Hi ladies,

My partner recently revealed that he thinks he wants kids in the future while I have spent my whole life really NOT wanting them. I love our relationship though, so this has caused me to think more about the reasons behind why I always thought I wouldn’t want to be a parent (like maybe it’s more fear than not wanting them?) and I’ve realized that the two main reasons are:

1) gender inequality

2) loss of freedom (probably partly because of gender inequality)

I grew up in an extremely traditional American household in the suburbs where my mom stayed at home and did all of the typical “housewife” stuff (cooking, cleaning, laundry, driving my sister and I around, etc.) and my dad worked. My mom is the kind of person that’s always trying to do more (she even started working for my dad’s company when he made it his full-time job to help out with low staffing) while my dad basically acted like if he was asked to do ANYTHING besides work it was a personal attack and if he did do that thing, he deserved a gold star.

Ladies, how do you maintain balance in your relationship with parenting? How do you make sure that you don’t end up doing the bulk of the child-raising and have to cut back on your career more than your partner (unless it’s what you want)? How do you deal with potential postpartum body dysmorphia while your partner goes on looking…exactly the same??

My boyfriend is Scandinavian and has MUCH more progressive and gender-equal views on parenting, but I still have this fear, as it’s really engrained in me. Part of me feels like it would be impossible to feel equal to my partner after having a kid, as even having to be the one that carries the child and deals with all the physical changes is already so unfair in my opinion. How do you deal with this??? I don’t mean to sound rude or critical, I just genuinely don’t understand and really could use some insight!