What If Closure Never Comes?

This is an iHeart podcast. [bright music] Guaranteed human. [upbeat music] Pushkin.

[singing]

The certainty I had was absolute. I don't want that. There was not a grain of doubt anywhere, you know?

Radio producer Helena de Groot spent the majority of her life assuming she would never have kids. But as she got older, people's criticism of that choice started to intensify, and it left her unmoored.

Even as I was saying, "No, no, no, I don't want kids," on the inside, I thought, "There has to be something wrong with me for not wanting that."

[upbeat music] On today's show, navigating the road less taken. I'm Maya Shankar, a scientist who studies human behavior, and this is A Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. [singing] When Helena was young and imagined her future, she pictured an apartment in a big, exciting city, a cool job, and weekends dancing at nightclubs. Children simply weren't in this picture, which wasn't an issue for Helena until she was in her 20s.

I love talking to strangers. I'd sit on the train or on the bus going somewhere, and I would just start talking to the person next to me, and they'd be like, "Oh, you know, what are you doing?" And I was probably still at university, and they're like, "Oh, what are your plans after?" And you know, like, uh, "Do you want kids?" And I'd be like, "Yeah, I don't think so." And I said I don't think so because I'd never thought I would do that. But every time this stranger, whoever they were, men, women, uh, middle-aged, older, 30, you know, they would push back so hard, and they would say some version of, "You're making a mistake. You're going to regret this. You're missing out on the greatest love that exists." So I think it's just in response to that that I became much more militant. The reaction is sort of what turns my, "Ugh, I don't think so," into a no, you know?

What were the reasons you found yourself giving to others about why you did not want kids?

Yeah. I see. Okay, so on the outside, right, I said no pretty consistently. But one of the things that made me unsure on the inside was the fact that if someone asked me why, I could never come up with a definitive answer. And my answer also changed depending on the day and all depending on how I was feeling or what I was thinking about most that week.

Sure.

And so I always felt like I was lying a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

You know? Because I would say something like, "Oh, you know, like, I don't think I can combine that with the kind of, you know, poorly paid work that is most interesting to me," or like, "I think I wanna travel more," or, "There's, like, a lot of mental health, uh, issues in my family, and I don't wanna pass that on." Every reason I gave I knew was not the reason. But it becomes calcified. Like, once you believe something about yourself, you find evidence for it everywhere. And so it made it hard for me to trust myself.

Yes. Well, I think what you're describing illustrates that there is something very curious about the way we engage with this topic. How interesting is it that the burden of proof, if you will, the, the burden lies on the person choosing not to do something versus