s what you want. Capstones often leave time for one or two — or none.
I turned 50 this year. There’s a good chance that by 55, I’ll have a couple grandbabies in my world.
If that happens, it won’t be because I started pressuring my children for grandchildren when they turned 30. The seeds were planted decades earlier: delighting in family life when they were little, coaching them when they began dating, teaching them the truth about fertility, and encouraging them to make finding a spouse a priority in young adulthood.
If you’d rather spend your 60s holding grand-babies instead of watching your 30-something daughter livestream hormone injections, start laying the foundation for marriage and parenthood now.
Raise children who don’t see marriage and babies as obstacles standing between them and the good life.
Raise them to understand that marriage and babies are where much of the good life begins.
