Hey Dr Sue — What Would You Tell Someone Who Was Worried About Their “Biological Clock Ticking”?

This is a really tough question. Normally when I get a question about having children, I often start by asking the person if they even want to be a parent.

Some people are really thrown off by this question, because they live in a world where the expectation is that you’re “supposed” to have children. But not everyone wants to have children. And as our culture is changing, we see more and more people who are choosing to be childless. Some studies show that about 20% of people report that they don’t ever want to have kids. This might not seem like a high number, but it’s definitely higher than it was even a decade ago.

There is a lot that’s changing around parenthood in the United States. Not only do we see people choosing to be childfree, but there are also those who are choosing to parent as either single parents, or to co-parent with a person who is not a romantic partner. This is sometime called platonic co-parenting. What does that look like? It’s two people who are often friends, who are not in a romantic relationship with each other but who really want to be parents. And so they choose to have a child and raise it together.

This often looks very different from the co-parenting we see among divorced couples. In many of those…