Reporting on Parenthood Has Made Me Nervous About Having Kids
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When people ask me what I cover as a journalist, they are usually amused to learn that I write about parenting without having kids myself. This fact is less amusing to me, but I typically just laugh along and say something about how the job is pretty useful preparation. It certainly has been a phenomenal education, but also a sobering one. Over these years of reporting on parenting, I’ve become more worried about actually doing it myself someday.
Like many people, I’ve always just assumed that I wanted to become a parent. In my 20s, I suppose I considered the possibility of not having kids—perhaps because that’s a prime phase of life for considering possibilities—but by the time I started this job four years ago, at age
