When deciding between having a child or being childfree, the most important question is: which decision will you regret least—in order to support your other life goals, values, and happiness? Here, Merle Bombardieri shares her own story and wisdom for you, as recently featured in Germany’s popular Zeit. We’ve translated this thoughtful, insightful Q&A interview using ChatGPT:
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Interview by Elena Lynch for Zeit
(If you have a Zeit subscription, you can read the original article in German here.)
Merle Bombardieri’s book “The Baby Decision: How to Make the Most Important Choice of Your Life” was published in 1981, but it is more relevant than ever. The question “Do I want children?” has never been as complicated as it is today. People from all over the world who are undecided pay up to $300 per session to seek advice from Bombardieri. For those who can’t afford that, she has been dedicating five hours a week since 2020 to answering questions in the Reddit group “Fencesitter” (meaning “undecided”). She came across the group when she googled herself during the pandemic.
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Zeit: You are 75 years old and have two adult daughters. Have you ever regretted having children?
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Merle: The early years of parenting sometimes felt endless because I had to give the children so much undivided attention. But it was never the case that I thought I had made the wrong decision. I was simply aware that if I hadn’t become a mother, I would have had more time, for example, to work on the novel I wanted to write back then.
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Have you finished [your novel] by now?
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Merle: No. (laughs)
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Instead, you wrote a nonfiction book intended to help women and men, regardless of their sexual orientation, decide whether they want to become parents. Where did the urge to write about the question of having children come from? After all, you had already made your decision—when The Baby Decision was published in 1981, you were already the mother of two daughters?
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Merle: I never had the feeling that I couldn’t wait to have children. I’m an introverted person—I like peace and solitude, enjoy reading, and prefer meeting friends one-on-one rather than in large groups. I also come from a small Jewish family of four, where family life was appreciated but never placed above everything else. My husband, on the other hand, grew up in a large Italian family with five siblings. For him, family was a top priority.
When he asked me to marry him, I initially said no because I wasn’t sure if I wanted children like he did. It took me a year and a half to come to a decision. The conversations I had with my partner during that time were fascinating. When I told other therapists about the idea for the book, they said, “We constantly have couples with careers on our couches asking whether or not they should have kids.”
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That was 44 years ago. What makes the question of having children so compelling that you’re still working on it?
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Merle: The question isn’t just: child or no child? It’s also: Who am I as an individual? What kind of person is my partner—be it a man or a woman? Who are we as a couple? What are our class and cultural backgrounds? What are our relationships with our families, our friends?
The question of children is philosophy. It means looking death in the eye and asking how you want to spend the time between now and the end of your life. Everything else can be undone—you can get divorced, change jobs, move to another country—but if you have a child, you have that child for life. It’s that irreversibility that makes the decision about children the hardest one we face.
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Many people are afraid of making a mistake, of regretting something or missing out—whether they decide for or against having a child.
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Merle: When it comes to the question of children, it’s not helpful to ask whether or not you’ll regret your decision. That’s pointless. The decision is so far-reaching, and the pros and cons are equally compelling, that sooner or later, you’ll experience doubt—no matter which path you take. The more helpful question is: Which decision am I least likely to regret? There’s no such thing as total certainty. As human beings, when faced with a choice, we will always feel ambivalent—because we know that multiple futures are possible.
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Every decision involves loss.
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Merle: Exactly. The word decision comes from the Latin for “to cut off”—to separate from something—which is something we struggle with today. When clients come to me because they feel unable to decide, what they’re really trying to do is find a way to experience the joys of parenthood and maintain the freedoms of a child-free life. Most of them come from middle-class backgrounds and have had the privilege of significant control over their lives so far. I believe they hold onto the subconscious hope that if they wait long enough, they’ll somehow get to have both.
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Is that why some couples in their thirties aim for what you call the “non-accidental accident”?
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Merle: In the Reddit group I’m active in, people sometimes write that they would prefer an unplanned pregnancy because then they wouldn’t have to take responsibility for the decision. They can’t bear the fear of making a choice that might lead to a life they don’t enjoy. But the problem is, by doing that, they give up control over the decision—and ultimately, over their own lives.
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And that’s a bad thing?
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Merle: Yes. Studies show that people who make conscious decisions—for or against something—cope better with the uncertainties that follow. Having a choice and actively making it, rather than surrendering it, is fundamental to happiness and mental health. The same is true for those without children.
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In what way?
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Merle: Child-free people who never clearly decide not to have children, and then realize in their mid-forties that they definitively won’t become parents, might have earned a PhD by then—instead of spending years keeping all options open. People who postpone a decision too long risk never making it at all.
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Of all the questions you’ve answered on Reddit over the past five years: Which one gets asked the most?
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Merle: One of the most common questions is: What should we do?—usually from people in a relationship where one partner wants a child and the other doesn’t. This situation can feel deeply existential, especially because of the fear that the relationship might end if they can’t agree.
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How can a couple get out of this “tug-of-war,” as you call it?
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Merle: The most important thing is to trust that a solution exists. Often, people know too little about their partner’s vision for life to appreciate or imagine it. That’s why I always ask couples to research and really try to understand each other’s perspective.
Take, for example, a heterosexual couple where she wants no kids at all and he wants three. After doing some research and reflection, she might realize she could imagine having one child—but definitely not three. For many couples I’ve worked with, that kind of middle ground—one child instead of none or more than one—became the compromise they could both live with.
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So do your clients generally end up choosing to have children?
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Merle: Forty years ago, maybe 80 percent decided to have children and 20 percent didn’t. Today it’s closer to 65 percent for, and 35 percent against. Not having children has become more socially accepted.
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How do you explain the declining birth rates in Western industrialized nations like the U.S. and Germany?
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Merle: When I began specializing in the question of children in the 1980s, most people simply assumed they would have kids. Today, more and more people can imagine remaining child-free—whether because they want to focus on something else, are afraid of pregnancy or the mental load, or because their outlook on the future is clouded by climate change and political instability. Some of my clients, for instance, say they’ll only reconsider having children when Donald Trump is no longer president of the United States.
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There’s been a shift in how parenthood is perceived, especially among women—from “children are the best thing in life” to “children can be hell.” Why does motherhood have such a bad reputation today?
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Merle: Because pop culture tends to spread a negative narrative. For an article on Vox, a U.S. journalist asked mothers why they don’t talk about the joys of motherhood. Many of them sheepishly admitted that they lived quite equally with their partners—or even enjoyed being mothers—but didn’t dare say so publicly. They worried it might come across as insensitive to mothers who are exhausted or on the brink of divorce, or that it might weaken feminist arguments. But for those who are undecided, it’s really important to hear the good stories too.
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Is there an exercise that helps with making a decision?
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Merle: Yes—for example, the chair dialogue. Here’s how it works: you set up two chairs facing each other. One represents the “pro” voice, the other the “con” voice. You sit in one chair, then the other, and let the two sides argue it out. For instance: “Of course I want kids! Why are we even discussing this?” versus “But what about my career? Should I sacrifice my personal growth?” The key is to let the voices clash.
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Why is that important?
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Merle: Because indecision often comes from suppressing one side of ourselves. Many people try to be rational or objective and end up muting strong emotions—whether it’s desire or fear. But when you allow both voices to speak freely and fully, without censorship, you get a more honest picture of what’s really going on inside you. The “chair dialogue” externalizes your inner conflict, and that helps bring clarity.
It also helps people realize that ambivalence doesn’t mean something is wrong—it means something matters deeply. When those inner parts are fully expressed and acknowledged, people often feel more settled, even if they still don’t have a final answer. From there, the decision can begin to take shape in a more grounded, integrated way.
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You believe that the fear of the “ticking clock” is related to the fear of death. Can you explain this?
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Merle: Yes, absolutely. Many people talk about the “ticking biological clock” as if it’s only a medical issue. But often, that clock symbolizes something much deeper: the awareness that our life is finite. The question of whether to have children confronts us with time—and with that, with impermanence, aging, and our own mortality.
When someone asks, “Do I want children?” they’re also asking, “What do I want to do with the time I have?” It’s an existential question that brings up fear—not just the fear of making the wrong choice, but also the fear of having to choose at all.
Many of my clients eventually realize: this isn’t just about having kids or not having kids—it’s about how they want to engage with the fact that life is finite. That can be frightening, but it’s also an opportunity for profound personal growth.
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Can you explain that?
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Merle: Our fertility and our lives are finite—at least for women—which can lead us to ask: What do I still want to experience before that time is up? That “what else” is important because it ensures that we actually pursue the things we want to do before having children—or before we die.
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A lot of young people think they need to have everything figured out and accomplished before having children, because afterward they’ll only be one thing: a parent.
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Merle: That’s a bleak view of growing older—as if you can’t start anything new later in life! Look at me: I’m 75 and giving interviews to international media. Life is like a patchwork quilt, with many squares where different developments can happen at the same time. That’s why the question “What else is important to me besides having a child?” is so meaningful.
There’s a concept I call stealing time for the other side. If you’re going to have a child and you love meditating, can you carve out an hour a day for it? If you’re consciously choosing not to have children but enjoy spending time with them, can you be part of the lives of your friends’ or relatives’ kids? It’s about asking yourself what you’d miss the most—and then making sure you still get a piece of it.
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The thing about decisions is that you never really know how things will turn out—especially with having children. How do you deal with that uncertainty?
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Merle: The best way is to imagine sitting in the audience of a theater, feeling a pleasant anticipation as the curtain rises—you don’t know whether you’ll enjoy the play or not, but you definitely want to see how it ends. That’s a bit like the decision around having children: you have to try to turn fear into anticipation.
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Note from Merle: I’d love to hear from you!
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Does something I’ve said above ring true for you as a childfree person, or as a parent who has considered another child? Please reach out and let me know. I’d love to hear from you!
What other questions can I help you address? How can I help you make the right choice for you? Reach out to me via my online contact form, or in our private Facebook group The Decision Café, or on any of my social media pages: Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter/X.
I will be writing more about mental health and other timely baby decision considerations in my new book, expected in 2026. You can preview some of these topics and techniques if you subscribe to my free, quarterly email newsletter. In each issue, I’ll share a sneak peek excerpt that only newsletter readers can see! So if you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe now here or in the signup box below.
After you’ve done that, I invite you to catch up on my previous baby decision blog posts here.
– Merle
Photo on this page by Tony Luong for Merle’s Time magazine interview, 2024
