12 Questions You Should Answer if You Are Thinking About Having a Baby

In a rela­tion­ship that has passed the test of dif­fi­cult times, top­ics can be raised not only about an ear­ly wed­ding, but also about the next, even more fate­ful steps of expand­ing a young fam­i­ly 🙂 We have pre­pared a list of ques­tions that you should ask your part­ner if you have start­ed think­ing about chil­dren.

There are no top­ics relat­ed to finances, dead­lines and oth­er prac­ti­cal things, because it is very indi­vid­ual in each indi­vid­ual cou­ple. We decid­ed to focus on psy­cho­log­i­cal readi­ness and your ideas about par­ent­hood.

1. Why do you want to have children?

It is very log­i­cal to start the con­ver­sa­tion with this ques­tion. It is worth under­stand­ing how seri­ous­ly you both take this top­ic, what your moti­va­tion is and whether you equal­ly under­stand all respon­si­bil­i­ty.

And even after this ques­tion, you can lis­ten to a lot of nice things about your­self and your rela­tion­ship 🙂 Because if a man dares to have a child, it means that he is very com­fort­able in your still small fam­i­ly and he sees you as very spe­cial, since he is ready to take new respon­si­ble steps with you.

2. What do you think it is like to be a father?

Dis­cuss with your loved one how you imag­ine par­ent­hood: what new oblig­a­tions it brings for you, how you will need to adjust your life to new con­di­tions, what work on your­self and rela­tion­ships will have to be done in advance or already after the arrival of the baby. How­ev­er, do not focus only on dif­fi­cul­ties, because a child can strength­en your fam­i­ly even more and bring many incred­i­ble moments into life 🙂

3. What challenges do you think we might face?

Of course, every­one wants to be good par­ents and give their kids a hap­py child­hood and healthy rela­tion­ships in old age. How­ev­er, as adults, you may be aware of your short­com­ings or cer­tain qual­i­ties that can com­pli­cate the upbring­ing process: for exam­ple, irri­tabil­i­ty, a busy work sched­ule or exces­sive indul­gence towards all small and cute crea­tures 🙂 It is bet­ter to rec­og­nize such prob­lem areas in advance and think togeth­er how you you can work on your­self and your rela­tion­ship to min­i­mize their neg­a­tive impact.

4. Child and technology

Mobile phones, tablets, TV and sta­ble Inter­net access — all this, on the one hand, has made life eas­i­er for par­ents, but on the oth­er hand, it has added rea­sons for argu­ments and wor­ries about the rules for using gad­gets. It is worth find­ing out how each of you feels about the use of tech­nol­o­gy by your child: how much time a day he will be allowed to use a tablet with car­toons, in which cas­es, how you will mon­i­tor the con­sump­tion of con­tent.

5. How do you think parental responsibilities should be shared?

It is worth dis­cussing on the shore what ideas you have about a com­fort­able divi­sion of respon­si­bil­i­ties. Oth­er­wise, in post­par­tum stress, against the back­ground of mis­un­der­stand­ings on this mat­ter, large-scale con­flicts and resent­ments can arise, which will wors­en the already dif­fi­cult peri­od in the fam­i­ly. Of course, no one expects specifics from you at such an ear­ly stage of plan­ning a child, but it is worth at least rough­ly out­lin­ing the future sys­tem of respon­si­bil­i­ties and mutu­al assis­tance.

6. What forms of education and discipline do you want to use?

The sys­tem of pun­ish­ments and incen­tives is the foun­da­tion of pro­duc­tive edu­ca­tion. Dis­cuss which forms of pun­ish­ment you con­sid­er accept­able and effec­tive, and which are taboo for you. In this mat­ter, the expe­ri­ence of your own child­hood will also help you: remem­ber what emo­tions you felt dur­ing var­i­ous pun­ish­ments, and it will be eas­i­er for you to decide what you do not want to doom your future baby.

7. What do you consider pampering a child?

Of course, any lov­ing par­ents strive to pro­vide the baby with the best, caress and pam­per him. How­ev­er, decide what for each of you is the cross­ing of the bor­der when the child already “sits on his head”. You should come to a com­mon posi­tion on this issue so that, first­ly, you don’t irri­tate each oth­er in the future, and sec­ond­ly, so that you can then con­vey these rules to your grand­par­ents as well 🙂

8. What qualities do you want to bring up in your child?

Par­ent­hood is not only about feed­ing, wash­ing and putting to bed; it is also the edu­ca­tion of a sep­a­rate per­son­al­i­ty, invest­ing in it cer­tain val­ues, moral guide­lines and qual­i­ties. And it is very impor­tant that par­ents at the start agree on exact­ly what they want to devel­op in their child, so that he has a clear pic­ture of adults’ expec­ta­tions and under­stand­ing of their posi­tion.

To make the con­ver­sa­tion seem more con­struc­tive, you can visu­al­ize these ideas. Write a list of qual­i­ties and val­ues ​​that you would like to see in your future baby, and then — ways to raise such a per­son­al­i­ty. For exam­ple, if it is impor­tant for you to teach your child finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty, you need to set up a pock­et mon­ey sys­tem from an ear­ly age, teach him to save and save for big pur­chas­es.

9. Describe a typical weekend with your child

This lit­tle imag­i­na­tion exer­cise will help you define your expec­ta­tions of the par­ent­ing rou­tine, and may even inspire you to make this deci­sion soon­er 🙂 Imag­ine what you think your joint fam­i­ly week­end will look like: what each mem­ber of the fam­i­ly will do, what the approx­i­mate sched­ule might look like. Per­haps it will occur to you to start a tra­di­tion — sump­tu­ous break­fasts, games in the park, joint cre­ativ­i­ty.

10. What do you want to do differently than your parents?

The most impor­tant edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence with which we enter adult­hood is the exam­ple of our own par­ents. Their pat­tern of behav­ior affects not only the for­ma­tion of your per­son­al­i­ty, but also how you (often uncon­scious­ly) will treat your own chil­dren in the future.

Ask your cho­sen one what mis­takes or actions of his par­ents, in his opin­ion, had a neg­a­tive effect on him. It is impor­tant not only to find wrong par­ent­ing strate­gies and their con­se­quences, but also to dis­cuss alter­na­tives that feel more cor­rect to you.

11. What do you think is good about your upbringing?

Don’t scold the past gen­er­a­tion, you should also express grat­i­tude in absen­tia 🙂 Dis­cuss what cool solu­tions and strate­gies your par­ents used and whether you want to repro­duce them in your own par­ent­ing expe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, keep in mind that due to the time dif­fer­ence, some points will have to be adapt­ed to more mod­ern con­di­tions.

12. What do you not want to change in your life after having a child?

Chil­dren real­ly fun­da­men­tal­ly change our lives, both glob­al­ly and in small things that we did not even think about when mak­ing this deci­sion. How­ev­er, putting your own life on the sac­ri­fi­cial altar of pos­ter­i­ty is a failed strat­e­gy that will neg­a­tive­ly affect you, your mar­riage, and your chil­dren. Think togeth­er what habits, rit­u­als, life goals you are not ready to change due to the appear­ance of chil­dren, so as not to lose the taste for life.

Of course, a lot will have to be giv­en up in the first months after the arrival of the baby, but you can dis­cuss some com­pro­mise solu­tions that will help you not to go through the roof at first 🙂 The main thing is the will­ing­ness of both future par­ents to help each oth­er pre­serve their per­son­al­i­ties with the appear­ance of chil­dren.