Im almost 30 now, the age I decided, years ago, I would start having kids. Once I set that date in my mind, it immediately seemed real to me. I began to pick apartments based on child-friendliness (In case we still live here in a couple years) and mentioned it to my friends (Wait, are you trying? theyd ask, confused).

Picking a deadline was a way of anticipating joy and of boxing myself in. I knew Id be terrified to get pregnant, after years of assiduously guarding against it. But I also knew I wanted it, the milky spit-up on my T-shirts and the tiny fingers plucking at my hair.

It never felt exactly like a choice. But the evidence that it is surrounds me: All my friends who arent having kids, or at least not anytime soon. All the people who moved to New York City, like me, to fling themselves wholly into their careers. I married someone a little older, someone whose friends are all married with small children, someone who wanted what his friends had. That didnt feel like a choice at the time; it felt like falling in love, serendipitously. But it was a choice, too, to love someone who wouldnt expect me to make a case for our childrens existence.

I also never argued that case to myself. I didnt want to think too hard about the alternative, the physical trauma and perma-exhaustion Id be avoiding if I stayed childless. It seemed like a decision best made instinctively, in the dark.

Maybe thats why, when I spent a month reading a raft of new books about choosing motherhood books that laid bare everything I might suffer and everything I might give up I experienced it as a psychic assault. Its never been easier , medically speaking, for a woman to choose not to have kids. Once motherhood was something close to a biological inevitability for a woman who had sex with men; now its an option. And its an option thats scary to choose, once you know how much pain and expectation youre staring down.