Why I'm Nagging For A Grandchild. Hear Me Out

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The other day, my daughter finally said the words I’ve been waiting a long time to hear. “For the first time,” she said, sitting just a few feet from me in a matching beach chair sunk in the warm, white sand, “the thought of having a kid doesn’t revolt me.”

My 30-something daughter is engaged to be married. She went through her 20s and early 30s saying she didn’t think kids were for her. Over the years, I’ve kept telling her things like, “Oh, when you meet a man you love, you might change your mind,” or “Maybe you’ll prefer having late-in-life kids when you’re 40”— anything to keep the vein of possible grandkids flowing.

Now she’s met the man she wants to marry. And given her propensity for out-of-the-box decisions like living abroad for a year and moving across the country on a whim, I've maintained a glimmer of hope for grandchildren.

But when I push on the rationale behind her childless decision, she produces a host of mostly selfish explanations that show she knows herself pretty well. For instance, she’d rather spend Saturday mornings at a boozy brunch with her girlfriends than on a soccer field. Maybe your kid won’t play soccer, I think. Or “Won’t all your girlfriends have kids at the soccer field, too?”

My daughter would like to skip the “baby” phase and go right to a fully self-sufficient, walking, talking preschooler since that seems much more fun. Adoption would be perfect, I suggest.

“When you have a kid, your life is completely upended, and you have to do everything for the kid.” Hmm, not much I could say about that one.

What’s more, all her friends who have kids are consumed by them, “and that’s not how I want to spend my life,” she quips. One unfortunate friend has barely left the house since having a baby almost a year ago. When I suggest the friend has possibly developed postpartum depression, she says, “No, she’s just decided she likes holing up in the house with the baby now.” These young families aren’t making it easy for me.

To be fair, I have two grandsons from my son and daughter-in-law, towheaded little boys whose smiles and antics light up any room they’re in. I’m excited for all the stages they’ll go through. They live two hours away and I hope to be at every birthday party and soccer game that I can attend. And I concede I’m being as selfish in my wish for my daughter to have a child as she is for likely remaining childless.

What about her fiancé, I pester? Will he go along with whatever you decide? “He says he might want a child,” she replies, “but he wants one in the way you want a puppy until you realize all the care and work involved in training, cleaning up and overseeing one.”

No help there. They’ve remained dog-less as well.

I couldn’t wait to have children. As an adopted adult, I felt having kids was the only way to grow my own family tree, the only way to have a blood relation, the only possibility of really belonging to anyone — ever.

And yet, my birth mother found me at age 29, and several years ago, I discovered three half-siblings on my birth father’s side. For the girl who craved having kids so desperately she’d have them with or without marriage or a partner to build the family tree everyone took for granted, I’ve been blessed with an entire line of relations I couldn’t even conjure when I was young.

When I type these words, I think to myself, what difference will it make if she has a child or not? I have somehow built a line of extraordinary family connections. When will I stop trying to belong?

I marvel at the strangeness of having a child who may not even consider having kids. Since my daughter was raised by her dad and me, she has always belonged — to us, her sibling, grandparents, cousins and now to nephews. Not knowing where she came from or not belonging somewhere isn’t driving her decision the way it drove mine. It seems I grew a branch of the family tree who might never plant her own garden because she bloomed in the fragrance of the most steadfast flowers.

And yet, a nagging thought sticks in my brain when I think about the grandchild she might, could, perhaps one day decide she wants. Maybe it will be a daughter who won’t only change my daughter’s life, but mine as well.

When we end the conversation, both staring off into the roaring ocean, she says, “Besides, the only way I’d consider having a kid is if we moved closer to you.”

And therein, she dangles the grandchild carrot in front of me once again. Can you blame me if I nag just a little?

 
Are any of you hoping for a grandchild? Let us know in the comments below.