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TOMORROW! How to Negotiate! The most terrifying topic of them all!

This week’s question comes to us anonymously:

My spouse and I are going to start trying to have kids soon, but I’m scared of all the ways our lives will change. How do I let go of that fear?

Ha! You are well and truly fucked.

I’m kidding. Mostly. Not really though. Because the truth is that your lives are going to change in every way possible. You cannot add a human being—especially a very small one that needs your constant intervention for its survival—to your relationship and expect your lives not to change, or to only change a little, or worse yet—to manage the type of change. It is a tidal wave of change, if a tidal wave was composed of baby shit, breastmilk, and strained carrots.

That said—kids are great, and you’re going to be fine. Probably. I don’t know you but, as cliché as it might be, people who ask these types of questions tend to be fine. Which isn’t the same as saying it will be easy. It won’t be easy. You’ll do well, but you might look like Nic Cage at the end of Mandy. (Look it up.)

The easiest way to let go of the fear is to accept that change is coming. Fear, and its rat cousin anxiety, are at their worst when you are dreading that something may happen. They’re at their most potent when there’s still the small sliver of a chance that what you are dreading might not happen. But your lives are going to change. That’s a non-negotiable fact, so fear—while understandable—is worthless to you in this particular circumstance. Your best bet is to prepare for what you can, and remain flexible for what you can’t. Most of parenting is the latter.

My kid is now 29 years old, so I get to gloat about all this. At least until she calls me, I see her name on phone, and immediately turn into a puddle of anxiety. Becoming a parent means being a parent forever. (…and yes I mean that in even the darkest of circumstances, which we are not going to dwell on today, but I felt it worth acknowledging.) In a previous newsletter I mentioned that becoming a parent means that your heart now lives outside your body, and I meant that. Becoming a parent means that what keeps you alive, and gives you meaning, now lives outside you. In a stupidly fragile body which cannot even bear the weight of its own unfinished head, which then grows into a stupidly reckless body which crosses the street without looking, and climbs trees, and interacts with a hostile world on its own. And every time your kid walks out the door your heart walks out with them.

The hardest part of being a parent is that you have to trust these awkward, gangly, brave, but ultimately reckless little humans with keeping your heart safe, while also letting them be awkward, gangly, brave, and ultimately reckless. Because that is how growing up happens. It’s stupid.

But here’s the thing… even as these strange little humans are pretending that they don’t give a rat’s ass about you, they’re watching your every move. They’re basically mimicry machines for the first decade of their lives. And they’re using you as a model to learn how to be a human being. Children don’t grow up to be loving adults who care for one another unless they’ve grown up in a home where love and care existed. Not just towards them, but they watch the way their parents behave towards each other. So the most important part of being a parent starts before the kids show up. It starts now.

It starts with you and your spouse having a loving and healthy relationship built on trust, equality, and love. The kind of relationship where disagreements (everyone has disagreements) are handled honestly, and openly, and with a goal of coming to an agreement. The kind of relationship where you enjoy spending time together, and also have a healthy amount of time to yourselves. The kind of relationship where no one feels like they’ve given up on their goals, but rather accommodate, and even egg on, each others’ goals. Laugh at each others’ jokes, tell each other when the music’s too loud, ask one another to smell weird things they found in the fridge, surprise one another with flowers once in a while, and genuinely like, like, like one another. If these things are in place, and I hope they are, then it becomes infinitely easier to add a child into that equation. If those things to not exist, there is no child now born, or yet to ever be born, that can fix a relationship. That is too much to ask of a small fragile human that cannot even hold its own head up.

(Relationship tip: if you and your spouse agree on what type of mattress to sleep on, and what type of coffee (or tea) to drink in the morning, everything else is possible. If you don’t agree on those two things, you are basically fucked.)

Ultimately, your goal isn’t to upend your life to fit a child, but to expand it in a way that your child comfortably fits within it. Because while a child is absolutely going to change your life, you don’t want them transforming it into something that you no longer recognize. You’ll be miserable, and miserable people end up raising miserable children. (Trust me and my therapist on this.)

If you enjoy going to museums, take your kid to museums. And no, it doesn’t have to be a kids’ museum every time. Show your kid some art. Medieval painters did weirder drawings of animals than your kid does. If you enjoy listening to records, listen with your kid. They Might Be Giants exists just for this reason! If you enjoy going to the bookstore, take your kid to the bookstore. Don’t just sit in the kiddie section, take the kid to the section you’re interested in, and when they ask a question about the book you’re looking at, answer it. Reward curiosity. If you enjoy cooking, get your little sous chef used to how the kitchen works. A kid that can cook their own food is basically a superhero. If you enjoy traveling, travel with your kid. Not just to Disneyland (although Disneyland is great, and kids are a great excuse to go there, not that you need one), take the kid to Tokyo, or the next city over, or on a train ride up the coast. If you enjoy going to the movies, take your kid to the movies. And sure… you’re going to end up at a few Minions movies, and you’re never getting that time back, but there’s gonna be a local art house playing Miyazaki movies and those are for everyone. What I’m saying here is that, yes, your life is going to change, but it doesn’t need to be overturned. It doesn’t need to become something you’re unfamiliar with. It doesn’t need to be something you don’t like.

When she was a teenager, my daughter decided that my musical tastes were limited (I want to argue that she was wrong, but she wasn’t). This is a kid who grew up going to record stores, and eventually harassing record store clerks with musical trivia that they couldn’t answer. (I enjoyed this very much.) In order to expand my musical taste, she decided that every time we went to the record store she got to pick out one album that I would have to buy for myself. (Kids are not very good with money.) Fine, I said. And you know what? She rarely missed. She rarely picked out an album that I didn’t like. But most of all, it became this thing that we did together. Something that I used to do by myself, that I ended up bringing her along with, until we were doing it side-by-side. My thing became our thing, and she ended up expanding my mind about stuff.

What’s really wild is that your fear about a baby on the way doesn’t even compare to the fear that one day that little baby you were so terrified of will walk out the door to make a life of their own. You will spend the first 18ish years of their life preparing them for the day that they will brutally gut punch you. And that gut punch is your reward for being a parent.

Long after my daughter stopped holding my hand in public, we would go to the movies and when the lights dimmed, and she was absolutely certain that no one could see, she would reach over and hold my hand. And I’d turn into jello. Time would go backwards and forwards. Backwards to a time before she was here, to a time where her mother and I were terrified, so terrified, that we would fuck this up. Forwards to a time where this would all end, when she’d walk out the door. When she’d be an adult. And I’d hold her hand so tight, holding on to time itself. Wanting that moment to last as long as time itself.

And in that moment, I could feel her heart beat. And I could feel my heart beat. And I couldn’t tell the difference, because they were the same heart.

You’re going to be ok.

🙋 Got a question? Ask it. Please, I need questions.

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📣 Next week I’m doing a Presenting w/Confidence workshop. It’s good if your employed, or trying to be.

🍉 Since we’re talking about parenting: how about helping the children of Palestine?

🏳️‍⚧️ Children are born ready to love you. Please don’t turn your backs on them. Protect and love trans kids.