Researchers were surprised to find that not all women are proactive about pregnancy, whether that means pursuing it or preventing it. Julia McQuillan, professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln studied about 4,000 women and asked them about their plans to have children. 71% of the women were preventing pregnancy, 6% were trying to conceive, and the rest were doing neither.
I am not surprised by this finding, mainly because I am one of those 1 in 4 women who are neither actively trying or preventing. We have one child and we know we want more. The timetable for having more kids is flexible for us. I decided the last time around that actively trying to get pregnant through means of tracking ovulation and planning the days we would try was much too stressful for me, not to mention a total mood killer. The other downside to actively trying to get pregnant is the fact that you are counting the cycles that you do not conceive. The larger that number gets, the more stressed out you become and the more you begin to worry about the I-word: infertility.
Not having a plan for babies does make things awkward, at least for a moment, when people ask me when we’re planning on having more kids. My usual response is, “we’d like more kids, whenever they will come.” People always want a number: a month or a time period. Does it really matter? Why is there so much pressure to get pregnant when your kid nears the age that would put him 2 years in front of his next sibling? The pressure really mounts when the women you were pregnant with the first time are expecting their second.
I am enjoying my one-on-one time with my son. I know I would like him to have brothers and sisters, but I’m not quite ready to give up my special time with him, though not to the point of preventing pregnancy. I don’t have a clear vision for my family in terms of spacing, so it’s easier for me not to plan it at all and simply let nature take its course. In the meantime, I live a lifestyle that is compatible with a healthy pregnancy, just in case.
What about you? Are part of that 23 percent? What are your reasons for not-trying-not-preventing?