Bianca, 37
“TK quote”
Meet Bianca, a 37-year-old journalist, digital creator and world traveler based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Bianca: My Uber driver and I recently got on the topic of kids, and she asked, do you have kids? And I was like, well, no, I don't. You know, I'm on the fence. And it's not necessarily about if I want to be in a child's life. Honestly, stepparenting feels very organic to me and like something I would be good at doing.
I'm 36, so it’s highly likely that I'm going to end up with somebody who already has kids, right? And so, I'm super open to that because I'm a child of divorce as well. So, I feel like I come into these situations with some experience of having had stepparents myself and I have relatively good relationships with them.
And so with stepparenting, I'm like, I can do that, you know? But birthing a child and the idea of caring for a newborn? I’m not sure. Anyway, this woman was talking about it and she says, I love being a mom, but I always find it funny when people are like, I love being a parent or a mom, because actually I find it to be really hard and I'm tired all of the time. It's really challenging.
And I'm like, ooh, that's not selling it for me, because life is already that. So that conversation was very interesting because it almost felt like she kind of wanted to change my mind about being a parent. She wanted me to leave her car after a 20-minute drive and know that I’m going to want to be a parent.
And I can tell some people kind of have judgment about those of us who are either on the fence or don't want kids at all. But sometimes I wonder if it's conditioning? Are we just conditioned to think that this is the thing that we want. I started asking that question once I got a bit more settled in my career and started feeling happy about it. I was like, okay, this whole marriage and kid thing doesn't feel as urgent anymore. It’s not as high on my to do list anymore. I'm happy as I am. I'm happy alone. I'm happy with friends. I'm happy when I travel. I'm happy in my career and because I'm happy in so many other parts of my life, the idea of this doesn't feel as urgent as it did in my 20s when so much felt unsure.
Bianca: It was like, I graduated from college and it was like this obsession. I think part of that is being from the South and maybe part of it was a cultural thing? But it was like an obsession. I thought, okay, fine. I didn't get my husband when I was in college. Oops. So now what? You have all these conversations with your friends, and everybody is always asking “Who are you dating?” That’s the first thing that people are asking you about. And then once you get serious and it's like, okay, y'all are getting married and then you guys are going to have kids. And I think that's how I thought it was supposed to go.
When I turned 30, I was like, oh my God, I'm 30, I'm single. No kids. I have no prospects. Like, what am I doing with my life? And then, you know, my career kind of took a turn for the better. And I started climbing and I was like, dang, so this is what it's like to be fulfilled in a totally different way that has nothing to do with anyone else. It was very much my own personal fulfillment, right? And so, yeah, I think part of that is why I live on the fence about this because I'm happy here and I know that kids can bring joy, but I see my friends and I question if I want everything about myself to just be about my kids once I have them? Does that mean I have to throw away the things that I care about? Because when you're taking care of another human, that human comes first. That small child comes first. It’s just so much to think about. And I think that women don't often get the opportunity to kind of step back from what people are telling us we're supposed to be doing and think carefully about what we actually want for ourselves.
Oh, and the weird questions people ask us all the time, like, where's your boyfriend? I don't know where he is. Or I don't have one and I'm fine with that. Or like people insisting that I don't really want to be single. “You really want to be married. You're just saying you don't want to have kids. You're just saying that because you haven't found the right person.” I'm like, no, I'm legitimately saying this because this is currently how I feel. And I'm open to that changing, but right now this is my truth.
Jenny: Yes to all of this. I told you this when we met, but I got out of a very long-term relationship not too long ago, and for the first time in my adult life, I'm single, and I've really been enjoying this time. But the questions from others don't stop. Like, anytime I meet anyone new or someone I haven’t seen in a while, they ask, are you dating? Are you on the apps? What's going on? I'm like, nothing.
Bianca: And that's okay. I am dating someone now and it's long distance and he has a child. Again, the prospect of becoming a stepparent feels like a natural thing that I would do. I don't know if that makes any sense at all. But when I think about it, it doesn't scare me. Anyway, dating someone with children still comes with its own challenges and I don't know many people who are in stepparenting situations right now, so it's hard to know who I can talk to about it. I spend like a lot of time talking to my therapist about this. I don't want to meet anyone's child until we know that we're going to be doing this thing for good. Because that's how my parents were after they divorced and starting dating. My parents weren’t dating multiple people. It was like, these are the people we’re seeing now and that's it. I think if you're dealing with divorce or separation or anything like that, you want to keep things as consistent and normal as possible because it's already hard enough on not just the child, but all the people involved.
Bianca: He parents the way my dad parented me, which is a big deal to me. He’s very present and he’s at everything. It's the reason that I like him because I'm like, okay, not only are you a good person, but you’re also a good parent and a good father and you're present with this child, and I can see that this little person is your priority.
People around me are like, oh, you know, well, he can't make you his top priority because he has children. I'm like, right, and I should not be first. I'm comfortable with that. I think part of that too, comes from, like I said, being like a kid of divorce myself and my parents always prioritized us. It was never it never felt like, oh, this new person came into my parent’s life and now I don't matter anymore. You know what I mean? It was actually the exact opposite.
Jenny: It sounds like you feel very at peace with the idea of coming into a stepparent role, but you feel on the fence about giving birth to a child. Where does that come from? What is it that you're you might be afraid of?
Bianca: There's a few things. I'm 36. I have fibroids. I just had my second fibroid surgery. I still have to get more right in the future, just based on this last surgery and how it went. They were only able to get 70% of the fibroid out, so the rest of it is still in there hanging out. Also, I have more of them. Usually when you have a fibroid, it's not just hat one. Some women can have hundreds of them.
Bianca: And the doctors don't always know until they cut you open and discover, oh, this person has 50 fibroids. This person has 60 fibroids. So let’s say I meet somebody I care about. We fall in love and we're planning on being together forever. I'm like, Oh my God. So now I have to get pregnant. I'm 36. I know I have fibroids, so this pregnancy might be really bad. I'm a black woman. We know that the mortality rate for black women when it comes to childbirth is stupid high. And yeah, I don't want to die and I don't want to be miserable while pregnant. I don't want that for myself. Additionally, I don't want to put a child at risk. It’s not just a risk for me. It's a risk for the baby. So, I wonder, is it worth it to go through all of that? To put myself at risk. To put my potential baby at risk. Is it really worth it to go through all that? And honestly, the answer for me is probably like 80% no, it's not worth it.
Jenny: Right. But what's the remaining 20% that’s still considering it?
Bianca: The 20% is if I'm with a partner who really wants kids, I’d consider it. Because I don't date people who I wouldn't want to have kids with. That's a hard no. If I meet you and you don't give me good dad vibes, we’re not pursuing this.
So yeah, that's where the 20% comes in, because if my partner wants to pursue this, I'm not opposed to potentially trying.
There’s a lot to think about when entering a new relationship at this age, right? Because there’s this feeling of having to rush if you want to have biological children. Let's rush before you turn 40 or whatever. So now we're not getting the opportunity to really just enjoy being together, you know what I mean? Then, if you add the stressors of having a really difficult pregnancy. Like, that's not easy on the woman, and it's certainly not going to be easy on the partner watching you go through it. And then let's just say there is, a bonus child in the mix. That's stressful. Everybody's stressed out. I don't know. Something about that whole situation just doesn't… I don't really feel like I need it.
Bianca: Additionally, I think there are other ways to care for kids. For example, a lot of my friends have had kids in the last two years, so I'm an aunt to four little babies. I get to spend time with them. I get to love on them.
People are like, don't you want something to love? There are plenty of places to share and give my love that don't have anything to do with birthing a baby.
And if my partner and I were to get to the point where we really wanted a child, I'm open to adoption as well. So it's like I'm not like anti-child, anti-motherhood. It’s more that I'm thinking about the pros and cons of it all. I’m thinking about the whole of it.
I'm not just looking at this as a kind of fairy tale thing because actually raising a child is different from just having a child. Many people can have a child. But raising them and raising them well? Oh, that's a totally different thing. And if I parent, I want to be physically, mentally, emotionally present for my kids because that is what I had growing up. You really have to think this through.
Jenny: Yeah. I do wish more people thoughts through all of these things as opposed to just treating it as the next like step to check off.
Bianca: People think of having children as another thing on the to do list and it's not. This is a very big deal. Sometimes people will say to me, oh, you just have to raise them for 18 years. And I'm like, no, my parents are still raising me. They're still all in my business. They're still trying to tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing, and giving me advice. And I think again, this is the kind of parent that I'm going to be and want to be. So I want to make sure that I actually want to do it, you know what I mean? And that I'm ready financially and emotionally.
Have I done the things in my life, and in my career that I actually want to do? And I think the answer to those things for me is yes. And I'm very lucky, a lot of people can't say that. But I think part of that is because I wasn't chasing—and I don't want anybody to feel like I'm shading anyone by saying this—but my focus wasn't marriage, kids, house. My focus was going after what lights my fire. And I did that from my 20s up until now. And so now I don't really I don't have any regrets or thoughts of “oh, I wish I could have done that”
Bianca: I tried so many things and I failed at so many things. Try and fail, try and fail. I think a lot of times people don't get to do that. And so, I think that's part of the reason why I feel so grounded in whatever decisions that I'm able to make because I'm like, well, I've done all this and obviously there's more to do. There's always something more to do.
I look at my work as less of a thing to check off, less of an accomplishment, less of a thing to show people what I'm doing and more like, does this make me happy? You know, maybe if I'm not happy right now with this, will this eventually turn to something that makes me happy? I think that living this way is going to allow me, if I do decide to become a bio mom, to show up in my best form because I’ve done all the work already. Granted it's going to be hard still and there's going to be a lot to learn, but I think because I have this good foundation, I feel better about it.
Jenny: You've made a few references now about how present your parents were growing up and are still now. I'd love to hear more about the way you were parented and what are some things that you’d like to take from that experience if you decide to parent someday.
Bianca: My parents are both first gen college grads of their family, so it was always about education, education, education, which was very annoying. My mom is an educator. She retired as a vice principal.
And I think also it was always about being grounded in lmy blackness and who I was, which was very vital growing up. And then additionally, it's just being there. I’d come home from school and they’d say, let's do homework together. My dad was the PTA president and the band booster president. To this day, people still ask about my parents because that's how much they saw them around. That’s how involved they were. And when I was younger, it was annoying. I was like please leave me alone. Other people's parents aren’t picking them up from school every day and going to the mall with them and making sure you’re OK.
Bianca: As a teen, I’d go to the mall and my mom would be right there. Like, girl, can you let us be? Or my dad would always pick us up from practices every day and show up to every meeting. My parents always went to every teacher parent conference night. Never missed one. And when I would get in trouble, it didn't help that my mom worked in the same school system.
One time, I begged her for these boots. They were black with a red lining. They were just so good. Anyway, I had begged her for them, and when I finally got them, she told me “do not wear these boots to school, Bianca.”
I wore them to school and took them off at gym class. Guess what? They got stolen. So I had no shoes and had to go to the principal's office. And I'm like, please don't call my mom. She's going to be so mad because she told me not to wear the shoes to school and I did.
Bianca: The principal thought it was funny because it wasn’t that I was afraid of getting in trouble. But I felt bad that I did something she told me not to do it.
My parents were very disciplined with me. Did you do your homework? OK, let me see the homework. If I had a school fair, they were going to help me stay up and do the stuff for the school fair. When these people became parents, they showed up for the job. They knew that's what they were going to do.
Bianca: Even though they're divorced, they do stuff together sometimes. I had a surgery recently, and I was like, dad, you don't have to come to this one. Mommy's going to come get me and we'll do this. And he was like, no, I’ll be there.
When I woke up, I asked the nurse, how are my parents doing? They were sitting there on either side of me, but they weren't sitting near each other. That was so funny to me. Let me get this picture to show you.
Jenny: Oh, they're kissing you. They're kissing you on either side. Oh, that’ so cute.
Bianca: Yeah. So, these are the kind of parents I have.
Jenny: It sounds like they are cordial. They're respectful to each other.
Bianca: Yeah, they are. And I mean, they still show up for me. My dad comes weekly to come walk with me. He’s always like “I have mail to bring you.” I'm like, dad, no, you don't and if he does it's junk mail. He's just coming down here to hang out with me. I already know that.
Jenny: That's so sweet. I guess on the flip side of that, is there anything they modeled that you want to be mindful of if you were to parent?
Bianca: Hmm, I think it’s being more emotionally…savvy? How else can I put that? My parents did so much for me, you know, and I never wanted for anything.
But I think, like a lot of fellow millennials are discussing now, our parents didn’t have the emotional capacity to talk about things beneath the surface.
Sometimes it felt like, hey, are you here? I'm acting out. Are you noticing why I'm acting out or that I'm having a really hard day? Can I come home and verbalize why I had a really hard day at school, and this is why? Yeah.
I think that if I had done that, then I'm sure they would have figured out a way to show up for me. But I never felt like I could or should do that. You go through a lot of emotional stuff as a teenager. And if I parent, or I’m an aunt, or a potential stepparent, or someone who adopts a child, I want them to be able to come to me and express how they feel about something. And express it wholly. If they say, I had a bad day at school. I want to say, okay, well, tell me what happened at school today and why did that make you feel bad.
Bianca: You know what I mean. I think that is, unfortunately, something I was missing—just the ability to sit down and talk to my parents from a solely emotional standpoint.
I've been in therapy since 2020, and I feel like I'm growing this muscle, this ability to not only see my feelings, but also see other people’s feelings more clearly. I was emotionally guarded for years. Someone could hurt my feelings and instead of telling them you hurt my feelings, I would just be angry at them. Or I’d stop talking to them. Like this relationship is over. That was me shutting down because somebody has hurt me. I know a lot of that is probably because of how I've seen other people navigate their emotions.
My hope is that I would be kind of the parent that, you know, because obviously you have to discipline and I don't have kids, so I'm like, I don't even know what that looks like. How do you discipline and empathize? I'm unsure of what that actually looks like.
Bianca: If your partner is maybe more of the disciplinary person and then maybe I'm more of the like sounding board. My parents had that dynamic. It was a balance. My dad actually was more of the like, oh, dad, I feel blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And my mom was also more like “do your schoolwork, get good grades, why did why do you bring this home to me?” And I know that's all out of love and wanting me to be the best I could be. I think a lot of it, too, is that we show up the way that we know.
And now that I'm older, some of that has gone away. And when she sees I'm upset about something, she will acknowledge it. I think so much of me not being upset about stuff is just me like holding it all in, if that makes any sense.
Jenny: That does make sense.
Bianca: So yeah, I want to be able to show up for any children that are in my life. With my friends’ kids, if something pops off and they don't feel like they can go talk to their parents about it, like they know they can come talk to me about it. Now, I'm not going to hold a crazy secret. Like if it's something nuts, I'm gonna have to tell your parents about this, but at least I can be the middle person to help soften the blow. Yeah. Let me kind of be the buffer in-between because sometimes that really helps.
Jenny: I think we dove into the conversation right away, so, I just want to backtrack a little bit and ask you to introduce yourself, your name, your age and where you are in life right now.
Bianca: OK, let’s see. My name is Bianca Lambert. I'm 36. And I'm in a place in my life of just accepting things as they happen now. I'm not just sitting on the couch thinking things are just going to come to me. I'm still working hard. I still have goals. But unlike my 20s, I'm not trying to travel the world, because traveling the world is very tiring.
I think I'm somewhere in between, like, I still want to see things, I’m still learning new things, I still want to travel, but I also feel this this pull to be a little bit more chill. It’s okay not to have to jump up and go do every single thing that comes your way. Sometimes I just want to be here at home. I'm also interested in finding my forever partner. Not in the sense of a fairy tale narrative.
Bianca: Not the “you will find the person when you least expect it and you'll bump into them on the street in a meet cute.” Or thoughts of if it’s right, it's not going to be hard like. I no longer believe any of that.
My therapist has helped me kind of dispel all of this Cinderella fairy tale BS, which is good because I think it really warps us on how we show up in our relationships. And in our ability to accept people as they are and allow people to be human. Like, I'm a human. You're a human. I think that's kind of where I'm at just from like a relational standpoint. I'm like, okay, why do we put all this pressure on people to be everything for us?
Like, that's insane. It leaves no space, no room for gray, for mistakes, for reconciliation or forgiveness, like none of it. And I'm not talking about, like, cheating or abusive people or anything like that. I'm just talking about people just being human.
And I feel like social media has made it that much worse, too, because everywhere you look, there's a meme, there's a thing about what you should look out for. Red flags. Green flags. Yeah, orange flags. Narcissists. Attachment theory. It is so exhausting.
Bianca: Anyway, I feel I feel the best emotionally that I've ever felt. And I think that is allowing me to make space for more things. I'm in a space where I am open and accepting.
Jenny: So I wonder too, like, piggybacking off of that, what your definition of success—or what does a good life look like now at this current stage of your life?
Bianca: That just gave me a chill. Oh, my goodness. It's changed so much. I remember in my 20s, it was like, okay, graduate from college. But you know what's crazy? It was also focusing on a man. My career and work were still important, but back then, there were a lot of times the focus went more on the man. What the hell?
Looking back at that, I'm like, Bianca, dude, get it together. I think success for me back then would have been having a successful man and some kind of big old house that people could come to and look at. And then it would be, okay, have kids. And then it's like, oh, designer clothes or like, stuff.
Now, I could care less about stuff. Do I buy myself nice things? Absolutely. Like even when I bought my condo. Everybody was like, you’re spending too much money for this tiny space because it's only 900 square feet. People were like, you need to get a bigger house, blah, blah, blah. But I don't want a bigger house.
Bianca: I'm just one person. Me getting the bigger house wouldn't even be for me.
Who's going to clean it? Who's going to furnish it? Furniture is expensive. Who's going to do these things? I probably could have gotten a humongous house, but who would that be for?
Bianca: Success to me is being able to order your favorite meal and not have to worry about, okay, how much is in my bank account and can I afford it? Success to me is being able to physically show up for people when they need you. Because, you know, before I couldn't just fly somewhere. If my friend was like, can you come hang out with me in the baby? I couldn't afford to do that before, but now I can afford to physically show up for people right when they need me.
I think also success is actually through the lens of my parents. It has been the oddest, and funniest thing to watch them watch me live my life the way I want to live it. Though they do have some comments. For example, my dad was a big part of my home buying experience. My dad is retired, so he could come with me to see stuff. And every time we saw the price, he just couldn't believe it. And granted, I didn't want to spend this much either. Heck, but stuff costs what it costs now, which is insane.
And so, we were sitting at the closing table, and the lawyer was like, here's a copy for him and a copy for you. I was like, I don't want my dad to see. Because I knew my dad is like cheap. So I already knew that he was going to have so much to say. Not in a bad way. Not what are you doing? But more like really? He could not believe that I could afford to buy this house by myself. Oh, he was so proud of that. And my uncle Vince tells me all the time, you know, your dad doesn’t tell people you travel to Europe because he doesn’t want to seem bougie, but he tells my uncle how proud he is that I just like go to Europe and can still pay my mortgage.
Jenny: Oh, that makes me emotional.
Bianca: I know. He just looked at me when I bought my place like he couldn't believe it. And then even with my mom, most recently, she volunteered me to do something for one of her friends. She wanted me to get up and explain what I did for a living. And I was really annoyed by it because I was like, why is she volunteering me to do this?
She's like, you have to get up and talk. I was like, why? And she said, because I'm so proud of your writing and what you do.
Bianca: So even seeing my success through the lens of all their sacrifice, everything that they did for me growing up…that’s been special.
And then also, my other thing about what it means to be a success is actually being able to help other people. You know, I feel like in this industry, sometimes it's so hard to get in. Sometimes it's so hard to get an opportunity. And I think now that doors have opened for me, I think the other piece of success is being able to open the door for somebody else. You know what I mean? Like, I think that is also the other piece of it and obviously like having money to pay a mortgage. I never thought I'd be able to buy a home, especially as a freelancer.
Sometimes I look around and I think to myself, wow, I can't even believe I did this. I think success can be so many things, but it doesn't mean any of the things that it used to mean to me. It’s just changed. And I know that was a long-winded answer, but it's just amazing to me how it evolves.
And it will continue to evolve probably, right?
Jenny: Yeah. Well, to circle it back to motherhood, it sounds like when you were growing up, you didn't question whether or not you would become a bio mom. Like, it sounded like it was part of the thing you would eventually do.
Bianca: Yeah. And I thought I would have kids already.
Jenny: That's so interesting to me because for me, I never knew, even as a kid, even as a teenager, I was like, I don't know. It could happen. It could not. I never had that conviction, and so I always just put it off, you know? And then I blinked and I turned 30 and now I'm 35.
Bianca: I thought I was going to have kids at by 28. Seriously, I can't even imagine having had kids at 28. Like married and kids at 28. There was something about how by my late 20s, I'll be married. I don't know where that number came from.
Where do we get these numbers? Is it solely based on our biological clocks? Like damn, do we get an opportunity to just live our life before all of that? And I know that some men are going to be like, oh, she's man bashing. But seriously, men get to do what they want, even after they become a parent—seriously. Unless they are actively deciding that I'm going to show up, I'm gonna be an active parent. They kind of get to do whatever.
Jenny: Yeah. Their life isn't as interrupted, it seems when I'm observing.
Bianca: And statistics prove it. There's like a documentary on Hulu and they were talking about the mental load. And they were saying how men get really irritated with their wives because they don't want to have sex and things like that, but they're not thinking about the mental load women are constantly carrying around—or like even on TikTok, I see so many people in the comments being like, I am a single mother, but I'm married.
And the guy I'm dating, he's so the opposite. Like, he's literally like, he is like dad. When I'm dating people, I'm paying attention to that. How are you going to show up? And sometimes you can't really know, right? Until there's a child in the picture.
I think, like I said, a lot of it is socialization. A lot of it is me talking to other women who are like, so who are you dating? When are you getting married? And then when I say, you know, actually I'm good. I'm good with being single. They're like, no, you're not. Or you'll change your mind.
Bianca: No, actually, I'm great. And then once you’re married, then it's like, oh, well, where are your kids? And then, you get into the conversation about that and why. And they're trying to convince you that you should have them. I mean, I hear all of what you're saying. But I also hear your children in the background screaming.
And then there’s the monetary piece of it, too. I'm like, well, I get to have all my money to do whatever I want to do with it. Like that's awesome and raising a child in this day and age seems very expensive.
Bianca: So yeah, I think about the money. I'm thinking about mental health. I'm thinking about my body, what that means if I actually had to physically have a child.
You know, they say it takes a village to raise a child and it truly does. I feel like people are, like, so ready for you to have a baby. But then it comes and it's like, okay, who's going to help me? Having help and daycare, all that stuff costs so much money. And I want to work still. Like, I enjoy my writing and my work. So what does that look like? Also, as a freelancer, it’s kind of scary because I don't have any leave. So if I haven't saved up for my leave, then that’s an extra layer.
I pay my insurance out of pocket. It's already so expensive. I think my premium is like 440 a month or something. How much is the child birth going to cost?
There's a lot to consider. I think it's more than just like, oh, it's a cute baby and I want something to love. There’s just so much more to it. But then people kind of shame you for thinking about the monetary parts of this decision. I’m on child Free TikTok and parenting TikTok. I’m on both, and they argue with each other constantly in the comments.
Bianca: I see both conversations happening, which I really enjoy getting both sides of the spectrum, like how people are feeling about all of it. Because before, we didn't get a chance to talk about it as much. For somebody to openly share that they don't want kids. I mean people already have problems with it currently, so imagine what people were saying like 20, 30 years ago?
I'm happy that the conversation is being had. I think it gives a voice to people on both sides of the spectrum and to women who are somewhere in-between because that is valuable. Women’s lives are impacted more. If we're talking just heteronormative relationships. They’re more impacted because we have to physically have the baby then the baby needs to be breastfed. All of the physical aspects also scares me, like all the physical changes. And then for a lot of black women that I know, they have ended up with like pre-eclampsia. You think about Serena Williams, like she had to continue to verbalize to her doctors, hey, something feels wrong. We’re talking about Serena Williams here. Even she had to advocate for herself to be heard.
Bianca: I don't know. Like I told you, I'm open to all things, it's not like a hard no for me, but it's also not a hard yes, because I can show up and love people and children and be a mentor or an adult of substance to kids without having to physically birth a child. There are so many other ways to show up, and I'm open to doing that.
*This interview took place March 2023 and has been condensed and edited for clarity.
