On today's episode of WNYC's new popup advice show, journalist and producer Nayeema Raza, host of the podcast "Smart Girl, Dumb Questions," leads a conversation about the tough odds, medical choices and emotional weight of fertility, pregnancy and other family planning considerations, with journalist Anna Louie Sussman, author of the book Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty. Listeners call in with their questions and experiences around egg freezing, IVF and other elements of modern medicine that come into play around the decision to get pregnant.
Note: You are listening to the podcast version of a live radio show. The call-in number only works between 1 and 2 PM Eastern, while the show is live.
If you'd like to submit advice questions to be featured on the show, or topic suggestions for future shows, please use the form on our showpage at wnyc.org/advice
[music]
Nayeema Raza: Welcome to Please Advise, a pop-up advice show from WNYC. I'm Nayeema Raza. I'm usually heard on a podcast called Smart Girl, Dumb Questions, but this week I'm your host on Please Advise. All of this week, we have been talking about and fielding advice about the phases of relationship. Think about that old playground theme of first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage, or does it?
For more and more Americans and more and more New Yorkers, these are open questions about how, when, whether, why we have children. Today, I want to hear from you, your questions and all things family planning, fertility challenges, and some of the more logistical considerations that go into growing your family. Our lines are open at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Maybe you're trying to decide whether it's the right time to have a baby. Maybe you need advice on where to start with surrogacy, or you have advice for someone else on how to start for the process. Maybe you want tips on building a village to support your growing family.
Listeners, we're talking about bringing kids into your family or into your world if you're solo parenting. We're taking your calls at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. I do not have kids yet. I actually have a lot of these questions, too, and have been pondering them and going through the process. Here to guide us through the challenging landscape of having children is Anna Louie Sussman. She's a New York Times contributing opinion writer, and she's the author of a new book called Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty. It does feel very uncertain, but is it impossible? Anna, what have you learned?
Anna Louie Sussman: It is eminently possible, but there are a lot of barriers that get in people's way. If you look at the data, the surveys, many Americans still do want children. People, on average, want maybe two or three. If you look at how many children women will actually wind up having, it's about 1.6. That suggests there are a lot of things that are keeping people from having the families that they want to have. That's what I tried to explore in the book.
Nayeema Raza: You go on an amazing reporting journey and an amazing personal journey that we'd love to get into today. You talked about America, and it has been a dominant theme of American politics since really 2019, when you wrote that amazing essay in New York Times Opinion called The End of Babies, right, it was called. There has been discussions of the replacement rate. You have Vice President JD Vance talking about childless cat ladies. You have President Trump talking about being the fertility president.
It's become a political conversation, but it's also a global conversation. One of the things I found so amazing about your reporting was that how this is turning out in countries like China, where they have seen a multifold increase in young people 18 to 24, and particularly women who are saying, "I'm not interested at all in having kids at any point in my life."
Anna Louie Sussman: Yes, there was just a study, I believe that it was a professor from Brown University who found that about half of Gen Z women said their preferred number of children was zero. That is really a dramatic shift, I think, from any earlier generation. We know that China's had a one-child policy for years. To say that you want zero, I think that's very shocking. It's not how we will overall propagate the human species.
What I don't know, because that's a fairly recent study and I haven't done reporting in China, is what's underneath that? Is that saying, "I just don't like babies, I hate children, and I never want to experience a parent-child relationship"? Is it saying, "In this particular moment in China, given the gender relations, given the economy, given the expectations on women in their role as mother, this is not for me"?
Nayeema Raza: I think the key word in your subtitle is uncertainty. I feel that's a global reality, and also the changing gender roles and changing expectations of family. Listeners, I'm so curious if you are having these questions, too. Are you thinking about whether to have kids? Are you in a relationship where parenting has become challenging? Are you going through a divorce and thinking about the choice to parent with someone versus now having to co-parent with someone you're, as Gwyneth Paltrow says, consciously uncoupling from? Please call us. Our number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.
This is Please Advise on WNYC. I'm your host, Nayeema Raza, in conversation with journalist Anna Louie Sussman, who has written Inconceivable about the impossibility of family in an age of uncertainty. Please call us, ask us your questions about all things babies. Maybe I can start with some of mine. I feel like for my generation of millennial women, our generation of millennial women, egg freezing has changed the game here. We have rethought about the context and timeline in which we want to have children. It's certainly not an insurance policy, but it is an option. How did you think about that, and how do you look at that in the reporting as having changed people's decisions?
Anna Louie Sussman: There's so many things to say about egg freezing. I think, first and foremost, we should remember that the number of women who freeze their eggs today, I think, among women like you or me, we live in big cities, we're professional, we're educated. It can feel like everyone we know is freezing their eggs. If you look at the data, it's fewer than 40,000 women, I believe, froze their eggs in the last year that we have data for. For context, I want to say it's like there's tens of millions of reproductive-age American women. The share of women who are freezing their eggs is actually very tiny.
That said, it tends to be prominent women. Obviously, AOC just documented her egg freezing journey. I think that if there wasn't already awareness and tons and tons of Instagram ads and marketing from all directions on this, there's definitely greater awareness now. I think what's interesting is the motivations why. For a long time, the narrative was this is something that women did to advance their careers.
There was a Bloomberg Businessweek story that made a lot of waves with the headline-- it was a cover story, and it said, "Freeze your eggs, free your career." It followed a woman who was embarking on this journey because she was some sort of high-achieving professional woman. Then she actually has become a spokeswoman because her eggs didn't work. She's become patient advocate, talking about how you help women who are in this situation.
Nayeema Raza: I found it so interesting. I was in a relationship that I probably didn't want to end up in long term for. He was a great guy, but wasn't the right guy. The whole egg-freezing explosion at the time, and it was around careers because I had just graduated graduate school at Stanford, and there were Google, Apple, et cetera. All of them were recruiting you with, "This is one of the menu of options of benefits that you could get along with," like free kombucha, for working at their companies.
I felt like it was a liberating force. More than that, it was a confronting force. What I think is really interesting about egg freezing is that, having been through that journey, you look at yourself in the mirror, you're giving yourself these shots of menopur, et cetera, and you're thinking about the context in which you want to have a family, et cetera. Anna and I actually met originally at a dinner for a sperm-freezing, a male fertility company, when I was thinking more men need to be doing this. Men can also think about their timeline. Men are given permission.
I'm curious. Men, if you're out there and you disagree with me or you agree with me or you have thoughts on this, please call in, add your voice to the conversation. We're taking your calls on Please Advise at WNYC at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. I have always thought men should do it, too, because if they were to confront it, they might think about these things earlier. They might want to have families. As you said, one of the main reasons why women are freezing their eggs is because they couldn't find the right partner to have a kid with. It wasn't about freezing time in their career.
Anna Louie Sussman: Absolutely. I think that's, on the one hand, what makes egg freezing or even sperm freezing so appealing is it gives you, like you said, an option, a way to exert control in an area of life, partnering, romance, where, in fact, we don't have a lot of control.
Nayeema Raza: Yes. You don't even have to go through the whole-- just going to a doctor. I'm not a doctor. I'm not giving you medical advice. Neither is Anna. Going to a doctor to have that experience rather than-- I think there's a lot of apps that tell you, like, "Just fill out this form and know this." Go to a doctor, have a conversation, see how you feel about the whole process of having a family.
If you've been through that journey and you want to share your experience with us, please call us, talk to us about it. It's 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. If you want to be confidential and private, that's okay, too. Just let our producers know, and we won't identify your name when you call in, but we look forward to hearing from you. I'm curious, Anna. You went through a reporting journey here, and you also went through a personal journey here. Having a kid over the 2019 essay that said the end of babies to the 2026 essay that you wrote, which is about when being childless is not by choice. Can you talk a little bit about your experience?
Anna Louie Sussman: Absolutely. I first started thinking about this issue precisely because I was saving up money to freeze my eggs in my early 30s. I was confronted with all the questions you're talking about. Let's say I can get this done. Let's say I get some eggs. What are the conditions under which I'd like to use them? What feels possible? What if I don't meet someone and I have to do this by myself? What would need to be in place? Who could help me? Would I get any help from the government? How much money would I need to save for childcare?
All of these things just started to seem really, really challenging. I always think of myself as in the broad landscape of the US labor market and a socioeconomic strata. I'm on the more fortunate end. I have a college education. I have a graduate degree. I don't have tons of outstanding student loan debt like so many people do, or medical debt. I thought, "If it's this hard for me, how is anyone else doing this? How do other people feel about this?"
I started thinking about this. Then as a reporter, you start asking these questions, you start talking to people, and it very much wasn't just me. I talked to so many people. Like you said, we're in New York. New Yorkers face so many financial constraints, space constraints. You hear so many people say, like, "I would love to have another, but where would it go? Where would I put it? In my underwear drawer?" There's--
Nayeema Raza: Exactly. By the way, we have a call exactly about that. I have Alexandra on the line from Marlboro, and I think Alexandra is here. Hi, Alexandra, it's so great to have you with us.
Alexandra: Hi. Thank you, guys. I'm enjoying the conversation so far.
Nayeema Raza: We appreciate it. Talk to us about what you're thinking about.
Alexandra: Yes, I have a six-year-old, soon to be seven. I wasn't sure if I wanted kids or if I wanted to, but we did have one. She's the light of our lives. The parent-child relationship is like no other. I think about what kind of world she's growing up in, what her future will be like. Uncertain is the word, unknown. It makes me uneasy to think about AI. What are the repercussions there? The environment, what's happening with our world? Will there be clean drinking water? Is the air that we breathe going to be safe? Sometimes I feel like, should I have brought her into the world? Is that fair to do with all the uncertainty? We don't have a second. We won't have a second. That's where we're at right now.
Anna Louie Sussman: Do you mind if I ask, when you say we won't have a second, what's behind that?
Alexandra: Yes. Part of it is our own age, but the other part is I feel a little bit of guilt, of like, "Oh, I bestowed this. You didn't ask to be born. I don't know what your future will be like. Maybe it'll be fantastic, but maybe it won't. How would I feel if it isn't?" [laughs] I have those fears. I wouldn't want to do that to somebody else.
Nayeema Raza: Can I ask, Alexandra? You said you didn't want to have kids, and then you decided to have a kid. How did you change your mind about that?
Alexandra: My husband and I had talked about it, and we were of the mindset of, "You know what, if it happens, great. It's a blessing. We take it. We love it. If we had trouble, we wouldn't pursue ny medical intervention." It was like, leave that open to the universe, and whatever happens, we'll accept it.
Nayeema Raza: Do you think about having that approach to this time round, age aside?
Alexandra: No. [chuckles] I won't be able to have kids or birth control, all of that. That is an active decision. I choose to do that each day.
Nayeema Raza: Well, thank you so much, Alexandra, for calling in and sharing your experience. I think it is a really uncertain world out there. Iit sounds like you have a beautiful relationship with your six, going on seven-year-old, and you and your child are lucky for that.
Alexandra: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Nayeema Raza: Did you hear that kind of story a lot, Anna, in the world out there?
Anna Louie Sussman: Absolutely. One of the central arguments of the book is that we've created a really inhumane world, and then people are shocked that young people don't want to bring more humans into it. All the people who are complaining that women aren't having enough children, or you had Mehmet Oz calling women underbabied. A lot of these policymakers have a hand in creating an economic system, a planetary situation, a technological situation that people feel deeply uncomfortable bringing new life into.
Nayeema Raza: I think what you're saying is so spot on. There are these real structural challenges that we are dealing with at a policy level, a national level, at a global level, and yet we're having to internalize all of these things into individual decisions without much safety net and with major social changes across society. We have to think about this individually. It seems deeply unfair and yet very universal at the same time. We have another caller here. Jim is from Ridgewood, New Jersey. Jim, it's so great to hear from you.
Jim: Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Nayeema Raza: Of course.
Jim: I think just more along the same subject line here, is that I'm a parent of four children. I have three daughters aged 21 through 24, and then I have a 15-year-old son. My wife and I have watched as the children have aged and an uncertainty evolve around their futures and as parents. They've started to talk about, like, "Well, I just don't know if I could have children. I've always wanted to have a large family. I'm not sure if we could manage that."
As parents of that, watching that happen, it makes me so sad. I think one of my greatest challenges as a parent is now to try to figure out how can I create within them the strength and the courage to move through that and continue to do the hard work necessary to have a family that we've done and had such great joy from. I'm just looking for advice on how to be that kind of parent to my kids to help them.
Nayeema Raza: I think asking a question is a great first step. I think a lot of parents have put a lot of pressure on kids and aren't asking about how best to have that conversation. Anna, do you have advice for Jim on this?
Anna Louie Sussman: A couple of things come to mind. One is just I want to say I'm sorry you're going through this because I know a lot of people. I've spoken to older people who've written to me when I've published something that said, "Thank you for helping me understand why my daughter or my son doesn't want kids or why it feels so hard for them. I never really understood it. Having them was the greatest joy of my life," et cetera.
You're not alone in this. Also, I understand how challenging it is for someone in your situation because you're not even the one making the choice. You're a bit on the sidelines, wondering how you can assist, or coach, or help when it's your children who have to make this decision. Since you are naturally, it sounds like, inquisitive and supportive, I think the person you need to ask are each of your four kids. What is it that they need? What would help them feel stronger and more secure? If, for example, the answer is like, "Well, I would need my own home," and that's not something you can provide to them, what are the other solutions? Would you have them move back in? Are there other things you can do?
This wasn't something I should say that I necessarily got from my mom, just her parenting style, but emphasizing how much joy and what an abundance of love it was to be a parent. You can just tell them. I feel like young people, your kids possibly included, really don't get a lot of exposure to parenting because a lot of us are actually in smaller families. People are having children later and later. If they went to college, they probably didn't see many parents around them in college, so they may just not know what that looks like. I think being really open about that in a way that, as Nayeema said, not to put pressure, but just to share with them what that experience is like. I don't think people necessarily know until they start to see it around them.
Nayeema Raza: Yes, I think that experience is so real. I feel like watching 7th Heaven as a kid helped me conceive a family. Yet I haven't conceived a family yet. Jim, thank you so much for your call, and I wish you luck in that conversation. My mom and I have this conversation often, and it is a hard one, but it's great when you can be supportive and share the joys that it's brought to your life. That's my advice as a kid.
Jim: Great. Thank you.
Nayeema Raza: Thank you. All right, listeners, we're going to take a quick break. This is Please Advise on WNYC. This break is a great time for you to call us. I'm really interested in your questions about the fertility journey. Are you solo parenting? Are you platonic co-parenting? Are you exploring your fertility options with IVF or having a surrogate? Our lines are open, 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You're listening to Please Advise, a new call-in show from WNYC. I'm your host, Nayeema Raza, here with Anna Louie Sussman, and we'll be right back. Don't go away, and do call us.
[music]
Welcome back to Please Advise on WNYC, a call-in advice show where we are taking your calls. I'm your host, Nayeema Raza. I'm here with Anna Louie Sussman, a journalist, New York Times Opinion contributor, and the author of the book Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty. We are talking about how people are having kids, why people are having kids, whether people are having kids. We want to hear about your fertility journeys, your parenting journeys. You can call in with your questions or your advice at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. I think we have a call right here, Anna, from John in Bedminster. Hi, John. Great to have you here.
John: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I just had more of a comment. I'm going through IVF with my wife. We're currently in the midst of our second round. We have luckily a handful of viable embryos on ice. My comment was regarding how many times you go through this and the uncertainty, when do you decide to call it with your partner when you've been through so much? Specifically, my wife has been through so much. It's a really tough situation.
Nayeema Raza: Thank you so much, John, for that question. Anna, I know you've spoken to over 100 people in the course of bringing this book. What's your advice on when to stop, if to stop?
Anna Louie Sussman: Yes, that one is so deeply personal. Obviously, a lot of it has to do with finances or if your employer is helping pay for this. Obviously, financial concerns can be a huge factor. You mentioned your wife is really going through it. Some people physically find it very difficult to tolerate the hormonal injections. There's a scholar, I believe it's this scholar, Sarah Franklin, who called IVF a hope technology. I think that's what makes it really difficult for people to turn away. The desire for a child can be so deep and so profound. For many people, this is the only path that they see to having a child, especially if having a genetic connection is important to them.
I've talked to fertility doctors who say they've seen people take out second mortgages or sell their cars. John, as you know, it can cost $15,000 to $20,000 for a round of IVF, and it's not guaranteed to work. Depending on the age, it's only about a 33% to 50% success rate. Then as you get older, the statistics go down even more. I don't feel like I'm the one to tell you when to stop. I'd be very curious what your doctors have been telling you about what they think is working, what they're changing each time you do a new round. If they're not seeing the results they want, they should also be tinkering with your protocols and not just doing the same thing without making any adjustments.
Nayeema Raza: I would just add to that, John. I think there's a third element. There's, obviously, the financial element, the physical element, and then there's the relationship element. I have seen this with so many friends having gone through rounds and rounds of IVF, where it really wears on a relationship. I don't have kids yet, but I am a godmother in four different families, and I've seen their experiences, but also the journeys of so many people near me.
I think, recently, on Smart Girl, Dumb Questions, I interviewed a finance expert, and I asked her things that you should go into debt for. It was very like a lightning round of red and green. It was like, "Grad school debt." She's like, "No, not really," et cetera. She was quite cutting. Then I got to, "What about having a kid through IVF?" She was like, "Yes, go into debt." One of her guardrails was like, "Don't go into debt on your relationship." I thought that was good advice, because at the end of the day, you have a person that's standing in front of you, and you can forget that sometimes looking for a person who isn't here yet and may not arrive.
Thank you so much, John, for that question. I think Anna's advice, we won't ask you about your medical experience here, but Anna's advice of talking to your doctor about, "Are you doing things differently to get to a different result," is a good conversation to have. I really wish you and your wife so much luck.
John: Thank you. Appreciate it.
Nayeema Raza: Thank you, John. We have another call here from Max. Hi, Max. So happy to have you here with us.
Max: Hello.
Nayeema Raza: Hi.
Max: Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm a little hoarse today. Sorry about that.
Nayeema Raza: Oh, it's okay. I'm a big horse. Just kidding.
[laughter]
Max: I'm 40, I'm gay and non-binary, and divorced three years ago or so. When I got divorced, my ex-husband and I, we had contracted a surrogacy agency and even started seeking an egg donor. We never actually saw a donor, but we lost tens of thousands of dollars in the process, unfortunately. Between that and the divorce, I'm probably looking at adoption as my route to single parenthood now.
I'm curious what you know about financial resources, but also support resources for single queer parents and how we can support each other out there. I feel like I don't have a lot of friends necessarily who are in my same boat, even though I have a lot of friends who have kids and who have kids approaching their bar mitzvahs already, because I'm 40. That's how it goes, right?
Nayeema Raza: Totally. Anna, what do you think?
Anna Louie Sussman: Well, first of all, I'm sorry to hear that you got partway into the surrogacy process and then probably lost, I'm guessing, a deposit or money that you paid to the agency. It is very expensive, but so is adoption. Unless you are going through the foster system, it can also be really expensive to adopt. I'm not sure if you work for a company or if you're self-employed, but family-building benefits that especially bigger companies offer can often include some assistance with adoption. Ideally, you should be also eligible for paid leave if your company offers that for non-adoptive parents. There should be equity or parity in terms of being an adoptive parent.
There is the organization Men Having Babies, which is geared towards gay and single men. I do believe a lot of the emphasis is on doing that via surrogate. I'm not sure how much they focus on adoption, but that is a community, that is a resource that you could look into. I will say, from my own experience becoming a parent, I'm a cisgender woman, and as you can imagine, there's a lot more resources geared towards moms. I'm on a LISTSERV for moms. There's Mom Reddit, and there's a lot of stuff for moms.
You mentioned your friends who are already parents. Some of the best resources for me and my village has been through the people who already know me, love me, care about me, and were really happy to support me and my daughter. Not to mention all the hand-me-downs of clothes I got for being the last, which you might be. You might benefit from this, too, being the last in your peer group.
It's also been amazing. What I found is I can look around and think, "Well, which of my friends," and luckily it's pretty much 100% of them. You look around and say, "Which of my friends have handled this situation in a way that I feel like has resulted in a really great kid," or, "Which of my friends just dealt with sleep regression?" I'm going to get their advice. I feel like when you have that range of friends with kids of different ages, you also have an incredible resource to call on, almost like a library of parenting knowledge and expertise is stored in a group of people who really care about you.
Nayeema Raza: I think that's a great reframe and important to hear about some of the specific resources. Max, I wish you luck. I'm sorry that you lost money and didn't get a match through surrogacy. I know that's many people's experience, but I'm hopeful for you. Thank you for calling. Our next caller, Amalia, is actually someone calling from Manhattan. As you said, moms get more resources. This is two women, I think, who want to have a child. Amalia, you're here with us.
Amalia: Yes, hi. Listen, we did have a child, and he is now nine years old.
Nayeema Raza: Oh, congrats.
Amalia: Thanks. I just wanted to promote that there are embryos that have been made that are little frozen surprise packages that people that have gone through IVF have made. When they signed the contract to go through the process, you have to decide, what are you going to do with those embryos if you make, I don't know, 10 or, I don't know how many people make. You can destroy them, or you can give them to science, or you can give them to other parents that are eager to be, want.
Nayeema Raza: I did not know this. I'm your host, Nayeema. I see Anna, who's here, nodding her head vigorously. I'm going to let her jump in.
Anna Louie Sussman: Absolutely. Yes, Amalia is absolutely right. When people create embryos at the IVF clinic, they're given a contract to sign before they-- usually, it's before they undergo IVF, with the question of, "What would you like to do with these embryos, the ones that are left over once you've finished building your family?" People donate them to science, they donate them to research at the clinic, or you can donate them to another family that's unable to get pregnant.
This began, I believe it was in the '90s. There was a Christian family that wanted to get pregnant. They were struggling, and in talking to their doctor, they realized that they could adopt. They called it adoption. To be clear, embryos are tissue. They're not legally children, despite some confusing court rulings that say otherwise. They launched a program that was, at the time, very faith-inflected that encouraged people to adopt "already made embryos," which this was Evangelical Christians. They believed those were already existing human lives and children. It became a really helpful, useful program, and it served hundreds and hundreds of families.
Now, more recently, there's a lawyer, I believe, in Chicago. Sorry, she's not a lawyer. There was a woman in Chicago who started a company that helps more diverse family forms find embryos, match with families. I'm not sure if, Amalia, if you know the family that you adopted from, but I believe that's also typically part of the process is you can have it an open relationship where the other family and you know the siblings and that kind of thing when you adopt.
Amalia: No, we didn't have even the option of knowing.
Anna Louie Sussman: Interesting.
Amalia: I want it to be a very open thing. I just want to make sure that you understand that we're not Christian. We're not anything. It's called a transfer instead of an adoption. I called it adoption for a while, not knowing what the right term to use was. It's just wonderful. He's a surprise to us.
[laughter]
Nayeema Raza: I love it. A nine-year-old surprise. It was a surprise to me too, because when I saw your call, I didn't know that you had already had a child. I thought you were going through that process. It's so helpful, Amalia, to know your experience and that this even exists because I have to say, I'm a woman of childbearing age looking at this world, and I did not know about it. Thank you so much for calling in, Amalia.
Those of you listening, you're listening to Please Advise on WNYC. I'm your host, Nayeema Raza. I'm here in conversation with New York Times contributing opinion writer Anna Louie Sussman. We are talking about all things babies, fertility journeys, the choice to have children. You can call us. We want to hear from you, your questions and your advice. 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Anna, we have a call here from Holly from Fort Greene. I'm going to bring her in. Hi, Holly.
Holly: Hi. Thank you so much for this interesting conversation. I think it's really needed. I am a 44-year-old woman who decided not to have children. This was not a choice I took lightly, but I think the anxiety of the climate and the Earth really tipped me over. It's just such a tough position. For the longest time, you had a caller that was a father, but my parents would ask like, "Why not?" To have that conversation and still have that conversation with people is quite difficult.
I think the more that we talk about this and these choices that we make, is so important. I don't hate my decision at all. I love being an aunt and spoiling my niece and nephew. I think that, at a certain point, I just decided that I didn't want to take on the debt and the hormones of doing IVF. It was not easy, but it is our choice to be made. I think that that's another important point that-- you know.
Nayeema Raza: Holly, it's really great to hear from you as someone who's thinking about this decision. I really appreciate you sharing the journey you've been through with your parents, with your experience, and with your choice. We actually had a message come in from another listener just before you called in saying, this person wrote, "I want to let younger people know that the choice to not have children can be fantastic for your life. I am a 70-year-old woman who never wanted children. I never had any. I have absolutely no regrets," she said.
She seems happy with that choice, which I think it's always hard when you're making these choices, to know how they all sit with you in 20, 30 years. I love hearing from the intergenerational audience that we have at WNYC. She said, "Unfortunately, late in life I married a man who had two grown children." Unfortunately. "Oh, and now there's grandchildren, and I have much more freedom and energy." I think she meant fortunately. "I see the demands that children and grandchildren make, and I am not a fan." Oh, maybe she didn't mean unfortunately.
Thank you for sharing that in. Thank you, Holly, for calling in with your experience. I really appreciate it. We are going to take a quick break. This is Please Advise on WNYC. I'm your host, Nayeema Raza. I'm here in conversation with Anna Louie Sussman, New York Times contributing opinion writer and the author of an amazing new book called Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty. We are talking all things family, fertility, your journey, taking your questions and your advice. You can call in at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. We're going to take a quick break. Don't go away. Maybe make a baby.
[music]
Welcome back to Please Advise on WNYC, a call-in advice show where we are taking your calls on all things fertility, family, the choices, the journeys that people are going through. I'm your host, Nayeema Raza. I'm here with Anna Louie Sussman. She's a journalist, a New York Times contributing opinion writer, and the author of a new book, Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty. We just heard from a woman named Holly who's 44 and was speaking about her decision not to have kids. I don't know if you had more to-- because I know a lot of your reporting, and during the break we were talking about this has shown the challenge of that choice.
Anna Louie Sussman: Absolutely. Holly, when she called in, she just mentioned climate anxiety, what the Earth would look like in the future, how much she loves being an aunt, and then also that she didn't want to go into debt or take all the hormones that are involved with IVF. I think what her experience shows, and what so many people I talk to shows, is that the decision to have or to not have children is really as unique as each person.
She just named three different factors that it sounds like went into her-- a lot of people have climate anxiety. A lot of people may also be at the point in their life where they need IVF, and the financial barriers are going to be too high. The fact that she has children who she-- her nieces and nephews, she said she's an aunt, that she loves may really fill that relationship for her.
Nayeema Raza: Age.
Anna Louie Sussman: Yes, and her age. I feel like when we talk about this, a lot of policymakers try to say, "Oh, we just need this. We need a bit more housing, or we need to give a baby bonus to women who have kids, or we need to do this one little thing." I feel like there's so many larger structural and, in fact, multiple layers of barriers or considerations that people have in their lives. You really have to listen to those people. We have to listen to stories like the ones of your callers to understand what it is that people need.
Nayeema Raza: Thank you so much for that, Anna. We have a call here from Jack from Princeton, New Jersey. Jack, welcome.
Jack: Hi. This is a wonderful show. I'm a single dad, and my kids are teenagers now, but I was a single dad when they were born because their mom, my ex-wife, got postpartum depression and left. I was with a six-month-old and a one-year-old. I did what I had to do, and it was an incredible experience. Finding childcare was so hard and so expensive, and it really put undue pressure on me and on a lot of people.
I just think our government should do a lot more. They get the pom poms out for family values, family this, have children. You mentioned free daycare, and there's no way. We can't do that. I just think it's so sad that people will make decisions about kids and put daycare price amongst why not to have it where I wish our government just did so much more around the whole country of just giving people money to have children, and we'll have a lot more children. They don't have to worry about daycare. I almost went bankrupt from daycare, but I survived. I just still care about our country and people having kids, and our government doing more for people with children, single mothers with children that they don't have the-- [crosstalk]
Nayeema Raza: Single dads with children.
Jack: Single dads with children. Exactly.
Nayeema Raza: Thank you so much, Jack, for calling. This is really on a theme. This idea of politicians will talk about family all day long, and then the policies are not there. The fact that we are the only OECD country that doesn't have-
Anna Louie Sussman: Paid family leave.
Nayeema Raza: -paid family leave, paid maternity leave, paternity leave. It seems farther afield, but it's just-- yet the current administration seems to have seized onto it a bit because they know it is a universal issue. Everybody is thinking about the pragmatics of maybe wanting kids and how they might do it if they want to do it, if they choose to do that.
Anna Louie Sussman: I think Jack is so right on when he talks about the gap between the rhetoric around family and family values and actually walking the walk. The US is a real outlier, not just in terms of not having paid family leave, but just in the share of their GDP that they spend on family policies. We have the highest penalties attached to single motherhood. There's a lot of other countries where you can be a single parent and your kids are not living in poverty, and their graduation rates are just fine. We really do an incredibly piss poor job by our parents on pretty much every measure.
There are so many things that have gone into the rise in daycare costs. The price of childcare has grown faster than inflation for, I think, the last couple decades. Some of those reasons are good. We still don't pay childcare workers enough. We've learned from research on early childhood education, early childhood development that very young children need a high ratio of caregivers to babies. There's certain things that we know that have improved the quality of early childcare, but it's also made it more costly. Until the government does step in and subsidize that, every dollar that a parent has to pay extra is coming directly out of their pockets. It can feel quite zero-sum.
Jack, I had the same thing. I had three months of partially paid leave through a self-employed insurance program that I paid for myself. Then I took one month off, unpaid. At that point, my savings were close to zero. I was panicking. I had to put my daughter in daycare, which was also incredibly expensive. The whole thing was just absolutely really stressful. That's the kind of thing that I think parents fear they know about. It causes undue stress, and it takes so much of the joy and pleasure out of what should be this sweet, relaxing. Having a new baby is always going to be tiring and stressful in its own right, but it doesn't have to be this full-blown panic attack, like, "Am I facing bankruptcy," that so many people go through.
Nayeema Raza: Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jack, for calling in and sharing that experience. Congrats on your teenagers getting through that. What a journey. Thank you, Anna, for those comments. Now, we have a couple more calls I want to get through before we're done with the hour, so we'll move quite quickly. Meryl, come in. You want to talk about your journey?
Meryl: Yes. My journey was a little different. I got married a little later in life and had my first child very easily, and then found we had a struggle having our second child. After seeing a fertility specialist, we found out that in my situation, my eggs were no more viable, which I didn't even know was a thing in your 40s. We ended up using my husband's sperm and a donor egg. He's a lovely young man. He's 19 now, and he looks just like his sister, which is incredible. It's nice because as an older parent, it's also nice to be an older parent. I find I'm a little bit more calmer, have more empathy and more understanding because I'm just a little older. It's nice.
Nayeema Raza: I love that. Any thoughts, Anna?
Anna Louie Sussman: Absolutely. I think Meryl's experience shows that genetic connection is not always primary. Your relationship with your child is exactly what you make of it. People adopt. People have children with donor gametes. People take in kin, and these relationships are exactly what you want them to be. I feel like there's a lot of emphasis on genetic connection, and a lot of it can come from a dark place. We have a whole eugenics revival happening. I really appreciate that, Meryl. She's showing us that family is what you make of it.
Nayeema Raza: Yes, very much so. We are approaching the end of our hour, but we have a couple pieces of advice coming in from our caller line. I want to get to those. If you have a quick advice, you can call us on Please Advise at WNYC, 212-433-WNYC. Let's go to Remy in Stratford, Connecticut. You had some advice, Remy, for the previous callers?
Remy: Well, yes, hi. I just wanted to respond to your previous caller and tell him. He asked, "When do we stop? When do you stop?" I was thinking, well, you don't. If you really want to be a parent, if you really want to have kids, you don't stop, and find ways. Our journey was seven years. It's still ongoing. We were in New York City picking up new hormones from people that didn't need them anymore for a fraction of the cost during the pandemic. We ended up having transfers here in the United States that failed. We ended up hiring an agency in Ukraine.
Last year, we went to Ukraine, got tested, everything was fine, signed a contract with them. We shipped our embryos to Ukraine, and literally it's a third of the cost of what it is in the United States. We're in constant communication. Our first transfer failed. Now, we're getting ready for our second one next week.
Nayeema Raza: Wishing you luck, Remy. Thank you for calling in with that advice.
Remy: Thank you.
Nayeema Raza: Wishing you luck and your wife, too. That's a long road. Seven years. We have Steve from Westchester, and he had a point of view here, too.
Steve: Hi, there. I'm 75 years old now. About 40 years ago, we tried to have children, my wife and I, and we went through every possible procedure that existed then. Then our lawyer said, "Why don't you tell everyone you know that you want to adopt a child?" Within four years, we had two children, both infants, both wonderful. There are many children who need parents who are willing to work to be parents. Not easy, but it's worth every minute of it. It's been the greatest journey I've ever had.
Nayeema Raza: Thank you so much, Steve, for sharing that with us. Adoption is a path that we didn't get into as much in this hour, but it's a very beautiful path. We also have another piece of advice from someone who messaged us at 433-WNYC. This person wrote, this is a priest who wrote in, "As a priest who prepares couples for marriage, the prayer, 'Holy Matrimony, Procreation, and the Nurture of Children' is optional. As an Episcopal priest, I am a father of four and the grandfather of seven, and I can tell you it is the greatest joy. I know many couples," he says, "who should have thought about having children but assumed it was a given. I had breakfast with my daughter this morning," says this priest who's written in, "and we were talking about how many happy single people there are. One does not need to get married, and one does not have to have kids to have a fulfilling life."
That's an interesting perspective from a priest writing into us. I'm so curious. We've just been here for the last hour talking to all kinds of listeners in the journey. Was this representative of your reporting journey and your own experience? How do you look at our policy crisis given the lived experience of so many people?
Anna Louie Sussman: I do think, as several callers pointed out, the policies that especially are under discussion in this administration are very, very far away from what people actually want. I think plans like in the original versions of certain Biden-era bills, or Elizabeth Warren's proposal to cap child care costs at 7% of your income, those are the kind of things that I think would actually help. We were also watching an experiment now in New York with Zohran Mamdani helping people have 2-K and maybe expanding that further. I think we'll see where that takes us in terms of people's ability to have families even in this very unaffordable age.
Nayeema Raza: Yes, I think it's certainly, along with AI and other things, something that people will be thinking about as they go out to vote in the midterms. That is the end of our hour. Thank you all for tuning in to Please Advise on WNYC. Thank you so much to my guest and advice-giving partner, Anna Louie Sussman, for being here with us.
Anna Louie Sussman: Thank you.
Nayeema Raza: You can read her in New York Times Opinion. You should definitely check out her new book Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty. You can find me, your host, Nayeema Raza, on my podcast Smart Girl, Dumb Questions. My latest episode with Seth Meyers, with the comedy seller, is all about how he became a wife guy and family as a bomb to our current politics. I've also interviewed some pronatalists on this topic of having kids or not. Definitely check that out.
I want to say thank you to the team here at WNYC who has let me hang out this last week. Matthew, Meg, Sarah, Zach, Rebecca. Come back next week, Monday, for an all-new Please Advise. It'll be hosted by WNYC's David Furst, and he'll be joined by Ray Magliozzi from NPR's Car Talk.
Copyright © 2026 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.
New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.