Trying to change your partner’s mind about having children is never a good idea

By Nina Steele 

I came across an episode of the Steve Harvey show the other day. The show is now exclusively on Facebook and has been renamed ‘Steve on Watch’. In this particular clip, a woman was asking Steve’s advice on a situation she was finding herself in. She is 45 and has been married to her now husband for 9 years. The man has no children of his own, while the woman has a son from a previous relationship.

The woman was very clear when they met about no longer wanting children. At the time, her now husband said he was ok with that. Recently however, the man suddenly had a change of mind after seeing a ‘cute’ baby in church. He told his wife that he wanted them to have a child together.

The woman was not about to change her mind, since she was honest from the start. As for the husband, him suddenly wanting children was proof that he was still not at peace with being childless, even though he seemingly said he was when they first met.

Stories like these are a reminder of what not to do in a relationship. Relationship are complicated enough without adding more layers of complication to them. The issue of children is a particularly potent one and one that needs to be addressed from the start. It is a very big deal and should be treated as such, which is exactly what the woman did. Sadly, the husband does not seem to have understood that. To ask a 45-year-old woman to suddenly change her mind about having children, with all that it entails, because you suddenly had a change of heart, is wrong.

I have written a few articles about this issue. People entering relationships knowing exactly what they are getting themselves into, and then trying to change their partner’s mind down the line. It is quite unfair on the person who was very honest from the start. In the case of the woman in this article, she was enjoying a new chapter in her life, running her business. As far as she was concerned, the baby issue was firmly in the past. The last thing she expected was to have to deal with this issue again at this stage in her life.

Not many relationships survive the children issue. It is too much of a disrupting force. Some people just don’t have what it takes to live happily without children for the rest of their life. What they should not do, is try to drag others into the choice they have made for themselves.