Turns Out I Did Want to Have Kids After All

Remember when I wrote “Babies are fine, but whatever”? Joke’s on me.

Here I am, pregnant and cradling my toddler son. JD Vance would be proud, but what would the old me think?

In the late ’90s, when I was working at Jane magazine, I wrote an article with the sole purpose of stating the “radical” view that I didn’t need to have kids. I was recently reminded of this by Esther Haynes, who worked with me at Jane and is now with AJPT, and I laughed and laughed. When my story was published, I even went on morning TV to talk about how I was just fine never becoming a mother. Magazine editors used to do that. They’d write pieces, and then the publicists, who also worked for the magazines, would book them on TV to promote the articles and the magazine. There also used to be these things called newsstands, but we’ll talk about that another time.

I remember what I was wearing for the network TV appearance — a brown sleeveless Nanette Lepore mini dress — but damned if I can tell you what I said other than, “I don’t need to have kids.”  My soon to be mother-in-law was concerned, confiding to my husband: “I hope Christina was not speaking her true feelings.”

Clearly I was not. In the space of a few years, I gave birth twice. So why did I write that article?