Rachel and I are not going to have a baby.
We decided this weekend, on our honeymoon, eighteen months after our wedding. (We already had three kids between us when we got married, so we had to take our honeymoon where we could find it.)
Early on, Rachel had talked a lot about having a child together. I loved the idea, but the reality made no sense. We already had plenty of kids, and dogs, and cats, and no time. And it would create an odd stepfamily dynamic. We’d have her kids, my kid, and our kid? Weird.
Rachel’s theory had been that an “our” kid was necessary for marital bonding. She told me that in the animal kingdom the only animals that mate for life were those that have offspring together, and that the same was probably true of us. I suggested that as human beings, we might not be subject to the same rules as desert quail. Rachel was doubtful. “I just don’t think human beings are that evolved,” she said.
I pointed out that most divorced people had previously had children together, so pooling genes in an infant didn’t seem a good predictor of marital longevity. This seemed to make sense to her. Also, she knew it shouldn’t be a baby’s purpose cement a marriage.
A baby shouldn’t have a job,” she said this weekend.
For the first time, poolside at the Marriott, she was sure: No baby. I was surprised at my reaction to her certainty: Disappointment. I didn’t really want a baby either, but I liked it when she did.
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