I Want A Third Kid, But My Husband Doesn’t
What now?
When we first started dating in college, my husband once asked me how many kids I wanted one day. Four, I told him. He looked shocked. Four? He asked. Really? I said yeah. I’d always wanted four kids. I like kids, and four seemed like a good number, enough kids that the house would always be full, but not too many that people start automatically assuming you’re in some kind of weird cult. I asked how many he wanted. Two, he said. Just two? That didn’t seem like enough kids at all. They could barely play a good game of Monopoly. We shrugged and probably took another tequila shot and went back to dancing to Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas or watching Avatar or posting entire albums of one night out on Facebook or whatever we were doing in 2009. We weren’t planning on having kids any time soon, and we both wanted kids. This was something we could figure out later.
You shouldn’t marry someone if you want kids and they don’t. That is a well-known piece of advice. We all know of people who broke up after they realized one person wanted kids but the other didn’t, or at least it’s an extremely emotional plot of tons of movies and TV shows. But what if you both want kids, but not the same number of kids? I’ve never really heard anyone talk about that. Whenever couples talk about their future kids, they always say things like “we want a big family;” “We are one and done”. But it’s always we. As if as soon as people decide to have kids together, they are immediately in agreement about the number.