Six Signs You May Want to Skip Parenthood and Become an Auntie Instead

#5: Your partner is a man

Here in the United States, the Trump administration has recently proposed to pay women $5000 for every child we birth. Furthermore, if we birth six children we will receive a medal – which I’m assuming will have Donald Trump’s face on it.¹ Tempting as this is, I’m recalling how the average cost of raising a child in the U.S. is nearly $250,000, and I’m thinking I might go ahead and pass.

Insulting, morally repugnant offers from elected officials aside, there are actually many longstanding reasons to skip having kids and become an Auntie instead. Today I enumerate six of them.

Now first, to be clear, if you want to be a parent, if you long to be a parent, regardless of how many of the boxes below that you can check — definitely go for it. Your heart is by far the best compass. Likewise, if you are a parent already, regardless of how many of these boxes you check — I am with you. I hope you have many Aunties in your life. I hope you are well and thriving. (And if you are, definitely tell is in the comments!)

What follows is especially for people who aren’t sure or who haven’t had a chance to think this stuff through. I’m going to make explicit a lot of the harder aspects of parenting — aspects that not everyone gets warned about, and that can and do take many new parents by surprise. As I have argued elsewhere, I believe people should be able to give their informed consent to parenting — emphasis on the informed.

Think of this like a quiz in a women’s magazine. The more of the six boxes you check, the more you might want to seriously consider Auntiehood as an alternative to parenthood.

1. You don’t just want quiet, order, and predictability – you need them.

Between Auntiehood and my many years of teaching, I know a great many children, and at least 95% of them are agents of chaos. You can imagine that your child will be different, either by temperament or by training, but you will almost definitely find yourself humbled and badly wrong. Ask any parent with kids still at home – they’ll tell you.²

Now, some people will say that parenthood helps you get over your needs for tidiness, order, and predictability. That might be true if these are merely wants. If you are the kind of person who can learn to be relaxed inside a house that’s coated in Cheerios, milk, and permanent marker, I love that for you. If you’re not, you’re going to spend several years being unable to ever fully regulate your nervous system. Be warned.

Nobody with young kids ever had a bathroom that looks like this.

2. You are highly introverted.

For the first several years of their lives, your children will want to be around you more or less constantly. In fact, they will want to be literally touching your body at all times. They will come with you to the bathroom. In desperation, you will occasionally lock them out, and they will hammer at the door.

They will want to sleep with you every single night for many years. They’ll be so cute and vulnerable in their little jammies, or they’ll be scared from a bad dream, and you’ll adore them so much and want so much to protect them and ensure that they always know how loved they are and they never feel rejected by you, and so if you’re like three quarters of my friends, you’ll give in to the many, many years of cosleeping thing. And you’ll love it – but you will also never be alone, not even at night.

Some people will say that introverts aren’t quite as tired out by their own kids, especially if their kids are also introverts – and I believe these people, to a point. For many of us, it’s easier to be around our own family, where we can let our guard down, than it is to be around anyone else.

But still. Even if your kids turn out to be introverts (no guarantee!), they’ll need you 24/7 for several years.

3. You cannot handle sleep deprivation.

Fortunately, in many cases, the sleep deprivation phase of parenting only lasts a year or two – or maybe three. Or okay, four years, or yeah, possibly five. Or in my sister’s case, nine years and counting. You probably won’t have kids who struggle to fall asleep and stay asleep every night for nine years and go through life with dark circles under their eyes despite the ministrations of the world’s literal best mom – but you might!

And let’s be real, even two or three years of chronic sleep deprivation is a totally sucky proposition. Yes, humans have been surviving this experience for all of human history. But does that mean you have to?

Now me, I am such a sleeper. I go to bed early (sometimes) and wake up late (as often as possible). Because of the Protestant work ethic and capitalism and hustle culture and stuff, I’m super embarrassed to admit this to potentially the whole internet and I keep almost deleting it, but the reality is that for me a full night of sleep is usually at least 9 hours. When I’m sleep deprived, I routinely need 11 or 12 hours.

And what does it take for me to become sleep deprived? About two nights in a row of a mere 7 hours of sleep – that is, the normal amount that many of my more energetic friends get every night and then wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed. For most of my life, my dad has been perfectly happy on about 5 hours of sleep a night. I could never.

If you’re a long sleeper like me, parenthood – especially the first few years (or nine) will be very rough on you.

4. You have a chronic illness or disability that saps your energy.

Raising kids is a lot, lot, lot of work. When they’re young, most kids start their day before dawn, which means you will, too. They do not share your priorities about getting to school or work on time, and they do have strong priorities of their own (Legos), so they will not eat breakfast when you need them to and they may throw their milk on the carpet, and then you’ll have to actively cajole them for a full 15 minutes to get them out of their pajamas and into underwear, pants, and a shirt, and then there’ll be another rigamarole with socks, shoes, and jacket at the front door. They’ll beg to play for five more minutes and then have a meltdown when you say no. And then once you’ve finally got them strapped into the car they’ll need to go to the bathroom.

You might think your own kids will be different. They will not. If anything, they’ll be worse.

Okay, so if this one morning reflects the kind of vibes that will recur on and off throughout the day, every day, for several years, and you know that on any given day you have a very limited and/or unpredictable tank of energy? Well, it’s a pretty rough scenario to find yourself irreversibly committed to.

On the other hand, if you have a disability or chronic illness and you definitely want to be a parent? Do it. Our community has been told what we can’t do for all of human history, up to and including having our children taken away, being forcibly sterilized, or both. That is so, so messed up. If you want to read smart, beautiful, radical takes on parenting with disability, check out Jessica Slice’s new book, Unfit Parent, and subscribe to Rebekah Tausig’s terrific newsletter, This Too.

5. Your partner is a man.

Yeah, yeah, I know: #notallmen. But Aunties, I know a lot of dads, including a lot of avowedly feminist dads – maybe you do, too! – and I’d say maybe about three of them, plus or minus, really, truly do their full share when it comes to parenting.

Let’s talk about “fair share” here for a minute, because from a non-parent perspective, it can be hard to detect all the labor that goes into having and raising kids. There is, of course, the obvious stuff: gestation, childbirth,³ breastfeeding,⁴ waking up at all hours of the night, diapering, feeding, clothing, potty training, supervising, teaching, battling wits and wills, playing, transporting around, etcetera.

This panel is from cartoonist Emma's viral 2017 comic, The Mental Load, which you should go read (or re-read) right now.

But then there’s the not-so-obvious stuff, which includes all the indispensable, interrelated, often invisible decision-making and monitoring and planning and figuring out and smoothing over and reaching out that together are sometimes called “emotional labor,” “the mental load,” or “kinkeeping.” This stuff is substantial. It’s keeping track of everything that needs to be done and making sure it gets done. It’s planning and preparing for birthday parties (your own kids’ and other people’s kids) and spirit weeks and summer camps; it’s keeping track of your kids’ clothes and who’s outgrowing what and what they need for the school play; it’s calendaring for multiple people and making sure the field trip form gets signed and makes it back into your kid’s backpack; it’s recognizing that something is going on with your kid and reading all about ADHD and making the appointments for the assessments and ensuring the teacher gets the right paperwork and getting a diagnosis and figuring out medication and then monitoring if the medication is helping or hurting your kid and then making follow-up appointments and registering them for gymnastics to help them get the wiggles out; it’s not just cooking but also keeping track of the grocery list and unpacking the groceries when you get them home and throwing away the empty milk carton and putting milk on the list and remembering to bring the reusable shopping bags; it’s reaching out to other kids’ parents when there’s been a conflict between the kids and sending thank you cards to the in-laws. This load is just about endless, and in many or most man-woman households, almost all of it falls on the woman. At best, the man takes the helper role: she delegates, and he does as he’s asked (and nothing more).

Same comic. Emma also has a book!

There are all kinds of reasons for this, and they all have to do with patriarchy. But let me just give one very common (certainly not universal) example of how it comes about for many hetero couples — no matter how much of a feminist everyone agrees the dad is.

After a baby is born, the mom is breastfeeding. She has to feed the baby multiple times throughout the day and night. This means that every time the baby wakes up in the night, the mom is the one who gets up with the baby, and the routine is established that the mom will be the primary responder to the baby’s needs.⁵ Then the dad goes back to work after, let’s say, two weeks. Now the mom is doing the majority of baby-related tasks, and the couple gets used to that. So does the baby. The baby has a huge mom-preference and cries a lot more when handed to the dad, so it’s simpler for the mom to keep doing everything – and then that dynamic just basically carries on henceforward, even after the mom goes back to work.⁶

I can’t emphasize enough how often this happens. As an Auntie who’s been alongside a lot of families as they’ve had kids, I’ve seen it unfold in real time, over and over.

6. You live in the United States.

Other than that $5000 per baby that you might get from the Trump administration (you know, minus $250,000 for expenses), if you’re having kids in the United States you can expect a whole lot of diddly squat in terms of infrastructural support and social safety nets.

You may or may not be able to access health insurance for yourself or your kids.

You may or may not be able to get paid time off to give birth or welcome children into your family.

Before your kids make it to school age, you may already have paid the equivalent of college tuition for their childcare, and even after kindergarten their school day will not nearly cover your workday, and during the school year they are likely to have more days off from school than you have vacation days and sick time, and then in the summer you’ll need to figure out temporary childcare for 8-10 weeks.

Also, when your kids are at school (or, alternatively, not at school), they might get shot.

There are lots of other problems here in the U.S., too, you might have noticed.

Women’s Magazine Time!

If none of the conditions in today’s post apply to you, that’s so awesome! I wonder what it’s like to be you? It sounds pretty nice. As long as where you live has a reliable social safety net that prioritizes families, parenting might be a pretty good proposition for you – that is, if you feel like it. But it would also be totally fine to opt out. Auntiehood is a good alternative no matter what!

On the other hand, I’ve been joking around some in this post, but I am dead serious when I say that if four or five or six of the items on this list apply to you – well, if I were in your position (which actually, I am) I’d be looking long and hard at my options and feeling verrrrrry curious about the Auntie alternative.

Despite the undeniable fact that nearly all kids are agents of chaos who will spend years refusing to put on their shoes and walk out the door when it’s time for school, they are also cute and funny and wonderful and wise, and you deserve to have them in your life in a way that doesn’t turn you into a vibrating ball of near-constant anxiety and distress for at least a decade. (Do I know parents like this? Yes, I’m afraid I do).

Becoming an Auntie is, of course and fundamentally, an act in solidarity with the parents in our lives – including or perhaps especially the sensitive, introverted, chronically exhausted, man-loving folks with whom some of us might closely identify. Parents like this really need teams, and if we take a pass on parenthood ourselves, we’re well positioned to answer the call.

Coming Attractions

All Aunties should have a small but excellent home library of great kids’ books. At our house, we’ve got one shelf and one book bin – maybe 80 picture books total – so there are enough for there to be many favorite re-reads, and also for forgotten or neglected treasures to surface when the time is right.

Next week, I’m talking with the wise, wonderful, and lovely Sri Juneja of the newsletter Readable Moments about curating an Auntie’s home library. She’ll share a few book recs for each age group, and tell us about a recurring newsletter feature where she revisits beloved children’s classics and explores how they stand the test of time. Some stand up just great – and some are Curious George.

Sri: This white guy, presumably in New York City, decides, "I'm going to shop around for a zoo to take this monkey that I have abducted from Africa." Of course, the monkey does crazy things because he’s a monkey in a big city – he’s been taken from his home. People are yelling at this monkey like, "You're so stupid!" It feels icky and gross.

Lisa: It's a story that's validating like, it's okay to go to Africa and kidnap a sentient being and then bring them back to the United States and try to sell them. There's so much subliminal messaging happening. As you said very directly in your post on this book, it basically celebrates the slave trade.

Sri: I was nervous about writing about Curious George because books like these are beloved classics. I don't want to tear down someone's favorite book that they loved when they were growing up. I realized you should absolutely read these books – but also explain to kids that, hey, we don't believe these things anymore.

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1. I was doing an image search for motherhood medals, hoping I might find a satirical and funny picture to include in this post, and I learned something. Guess who else gave out motherhood medals? The actual, literal Nazis.

2. People whose kids have grown up and moved out tend to look back with rose colored glasses. You know I love my elders, but I’m afraid their accounts of how hard parenting is cannot be trusted.

3. Of course, gestation and childbirth are not always part of having kids. Here at The Auntie Bulletin, we are all about remembering that there are many ways kids can enter families!

4. Aunties, breastfeeding is super controversial. If you are not hip to this particular culture war, here’s a primer. Some people say “breast is best” and cite things like the health of the baby and how breastfeeding aids parent-baby bonding. Other people say that breastfeeding is neither possible nor desirable for all families, babies do absolutely great on formula, and parents should make whatever choice is best for them and not have to hear other people’s judgment about it, either. For what it’s worth, I love a number of people who have chosen or been forced to forgo breastfeeding, and I’m firmly on Team Parents’ Choice.

5. This is actually one reason that some families opt for formula – instead of or in addition to breastfeeding – so that the parent who didn’t birth the child can take their fair share of turns getting out of bed and feeding the baby. In other families, the birthing parent pumps so that the other parent can bottle feed breastmilk at night. When we hear that both parents are taking equal turns doing nighttime feeds, Aunties should be super stoked and encouraging. This is such good news!

6. It helps somewhat if – as many families who are able are doing these days – the father takes the maximum parental leave after the mother goes back to work, and then he experiences early on being responsible for more tasks.