12 Good Reasons to Delay Parenthood

What are good reasons to delay parenthood anyway? I’d say a good reason is whatever your own reason is. I don’t believe there is a best age to get pregnant. If you’re at the stage where the majority of your friends have had babies, people are probably asking you when you’re going to do it too. Infact, you might be asking yourself, “Should I have a baby?”

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If you do want to have a child (and more so children), then you’ve probably been weighing the pros and cons of having a baby. If you constantly conclude that it’s better to wait a little longer, then you might have come up with one or more of the 12 reasons below.

Good reasons to delay parenthood

1. You want to develop a strong foundation for your marriage

Let’s face it. The strongest marriage can be rocked by the arrival of a baby. You committed to a two-person relationship after all. Putting a third person into the mix can take some getting used to. One of the reasons to wait to have a baby is therefore to build a solid marriage relationship before growing your family.

2. You need to recover from difficulty in conceiving

If you’ve been trying to conceive for months or years, that would take a physical and mental toll on you. You may want to give your body and mind some time rest before you try again. Of all these reasons to delay parenthood, this may be the least discussed.

3. You want to come up with the best possible parenting style

This is one of the big topics discussed in my Baby Workbook. Where you two experienced very different parenting styles yourselves, it may necessary for you to delay parenthood in order to come to an agreement on which style works best for both of you.

4. You’d like to gain greater emotional maturity

It makes sense to want to be able to better handle your own emotions before you have a baby. That way, at each stage of life, you can guide them towards higher level of emotional maturity than you had at their age.

5. You want to give your child access to better technology

Everyday brings new technology before we even get to grips with what was created the day before. Delaying parenthood means that you are giving your child a chance to have access to even better gadgets and medical breakthroughs, for example, than they would have had if they’d been born a year before.

6. You want to be free of responsibility

One of the benefits of not having children yet is that you can consider doing anything and going anywhere that you please without considering too many other people. Having a child now may mean giving up far more of your time and attention than you’re willing to sacrifice. If you do not want anyone else’s needs to come before yours, a baby is not what you want right now.

7. Your partner is not ready

You don’t want to foster resentment by pushing for such a big life change if they’re not ready for it yet.

8. You worry about the health implications of giving birth during a crisis

These uncertain times have led to the conception of many babies. However, there are also some people out there who have decided to delay parenthood until healthcare systems are under less pressure.

9. You generally have commitment issues

Struggle to commit to a stable long-term relationship? With a human, animal or plant? You may want to work on that before having a baby as that’s a lifelong commitment.

10. You want to establish yourself in your career first

This is a big reason for women choosing to wait. Without a doubt, it’s one of the reasons why millennial women are considered as being selfish. One of the benefits of not having kids is that you can focus completely on developing your career. That involves committing to more than just 8 hours at your desk and it can be tough to handle when you have a baby.

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11. You want to make sense of your own childhood (trauma) first

If you had a difficult childhood, you probably have some unlearning and relearning that you would like to do before you have babies.

12. You want to finish off your education

Finishing off your education is something you can do later on if you still want to, but it’s not ideal. It’s not ideal if that’s not how you wanted to do it. If it was always your dream to get through an undergraduate degree and three postgraduate degrees before you considered having a baby for the first time, then that is a good reason for you to delay having a child.

Whatever your reason is to delay parenthood, it’s right as long as it’s yours!

Are you waiting till later to have children?