Especially for Newlyweds
My Wife Didn’t Want Kids Right Away—Was It Because of Me?
After getting married, I found out that my wife and I weren’t on the same page about when to have children.
Photograph posed by models
I had always assumed that my love for children and my focus on family over anything else would mean an early start on parenthood after marriage. When I finally met and married my wonderful wife, it was the best day of my life. We had talked about how we both wanted kids, and we had even discussed a timeline for growing our family. I was so happy to have found someone to start building a family with.
But a few months into our marriage, when I started talking more earnestly about having kids, I realized my wife was much more anxious about it than I’d understood before. The longest time frame I’d ever thought we’d follow was far too fast for her!
Suddenly I knew that my expected timeline for becoming a father was going to take longer than I’d anticipated.
More Than Just My Side of the Picture
I was frustrated. I had spent my younger years preparing to be a father, dreaming about talking to my wife late at night about how exciting it was to be parenting a little mischief maker. But my wife, who was still simply adjusting to life as a married woman, was hoping to wait to start having children for what seemed to me to be a very long time.
My wife hadn’t spent much time with children when she was young, unlike me, who had four younger siblings and several nieces and nephews. She was nearing the end of a difficult college degree and felt very strongly that waiting one more year to finish it would allow her to be a much more invested parent. She was also nervous about the physical aspects of childbirth—with her existing physical conditions, which were complicated, would bearing children be much worse than normal?
Even though I knew these things, I blamed her hesitancy on myself. Did she not trust me to be a good father? How could she think I wouldn’t have enough time for her when we had a baby to care for too? Was I not inspiring in her the confidence she needed to be a good mother?
It took some time for me to understand that there was more than just my side of the picture.
Trying to Understand Each Other’s Point of View
As my wife and I sought to understand each other, there were several key things we did together that helped us keep the foundation of our marriage strong.
First, I learned to ask good questions about what my wife was feeling. When I started asking questions that invited her to talk about her thoughts and feelings, she began to really open up about her concerns in a way that I could understand and sympathize with instead of her feeling like I was blaming her for not wanting kids yet.
Second, I learned to evaluate—and often reevaluate—what my expectations were. The families we grew up in were quite different, and it took some time for me to realize that we didn’t need to have our family look like either one for it to be established on righteous principles. Confronting my expectations and evaluating if they were based in eternal truths helped me realize that our family was going to be uniquely different from the ones we’d grown up in.
Third, praying together about our family was essential. While my wife and I enjoy praying together each day, it was initially awkward to try to pray together about something that we felt so differently about. But as we took turns expressing our desires as a couple—not just as individuals—to someday have a family, we began to realize we had more commonalities in our desires than differences.
Becoming One
As I listened to and counseled with my wife over the course of several months, my heart softened, and I began to realize that my initial judgments were wrong. My wife wasn’t trying to hold me back from my most cherished dream. She wasn’t upset with me for not providing her with enough love or care. Her anxieties weren’t pinned on me at all—and I felt much better knowing that.
Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught: “When to have a child and how many children to have are private decisions to be made between a husband and wife and the Lord. These are sacred decisions—decisions that should be made with sincere prayer and acted on with great faith.” 1 I learned for myself that deciding our family’s path was something that really did involve both of us—acting as equal partners and relying on the Lord to guide us.
We still don’t have a child, but we are much more united than we were at the beginning of our marriage. And we are looking forward to our first kid with more optimism than we ever have. Together we have worked to overcome our individual insecurities and fears, and we understand each other so much better now. I have felt the Spirit whisper that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ know both of our hearts. They will help both of us realize our dream of parenting in the best way possible. I know They live, and one of the great miracles of the plan of salvation is the opportunity to parent in this life. What a rich and wonderful blessing that will be.