119 reasons to have kids, part one

A woman recently went viral by listing 119 reasons she doesn't want kids. Here are my responses to each

My daughter Lily, aged almost five, and me, aged 35.

I’ve always known I wanted kids, to the extent that I conceived aged 24. This is very young in the UK, where the average age to give birth is 31.

When, early into my first pregnancy, my then-boyfriend turned violent and I felt I had no choice but to have a termination, I descended into a year-long depression.

I got pregnant again aged 30, and gave birth to my daughter in April 2011. She was a screamy, difficult baby and toddler, and this hasn’t changed. I love her with every fibre of my being.

She is now nearly 13 and spends many a weekend yelling at me, slamming her bedroom door and telling me how inadequate and useless I am. But she’s also totally amazing and I feel utterly blessed to be her mum.

I mean, to be fair, I probably am quite inadequate and useless at times.

Parenting is a mass of contradictions

I have generally found parenting boring, exhausting and stressful, to the extent that I wrote a piece on its trials for the Guardian.

And yet, I would have loved more kids. I tried to conceive a second for nine months with my ex-husband, but it wasn’t to be.

Why, given my difficult experiences with my daughter, was I intent on having more children?

Because of the amazing unconditional love I experience with Lily. It’s absolutely beautiful, the highest of highs. And nobody who isn’t a parent will be able to fully understand what I mean.

My friend

James Harris

recently tweeted, “My friends with kids tell me it's made them ecstatically happy. Sounds awful TBH.”

My daughter and I in 2017, soon after she’d cut her own fringe with blunt scissors.

I mean, it can be awful. But it’s also the best thing in the world.

The incredible, unconditional love

My daughter is so prone to strops that I refuse to take her on holiday anymore, after one particularly bad time at Center Parcs when she ran off in a rage and I couldn’t find her. It would be a nightmare if that happened abroad.

She is often cranky, irrational and inconsistent. Like me, she suffers from clinical OCD; this year, I bought her an early Christmas present of a toothbrush, which she screamed at me that she would never use, because I’d committed the crime of touching the handle to check whether it was charged or not.

However, she’ll happily eat fruit and veg which I prepare for her with my bare hands. Sometimes, she is absolutely exasperating.

But her honesty, her realness, her kindness, her innocence, her earnestness and her sense of humour are absolutely beautiful, and totally make up for all the frustrating times.

She and I are also incredibly close, and I found out last October how much she loved me when I called her from hospital to say I’d had two suspected heart attacks. She burst into tears and became completely hysterical.

When my mum wasn’t there for me - when Grandad wasn’t there for me - Lily was. A model student, she decided she wouldn’t go into school that day, and would instead come to the hospital to see me. She couldn’t believe that my mum and Grandad hadn’t been there for me in the middle of the night when I called them. When I said that they had things to do other than come and see me, she replied, “But you’re so much more important!” It was a poignant revelation, realising how much she cared.

That thing in her hair is a ‘worm’. No, not a real worm.

119 reasons why this woman doesn’t want kids

Anyhow, I decided to write this blog as a 32-year-old model and actress called Ellie Gonsalves recently went viral for listing 119 reasons why she doesn’t want kids.

She is absolutely within her rights to not want them - and, speaking as an unwanted child myself, it’s far better that people who don’t want kids don’t have them.

Anyhow, on a cheerier note, as a mum, I thought it might be fun to provide a parent’s counterpoint to Ellie’s reasons why she doesn’t want kids. The list is very long, so I’m splitting it into two Substacks.

Brace yourselves. Here goes…

1. They are your responsibility until the day you die

They’re certainly a heavy responsibility for the first ten years. But as they grow older and more independent, you realise you can no longer tell them what to do (though that doesn’t stop us parents from trying).