I don't wish I'd had children earlier

There’s a refrain I sometimes hear from parents, which is “I wish I’d had children earlier”.

I recently had my first child, aged 37, and I can’t imagine wishing I’d had children earlier. This is not at all because I’m regretful or not enjoying being a dad. In fact, I love it, and not once have I felt even a flicker of regret. I’m grateful for this, because I suspect there’s a lot of good fortune in my being able to make that claim.

And, as a not-young—but certainly not old, either—dad with a sharper sense of my own mortality, I understand the desire to have more time with my son. It’s just that I can’t drop the knowledge of what an alternative life where I’d had children earlier would have looked like.

My life was different ten years ago. I hadn’t met Cécile, who was 100% the correct person to have a child with, and I wouldn’t have had this specific boy who I love deeply and can’t imagine swapping out for another. Children aren’t fungible.

If I’d had children ten years ago, I would have likely locked myself into a life that would then have evolved extremely differently and in ways I suspect I wouldn’t have liked. My life now is awesome, my choices and intuitions have been correct, and I do not regret for a moment how any of this has unfolded.

Of course, I say this now, when my son is five months old. Later in life, when I’m 55 and he’s 18, I will probably feel intense emotions around not getting more time with him. But there’s the rub: there is no alternative timeline where I could have had more time with him, because this is the timeline where I got him.

Put another way, wishing I’d had children earlier is just another way of saying I wish I’d had different children, and probably a different partner and different entire life situation to boot.

It’s entirely plausible that I would have felt the same way had I had those other children as a different person, by a different mother, in a different life. But, from my vantage point—right here, right now—this is the timeline where he got loving parents who have the confidence and capacity to be self-employed free agents, who can devote the time and attention they want to devote to him, and who have gained the skills and experience to be the kind of parents we don’t think we will regret being.

Maybe we’ll get ten fewer years together, but the years we do get are going to be so rich in a way that I doubt would have been possible in that alternative, earlier kids timeline.

I could wish I’d had children sooner, but I’d rather pour myself into enjoying the life I actually have.

And enjoy this life I do.