Brooke

I had my first child at 45, which tells you how ambivalent *I* was! (It was an accident.) So I’m here to tell you, first, that either way, you’ll be fine. Having spent many years happily being one of the few childless women among my friends, I’m sure I’d still be happy today if I hadn’t had a kid. But having never “gotten over” my ambivalence in the sense that I actively made the decision that I wanted kids, I can also say that ambivalence is no indication of anything–that you shouldn’t have one, that you wouldn’t be great at it, or even that it might be (one of) the best thing(s) that ever happened to you, as it is for me.

Most crucially, being an older parent is just easier. This is partly to do with increased stability: it’s much, MUCH easier to have kid when you’re earning enough to pay for childcare, a housecleaner, whatever it takes to make life more manageable. But it’s even more to do with being more settled in your career, relationship, and just LIFE.

I don’t want to presume about your 35-y-o life, but for me, at that age, I still felt as though my adult life was just getting started. Relatively few of my friends had children, and we were still having a great time. But by 40 . . . almost all of my friends had children or were pregnant. Things can change very fast, and although I did not experience peer pressure or FOMO or anything (their kids were great, but seeing them never filled me with a sense of longing), life just is different when you’re 40-ish. I still loved my childless life, but by then I had a busy career and a marriage and a mortgage and a yard, and it’s not like we or our few other childless friends were going out for boozy 1 p.m. brunches or staying out past 11 anyway. For most of us who aren’t rock stars or celebrities, life settles down.

In my case, I went off birth control at 40 and figured it would happen, or not. And it didn’t, which was fine–but although I would not have said that I felt a child-shaped hole, around 43 my career and marriage and hobbies, awesome as they were, didn’t necessarily feel like enough to sustain me for another 30 or 40 years. I started exploring volunteering opportunities, taking lessons, that kind of thing. I’m sure I would have found something that would have been the thing, or at least A thing, but as it happens, I got pregnant.

You may not, or may choose not to! But I think it’s relatively common for people to want to shake things up or do SOMETHING new and challenging and different within the next decade. And a kid is a pretty reliable source of all those things. Good luck to you.