Every milestone of my life has come with a question I did not ask for. At 18 it was where is your boyfriend. After graduation, it was when will you have one. During the relationship, it was when will you get married. After the wedding, you already know.

If I were to count every single person who has asked me “When are you going to have kids?” since the day I got married, I would be rich by now.

If you are reading this, chances are, you have been asked the same question on the same relay race of expectations that never lets you exist in the chapter you are actually in.

This post is my answer to that question. Finally, on my own terms.

The economic reality and broken system in the Philippines

1. Government

The Philippines has a government that keeps letting its people down and this is partly thanks to the people who keep voting them in (Yes, sarcasm, but not entirely).

As Thomas Jefferson said,

The government you elect is the government you deserve.

As much as we Filipinos do not deserve this, given the beautiful country we have, it is a painful reality that people like me who strive to vote for deserving officials get consistently overshadowed by voters who choose self-centered politicians. This is not a one-time thing as it is a cycle that repeats itself every election.

I complain about it and a lot of us do, but at some point I had to accept that I can’t control what other people do during the elections. I can only control my own choices and focus on my own life.

With that acceptance came a heavier realization that I am not sure I will witness a significantly better Philippines in my lifetime. I’m not defeated, I’m just honest.

If that is the reality I am living in, bringing a child into this country without serious thought is not brave. It is just not something I am willing to do without asking the hard questions first.

2. Healthcare

The healthcare system in this country requires money more than it requires compassion. Pregnancy, childbirth, childcare, postnatal care, and the months that follow after these are expensive.

The government health insurance that is supposed to help is unreliable at best and absent at worst, which leaves most families to shoulder medical expenses on their own. This is the everyday reality for the middle class and the poor, where one serious illness or one hospitalization is all it takes to wipe out years of savings or spiral into financial distress.

Having a child in this country does not just mean preparing for a baby. It means preparing for every fever, every emergency, every unexpected diagnosis that comes after, in a system that was never built to catch you when you fall.

3. Education

Bringing a child into the world means committing to give that child a real shot at life. In this country, education is a huge part of that.

Yet, the public education system here is in crisis. As someone who went to a private university from preschool to graduate school, I consider it as a privilege I fully acknowledge and one I credit entirely to my parents. My parents did it because they believed in what that education would give us and I am grateful that they did.

Because I know what a good education looks like, I also know what I would want for my child. Sending my kid into an underfunded and overcrowded public school system where the quality of learning is inconsistent would be unfair.

That means private school and with this kind of institution means tuition fees that have never once gone down in my lifetime and show no signs of doing so. By the time I have a child old enough to enroll, I am certain that tuition alone will exceed six figures in Philippine peso every year or semester.

This is just the tuition and doesn’t include the total cost of raising a child. That is before school supplies, transportation, uniforms, extracurriculars, and everything else a growing child needs to thrive.

Education is not optional, but affording the kind of education a child deserves in this country is becoming less realistic for regular families every single year.

The world we’re bringing a child into

1. The world is no longer local

In our grandparents’ time, competition was more contained as businesses were local and the job market was local. What happened in another country largely stayed in another country. Right now, that world no longer exists.

Whatever happens internationally now eventually lands on our doorstep. The job market is a clear example.

As a virtual assistant and freelancer who works with businesses remotely around the world, my competition is not only other Filipino VAs and freelancers, but also talent from India, from other parts of Asia, and from Central America, who are all offering the same services.

The pressure to upskill, to stay current, and to remain relevant is constant. The moment you stop keeping up with technological developments, you become replaceable. That is the reality I live in professionally and it is the reality the child I will raise would eventually have to navigate too.

2. The degree a child chooses now matters more than ever

With that reality starts with education, specifically with choosing the right one. It is not enough to just send a child to school and hope for the best. There has to be intention behind it.

There are college degrees in this country that are oversupplied and undervalued. Fields producing far more graduates than the job market can actually absorb. There are courses that carry a prestigious name, but offer little practical return in today’s economy.

Sending a child to school without thinking critically about what that education leads to is not investing in their future and is just about checking a box. Any child I raise deserves more than a diploma that does not open doors.

3. Your child will also be competing with technology

Speaking of technology, the competition in the job market is no longer just among humans. Artificial intelligence is making certain jobs irrelevant and the pace of that shift is not slowing down.

I wonder what the job market will look like by the time my child is old enough to enter it. Will there still be enough space for people to work and financially sustain themselves?

That is not a dramatic question, but a reasonable one that more people should be asking. It makes the conversation about education even more urgent because the degrees that matter tomorrow will look very different from the ones that mattered yesterday.

4. When the world is in chaos, we feel it too

Then, there is globalization and what it costs us on a daily basis. A conflict happening thousands of miles away does not stay there anymore.

The current Iran-US tensions are a great example. The resulting fuel shortage has caused gasoline prices here to spike by almost 300 percent. Because fuel prices rise, everything else follows like basic commodities, food, transportation, you name it.

These are essentials that every family with children needs every single day. We are already struggling with this now. What version of this chaos would our child grow up into?

Yes, our grandparents had it hard too

Now, I hear the counterargument forming. Our grandparents survived a world war. They raised several children through it. They managed and so will the next generation.

Every generation carries its own challenges and our grandparents’ generation was no exception. Yet, every generation also enjoys things the previous one never had and loses things the next one will never know.

Our grandparents lived through a war we never had to face, yet they also lived in a time where housing was cheaper, competition was local, and a single income could sustain a family. For us at present, we have technology, connectivity, and opportunities they never had access to, but we also have inflation, a global job market, artificial intelligence, and a mental health crisis that nobody in their time talked about, The trade-offs are existing on both sides.

Then, there is the matter of how many children they had. My father is one of eight siblings. My maternal grandfather was one of sixteen. I say that with respect for what my descendants built and survived, but having that many children was a norm of that time. It was not questioned as it was what families did.

However, what was normal then is not practical now. Carrying that same norm into the present without questioning it is where it starts to become a problem.

If you can’t afford to support not that many children, but just one child, not just financially but holistically, not just in survival but in giving each child a real and full life, then having them anyway is is selfish.

Every child deserves to be brought into a home that is ready for them and not just willing to manage.

A child is not a retirement plan

I wrote about this in my weekend wind down post last year. My father has a sibling who is now living alone after his wife, my aunt, passed away. They were childless.

I want to point out that childless and childfree are not the same thing. Childless means a person or couple made efforts to have a child but was not successful. Childfree means it was a choice to not have one. Their situation was the former. While their story is personal and not mine to fully tell, it does raise a question by other people: what happens when you grow old without children, whether by choice or by circumstance?

The honest answer is that it requires preparation. Caregiving support, community support, financial independence, and a plan that does not fully rely on another person to save you. You can read more about that reflection in the post linked below.

On the other hand, it has not always been an assurance that having kids mean that they’ll take care of you as you grow old.

I’ve known some children who had conflicts with their parents as an adults and never talked to them until their deathbed, while others won’t bother taking care of sick parents as the children are busy with their careers or some just don’t care. For some, not all children in the family will eventually take care of the parent and that there will be that one child who will be responsible of taking care of the parent.

With this, it’s important that parents and adults who want to have kids should prepare themselves for retirement by the time they start joining the workforce and not expect to have their kids support them financially in the future.

Some of us have helped our parents in their financial distress and health difficulties, but not to the point that the kid is having an extension of supporting another family member that they forget to think of themselves and set themselves up for success and independence in the future.

Someone else’s chapter is not a deadline for mine

Five years ago at a family gathering, I was 26 and I made a simple comment about a family friend who now has two kids. It was a lighthearted observation about the person and noting how cute her children were. Then, a cousin of mine looked at me and said, “Good for her that she has kids now. How about you?

I was not devastated, but my blood pressure went up because this cousin, who had the guts to redirect that comment at me, was someone who had children while still financially relying on others to help raise them. The self-awareness was simply not there. It stuck with me because it illustrated the problem that people are so focused on whether you have reached a certain milestone that they never stop to ask whether they themselves have handled it responsibly.

Having kids is not a race and timelines look different for everyone. Some people have children at 18, at 25, at 30, at 40.

Some have children early and spend years juggling work and childcare before finding their footing financially. Some wait longer, build stability first, and are able to give their child a life that was prepared for. None of these are wrong, but some require more surviving than the other.

Some conceive months after their wedding, some years after, and some through long and difficult roads that nobody else fully sees. Our life paths are different and not one of them is the standard that the rest of us should be measured against.

Yes, I hear the biological clock argument. However, with the advancements in reproductive science today, women have more options to conceive later in life if they choose to.

Then, there is the other argument that if you have kids later in life, you will be old by the time they turn 20. You might never get to meet your grandchildren. That is possibly true, but again, it is also a choice.

Every decision in life comes with a trade-off. Having children early comes with its own set of trade-offs. Having them late comes with others. Having them at all comes with trade-offs, so does not having them.

A child should never be born out of FOMO, out of pressure, or out of a desperate attempt to beat a clock. They deserve to be chosen with full acceptance of everything that choice carries with it.

At the end of the day, it is your life and whatever chapter you are on, it is yours to write.

The irony of the people asking

I salute the people who have built their families through hard work, sacrifice, and resilience. Raising children in this country is not easy.

I hate using the word resilience in Filipino context as it’s a word equated to our unique trait as a people. I disagree as resilience has become a badge of honor for what is a systemic failure. It has become a way to normalize sacrifice, to silence complaints, and to make people feel guilty for wanting better. It should be questioned and not celebrated.

Yet, the same people who ask me when I am having kids are often the same people who are ranting about how expensive tuition has become, how their salaries can’t keep up with the cost of living, and how they desire of retiring early but cannot because their financial obligations to their children will not let them. They are exhausted and stretched thin. I believe they are impliedly asking me why I have not signed up for the same thing.

Also, some of the people asking have not stopped to look at their own homes first. There are households where the children are not thriving, where the environment is chaotic, where the kids are not receiving the life, the attention, and the support they deserve. Yet, the question is directed at me easily and without hesitation. It is far simpler to ask someone else about having children than to examine whether the children you already have are truly okay.

Is the question coming from a place of care or is it coming from a place of wanting company in the struggle? There is a difference between someone asking out of love and someone asking because misery, even unintentionally, tends to want company.

I say that without judgment because I understand how hard it is. However, I also can’t pretend that watching people ask me that question while quietly drowning in the very responsibilities that come with it has shaped how I rethink about this decision.

If the life you are living is already telling you something, maybe it is worth listening to before asking someone else why they have not made the same choice.

Upbringing and the healing that I’m doing

I grew up in a complete and loving family where my parents were present and my 2 siblings were supportive. We’re not wealthy, but my parents made sure that our needs were met. What we lacked in financial abundance were made up for in a peaceful home. The home I grew up in was a good one and which I’m grateful.

However, childhood is rarely just one thing. Outside of my immediate family, I experienced bullying outside the home that left a scar. Those events shaped how I saw my body and myself. By the time I was twelve years old, I was battling an eating disorder resulting to body dysmorphia. That battle lasted fifteen years from twelve to twenty seven years old. It was a significant portion of my life spent in a complicated relationship with food and my body. It’s something that I did not resolve quickly as it takes time.

This is relevant to the conversation about having children in a way that does not get talked about enough.

Unhealed trauma does not stay contained to the person carrying it. It finds its way into how you parent, how you speak, how you react, what you model, and what you unconsciously pass on. Generational trauma is a pattern that repeats itself in families where wounds were never properly addressed because nobody had the tools, the awareness, or the permission to do so. Then, a child grows up wondering why they feel the way they feel, not realizing that some of what they are carrying was never theirs to begin with.

I’m happy at this time that we’re having the conversation about mental health that previous generations never did, but awareness alone is not healing. Because of this, healing yourself before bringing a child into the world is not selfish as what they always say. It is the most responsible thing a person can do.

No parent is perfect, but a child deserves a parent who has done the work. A parent who is honest about what they are carrying, who is actively trying to heal it, and who refuses to let it become someone else’s inheritance.

Because of that, I’m still a work in progress.

My life without kids at present

My husband and I have been married for two years. Looking back, the pressure started building immediately after the wedding. The questions came consistently and they had a way of making you feel like you’re now behind before you even got started.

Yet, with time came clarity. Two years in, I can look at the life my husband and I have built together and I feel good about it. We have had the time and space to grow individually and together which would have looked very different had we had children right away.

Someone once told me it made no sense to want to enjoy time with a husband before having kids. The person was arguing that we would be together for a lifetime anyway, so what was the rush to enjoy it now. I laughed, not just because of the comment itself, but because of who it came from. She got pregnant before marriage and who regularly complains about the rising cost of living. Again, I say this not to shame anyone, but I do find it difficult to seriously take a lifestyle commentary from people who have not stopped to examine their own.

My husband has been able to build his business in these two years. I have been building my career as a virtual assistant, upskilling, learning about AI developments and technological shifts that directly affect how I work and earn in the future.

These are not trivial pursuits as this is how we are building the financial foundation that will matter if and when we decide to have children. You can’t pour from an empty cup and you can’t provide a stable life for a child from an unstable one.

Because we work remotely, we have also been able to go on dates outside our home, go on hikes, take care of ourselves physically, and travel on our own terms.

We have talked about what it would look like to travel with a child someday and we are open to that. Yet, there is something to be said about this season of life and what it offers while it is still here.

The traditional idea of what a family should look like and when it should happen is not the valid blueprint anymore at present. People have their own values, their own circumstances, and their own timelines.

While I respect the faith here being in a Catholic country, I have also come to a place in my own spiritual journey where I believe that faith and personal responsibility are not in opposition. I was a religious person for most of my life. Today, I believe in a Creator, but I also believe we are given free will for a reason. The choices we make, the lives we build, the timing we decide on are ours to own. Waiting for divine provision without doing the work is not faith.

We are free to have our own ideals, our own values, and to live in our own pace. In a democratic country, that freedom is not something anyone should have to apologize for.

The pros and cons of having kids

I have shared a lot of my personal thoughts throughout this post, but for this part, I looked at what outside sources actually say about the decision to have or not have children.

WakeMed, a health system based in the United States, published an article drawing from the insights of a medical practitioner, psychologist, and financial advisor.

On the side of having children, the article points to genuine emotional rewards. The excitement of a new life, the deep satisfaction that comes with raising someone, and the joy that children bring into a home. Beyond emotion, parenthood can also give a sense of purpose, fulfill a long-term personal goal, and open a different kind of love that comes specifically through giving yourself to another person.

Yet, on the other side of that list, having children comes with a significant reduction in freedom across almost every area of life. Sleep becomes a luxury, privacy disappears, and career opportunities can narrow.

Then, there is the financial reality. From Reddit, people confirmed that kids are expensive. This just doesn’t happen at the early years of the child’s life, but also in ways you can’t anticipate. I have detailed this extensively in the earlier parts of this post, from tuition fees to healthcare to the compounding effect of rising costs in the Philippines. I say it again here because it is the one point that is unarguable. Nobody who has raised a child has ever said it was cheap.

As I read the list and the comments, it’s not that the cons outweigh the pros or the other way around. What strikes me is how rarely people sit down and actually go through both sides before making the decision. The excitement of a baby is always celebrated. The loss of sleep, freedom, and peace of mind tends to only come up later which is usually in the form of exhausted complaints.

I am not saying the cons should stop anyone. I am saying they deserve to be a part of the conversation from the very beginning.

So, will I have kids?

I am tired of thinking about it and I mean that in the most peaceful way.

As the song says, “Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be.” It’s about accepting the future rather than fearing it.

I have reached a point where I have thought about this enough, examined it from enough angles, and sat with it long enough to know that the answer does not need to be decided today, which I’m okay with that.

I am grateful to be living in a time where having children is a choice and not a mandate. Couples can look at their lives and decide what makes sense for them without it being treated as a moral failing. Having kids does not make one superior, nor not having one makes one inferior. For millennials and Gen Zs especially, the conversation around parenthood has shifted in ways that previous generations never had access to.

Yet, here in the Philippines, it is still a taboo topic for traditional and family-oriented individuals. Choosing to question the timeline or the decision itself is still met with raised eyebrows and unsolicited opinions.

This post is proof of that. The fact that I felt the need to write these many words explaining a personal life choice says everything about the kind of cultural pressure that still exists around it.

As for my husband and I, we are open to having children or not. What matters most right now is that we are on the same page. I do not know what the future holds and I have made peace with that uncertainty.

What I know is where I stand today and today, this is enough. Whatever direction life takes us in, we are facing it together. More than any timeline or outside expectation, that is the only thing that actually matters.

To anyone who gets it

If you have read this far, I believe you know completely what this post is about. Not because you are in the same situation, but because you have felt some version of this pressure before. The exhaustion of explaining a personal decision to people who had already made up their minds about what your answer should be.

You are not behind, afraid of commitment, selfish, or cold for thinking carefully before making one of the biggest decisions of your life.

I see you if you’re still healing and figuring out what kind of life they want before they invite another one into it.

We are all just doing our best with the season of life we are in. The least we can do is extend that same grace to each other.

Whatever you decide, decide it for yourself with intention and without apology.