Front Burner - The mother of all questions: do you want kids?

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Get lost in someone else’s life. From a mysterious childhood spent on the run, to a courageous escape from domestic violence, each season of Personally invites you to explore the human experience in all its complexity, one story — or season — at a time.In the latest season of Personally: Creation Myth, Helena does not want kids. Her husband believes she’ll change her mind—she has so much love to give, she would be a perfect mother. That will never happen, she tells him. Again. And again. Until one day, he leaves.In the silence, doubt starts rushing in. So she asks her close friends, her mother, her sister, even a perfect stranger—did she make the right decision? What is the purpose of life? Center your pleasure, says one friend. Go for adventure, says another, and isn’t parenthood the biggest adventure of all? Be true to yourself, says a father who regrets his decision. But the voice she needs to hear is her own. More episodes of Creation Myth are available wherever you get your podcasts and here: https://link.mgln.ai/CMxFB

This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always overdelivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairro.com.

This is a CBC podcast. Hey everybody, Jamie here. Today, five Canadian provinces are marking Family Day. And what family looks like in Canada has changed a lot since this holiday was first introduced back in 1990. One big change is that there are just fewer babies being born. Today, the national fertility rate is in a zone that demographers call the lowest low fertility countries, alongside places like South Korea, Spain, Italy, Japan. And behind numbers like these are deeply personal stories and one of the biggest decisions many of us will ever face, whether or not to have kids.

So today we are sharing a very special episode from the new season of CBC's memoir podcast personally. The season is called Creation Myth. Here's the first episode. I hope you all like it. We met in Paris, not for the romance. I'd suggest to Paris because it was close. I'm from Belgium, and I was only going because I was trying to forget my ex. This ex had been smart and beautiful and abusive. All I wanted now was a man who'd make me feel good for a few hours and then kindly disappear from my life forever. So I'd gone online and found David.

He was American. traveling through Europe, but about to go back home. Perfect. When I arrived at Gardinard, it was noon, and it looked like it would be raining all day. I got out my umbrella and walked half an hour to the modern art museum, the Centre Pompidou. He was already there.

His shoulders were impossibly broad, and he was leaning against the railing in this way only Americans can. You have to be from the heart of empire to be so at ease. We headed to the closest cafe we could find and sat under a plastic tarp. It made me smile, seeing this man in a rainy place. Every one of his profile pictures had been sunny,

whether he was on a glistening ski slope or on a beach in his wet seat, smiling next to his surfboard. I'd have expected him to be rain repellent. I was worried I wouldn't be his type. I looked nothing like the first. female lead with the flowy hair I imagined next to him. My hair was short, dark, and I was wearing the Northern European uniform, all black. But I shouldn't have worried. All it took to have him

look at me with shimmering eyes was ordering a tea in French. I liked him. He was attentive, comfortable to be around, and very funny. But it was cold under the tarp. And when my hot tea was gone, David suggested we go to his Airbnb. We sat down on the couch, close enough that our bodies were touching. I could feel the buzz between us. But nothing was happening. I couldn't take it anymore. So I turned to him and said, Are you going to kiss me or what? And he did. The next thing that happened was that the column broke. David jumped up, started apologizing, asked if I was okay. I was fine. But he took my hand, looked me in the eyes, and said, whatever you decide, I support you. I don't sleep with anyone who I couldn't imagine having a child with.

We'd met only a few hours before. Was he some sort of Christian and I hadn't noticed? A Republican? Then again, I didn't know many Americans. Maybe they were all like that? I was ready to make a joke. But David looked at me like this was an actual conversation we were having. So I put my hand on his and said, don't worry, I wouldn't go through with it anyway. I don't want kids.

I'm Helena DeHiroldt, and from CBC's personally, this is creation myth. I got obsessed with the kid question in my early 20s. I was in no way ready to have a kid, but did I want one? Did I not want one? It felt like the biggest decision I would ever make. My thinking was that I would probably not have kids. It wasn't something I'd ever dreamed of for myself. Then again, maybe I was just scared.

Because I was not the most emotionally stable even small things could knock me off balance. A stack of dishes, a roommate left in the sink, a party next door that went on all night, two days of pizza in a row. My friends knew that about me. I'll just put this away so I don't bump it. Yeah.

And no one knew it better than Sigrid. She's my oldest friend. For my sanity, I need things to be a certain way. Yeah. You know, like the house has to be perfect. organized and there has to be this kind of food on the table. And if I haven't slept well, I just don't function. So I have to, and I do go to yoga every day, you know, just for my mental health and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Cigrid was different, but I'd always admired about her,

was that she had a sense of proportion. She was passionate about the things that mattered, her friendships, her first big newspaper article, she's a journalist, but about things that didn't really matter, she didn't get worked up. So what if she saw midway through an interview that she was wearing a shirt with a coffee stain? The same was true now that cigarette had kids. She was merely amused when she came downstairs and found her six-year-old making himself breakfast, wielding a sharp knife. And when her 12-year-old said she wanted to skip school to go and protest the war in Gaza, she said, it's against the rules, so it'll be your problem if you get punished. But if it's important to you, go. But if there was one thing that I envied about her, it was that

she went easy on herself too. Yeah, you know that. And I love that. That you'll just be like, this is going to be an off day because I slept like two hours, you know, whatever, I'll wrestle through. Tomorrow's another day, you know, and I've just always been afraid that I couldn't do that, You know, that I would just fall apart. If you had a kid. Yeah. Yeah. I've had that fear too.

Like, what if I would feel that is too much or that is not worth it? But I think you can kind of just trust biology there. Wait one second. Yeah. They're knocking on my door. Yes? Do you want to eat? No, thank you.

But I'm recording. Thank you very much. What was that? It's the Ukrainian refugees living here. Oh, I forgot that they were living with you. And he's very, very sweet. And so now, you know, he's knocking and saying, do you want to eat? I'm cooking.

Wow. How had I forgotten about the two Ukrainian refugees living with cigarette and her kids? If I had taken in two total strangers, strangers who had fled a literal war zone, I would not let you forget my heroics. Though, who was I kidding? I wasn't taking anyone in. I loved talking to strangers.

A conversation at the post office could make my day, but I didn't want them to move in. What if they left all the lights on, or blasts with bad music, or had friends over all the time? I got stressed when someone got the inside of, of my dishwashing gloves wet. I didn't like this about myself, but that's who I was. I loved spending time with people as long as I could walk away. David and I hadn't talked in three years, but then one spring, I went to visit a friend in the U.S. and thought, why not? Let's see if he

wants to meet up. He did. Again, I wanted nothing complicated. a few days of sunshine and desire, then go home. I didn't know it then, but David had bigger plans. He'd had a dream about me. In the dream, the two of us were wrapped in an embrace. The light was filtered as if through white curtains. And I was pregnant. With that image in mind, he drove to the airport.

Once I got in the car, he put a bird. bag with snacks and fresh orange juice at my feet and took me on a carefully planned week-long road trip through his home state, California. It was my first road trip. I didn't even have a driver's license. Growing up in a European city, I just took public transport. But here was a man with a car, and he knew how to drive it through nature like I had never seen. Redwoods with a car, and he knew. hundreds of year old trees and ocean water that wasn't gray like the North Sea, but a clear blue-green. I was enchanted. Whenever something caught his eye, David would park the car so we could look together. I wasn't used to this mode of traveling. I was used to diving into the history of a place, the political system, read the novels that were written there.

but David just looked. He had an uncanny ability to see whales in the distance. Unfortunately, however much he pointed, all I could see was water and more water. It didn't matter. He got me to notice other things, the waves, the eucalyptus trees, the warmth of his body as he held mine.

As we drove, we also went through a list of questions, I'd found on the New York Times, designed by a scientist who had succeeded in making people fall in love in his lab. What would you save in a fire? What are you most ashamed of? How do you think you'll die? What is your life story in four minutes? I wasn't too sure what my life story was. My parents were still together.

My sister and I were close. We all like to read and play music. The most dramatic thing about me was probably the mental health stuff. A few times it had gotten pretty. pretty bad. And I was always scared I'd do something that would set it off. So I'd gotten used to living with one hand on the railing. David was different. He surfed, climbed volcanoes, spent months driving through the mountains of Bolivia and Argentina to study the movement of tectonic plates. He'd manned a weather station in Antarctica. He lived in Brazil to learn Capoeira, in China to learn Mandarin. What would my life look like if I let myself take risk?

I imagined having a go-bag by the door with a few changes of clothes, dry shampoo, a microphone, and my passport, so I could hop on a plane whenever something happened. David would do his field work. Then we'd both come home to our cozy apartment in a big city, regale each other without stories, and recharge. I never asked David how he imagined our life together. On the last day of our trip, we did the only thing that made sense to us. We went to San Francisco City Hall and got married.

David knew I didn't want kids. I told him a few times, including the day we met, and I told him again while we were in line at City Hall, do not marry me if you want kids. But he responded, I'd rather be with you than have kids. He didn't mention, his dream with a filtered light where I was pregnant.

In my mind, the issue was settled. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always overdelivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights.

And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk business. The first time, Sugri had met David. She had to laugh. He looks like a superhero. Like that jaw, it's ridiculous. It is. He looked like he would be named Buck or something.

And you're like, I'm a leave from a martyr, you know. So what did you think of us, you know, being together? I liked him. You did? Yeah. Yeah. It's a very kind, warm person. Yeah.

And when we got married, did you think that I would have kids, that I would like change my mind? Hmm. Yeah, probably, yeah. Also because, well, most of my friends. who said that they didn't want kids, maybe they weren't with the right person. And then five years later, they were with the right person, and then they had kids. And you were good together, you know. So, yeah, I could imagine that you would be swept along with that, yeah.

I can't remember when exactly. But David told me about that dream he'd had, the one where I was pregnant. I could just see it, he'd said. You'd be such a good mother. I didn't know what to say. I was halfway through packing up my life in Brussels so I could move to America. I had so much on my mind.

I'd quit my perfect job at the Belgian Public Radio, sublit my apartment, and I was spending my days saying goodbye to my beloved Brussels, my family, my friends. I was excited for my new life, this new me. Maybe I would learn to drive and go on my own road trip. Maybe I would have the guts to become a real journalist. Maybe I would even make a critically acclaimed podcast and win a prize. But what if no one cared about some Belgian ladies podcast? What if my black clothes were not seen as sophisticated but sad? What if I sounded like a book when I spoke, because that's where I'd got most of my English? And when a cashier or a barista said, how are you today, should I respond? Ask them how they are doing? Or would that just hold up the line and irritate everyone? Should I say Helena de Groot or Helena de Groot?

Meanwhile, David had found an apartment for us in San Francisco. He showed it to me over Skype. It was beautiful. Wooden floors, high ceilings, and bay windows with little mosaics of stained-colored glass. Then on a Thursday in early January, I boarded the plane. 18 hours later, David came and picked me up from the airport and drove us to our first home. He was so excited to show me where we'd live together. He had thought of everything we'd need, even the boring things, cleaning supplies, a shower curtain,

and he'd built shelves for the books he knew I'd bring. But when I walked through the door, instead of seeing his effort, all I saw was, the image of my mother at Brussels Airport, her eyes red and swollen from crying all night. And I saw the apartment of a single man. Every object was gray or plastic or pleather. His face fell when he saw mine. We'll make it ours, he said, I know I'm not good at this stuff. The next morning, he took me to a diner, something I only knew from movies and wanted to try. As I marveled at the booths, the chrome-line bar stools, the giant portions, and the endless coffee, he squeezed my hand, his eyes lit up. Then he went to work, and I started

Googling public radio jobs. I wasn't allowed to work yet, but I wanted to be ready when my green card arrived, whenever that would be. It could be weeks, months, another year. So for now, I decided to make it my job to get to know America, starting with San Francisco. Most mornings, I take my computer to a coffee shop and journal. I wouldn't include anything about my day or my feelings. How lost I felt without a job or even a single friend that David and I had had our first fight because he wanted me to at least consider having a family with him. I didn't write any of that. What I thought made the most sense was research. I tapped on my keyboard.

The first humans to have set foot on what is now San Francisco would not have been able to see the ocean. It would have been a great plane with a view of a distant ridge of low-lying hills. I'd copy a few more paragraphs, sip my coffee, think about Earth and time. Then I'd start a conversation with whoever was sitting next to me. But all anyone wanted to talk about was their app idea, their startup, or their upcoming IPO. So I'd pack up my computer and start walking through the neighborhood, the mission. It was beautiful. The murals, the park on a steep hill, the candy-colored Victorians. Curious about the inside of those houses, I started searching for listings.

I had never seen prices like that. at three, four, five million? On the sidewalks, I saw folks who lived in tents, but we could afford the ridiculous rent and the price of an $8 ethically sourced bore over coffee. And so I remember these fights that I had with David, like, and you want to bring a kid into this? I was just so angry with him and with America,

and I would go on and on about like segregation and income inequality and no support for mothers and how the gender imbalance between us would only get worse because, of course, he worked in tech, so he made all this money, and I was a freelancer trying to find work in media. So who would stay home with the kids, you know? And I just got so angry

because that was not a context that I could imagine becoming a mother in, you know? But why did you take it as a given? You could have changed that. While I could not change America, we didn't have to live in this sci-fi dumpster. I begged David to move. He was the most adventurous person I'd ever met.

Maybe we could travel for a while, find some place where we could both be happy. But he said he'd done enough adventuring. Enough living out of the trunk of a car, eating cans of beans and unidentifiable meat. He'd seen places few people got to see, he was grateful. But he was ready to settle down and start a family. This was the opposite of what I wanted. My whole existence had been lived settled down, at the piano or on the couch with a book.

I wanted to go outside, talk to people, learn about history from those who'd lived through it, get to know my neighbors. And I badly wanted to make my way back to my career in audio. So I tried making a radio story, Green Card Be Damned. I found an article in the paper about a family that was being evicted, and I went over there and talked to them. But what could I do? I had no contacts in this country, and my Belgian portfolio wouldn't mean much here.

I wanted to be the kind of person who tried anyway, gave it her all. But what if in this new country my all was not enough? So I filed a recording away, ashamed of myself. for having wasted this family's time. But I was desperate to be employed again and feel like a member of society. So when, after 15 months of waiting, my green card arrived in the mail,

I took a job as a line cook, doing a few things on an endless loop, prepping carrots and broccoli, massaging kale, boiling bones. I often cried in the bathroom. This was not the new life I had imagined. for myself. Late at night, after my shift, I would search online for places I would rather be.

On Google Maps, I found my favorite literary magazine, which had its office in New York, and I'd click through pictures of their bohemian-looking office filled with plants and books. That's where I belonged. And then, after three years in California, David accepted. a job in New York. We arrived in New York in November. It started blizzarding

almost right away, but after all this time in California, I loved it. The seasons, the buildings, the subway, but most of all, the people. I mean, it's funny. You know, like, the cliche in America

is that New Yorkers are rude. Yeah. But, you know, compared to what we're used to in Europe, they're very nice. Us being used to French people, yes. Exactly. No, but, no, of course. I don't think New Yorkers are rude. Maybe one or two New Yorkers were rude,

but New York itself was nothing but kind. It was almost unbelievable. Within two days, I found us an apartment on the top floor of a brownstone on a quiet street. I made my first friend just a few days later. And within 10 weeks, I'd lined up two of my... dream gigs.

Two podcasts about my favorite topic, books. And hopefully he's just entertained by that bone and it doesn't pick up the annoying sound. People just think that's me, right? I zoomed all over the city with my microphone, spoke to writers I'd admired for years, and had meetings at the place I knew so well from Google Maps, the office of my favorite literary magazine. Only now I was really there, sitting on their old leather couch discussing which stories we would adapt for sound. One night in bed, David pulled me in close, kissed me, and whispered in my ear how proud he was. He even had a present for me. Tickets to the opera.

That Thursday night, we put on our shiniest clothes, got on the subway, and walked into the building and up the Cinderella staircase, where a stranger took a picture of the two of us, grinning in front of the epic chandelier. But while I felt like the city and me were lovers, David's New York experience was nothing like mine. He was taking the subway at five every morning to get to midtown before rush hour and then work crazy hours at a startup he only have believed in.

He'd brought in some plans. and some photos of seaweed to hang on the wall. But that didn't change the fact that the view from his office was nothing but other offices. When he came home, he was still all smiles and funny stories, so I didn't realize until it was too late. David's gentle soul, raised on palm trees and temperate weather, was withering away.

Then the pandemic happened, which was particularly brutal in New York. Sirens went by our apartment day and night, and morgues were filling up so quickly that bodies were stored in refrigerated trucks. One day, David asked me, What is the point of life? If all we do is work and then what? Die?

He wanted his life to be about more than that. And he told me, I really want to have a child with you. A child, I'd only just got my career back on the rails. And I love my work, lived for it. I wasn't going to give that up. But I do remember, Helena, that I think I tried to kind of push back a bit on your view that it would be like incompatible. Like to do the projects you want to do, to do the jobs you want to do, like the independence,

that that would be incompatible with kids. And so I do remember not agreeing with you. Like you don't have to choose. You can have it both, you know? Yeah. I mean, I also think we just come from such different families, right? Like my mom used to be a teacher. And then when she got pregnant with me, she gave that up and stayed home with us kids.

And of course, it doesn't mean I would have to do it like she did. But that was the example I had. That's what I could imagine. And I think it's very different for you, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom throughout my childhood, she was a student and then a PhD. So she did kind of an academic career after having had small kids. And then they split 50-50 on everything.

Mm-hmm. David said that's what we would do too. He promised he'd find a job that would let him work part-time and we'd divide the child care 50-50. 50-50, what was he even talking about? about only one of us would be spending nine months growing this baby. And I was terrified of pregnancy. Being pregnant when you don't want to have children, like I can't imagine anything more scary, you know? No. That's like alien, like the movie, you know? Yeah. And it just felt so unfair

that the person who wanted it less or maybe not at all would have to do more. even if after birth we can split it 50-50, which I doubt because David is also like wildly unrealistic, you know? Yes, but he's a capable man, you know? Like there's no reason he wouldn't, yeah, maybe he didn't know it before, like how much work it is, but he would find out after one day. Who'd have to that? Yeah.

But actually, Leona, what you're saying is like you didn't want it, but you kind of went looking for other reasons than just not wanting it. Like one reason being economic aspects or the inequality, but that is like, yeah, kind of beating around the bush, you know? I just have in general like a hard time really trusting myself. And I'm sort of afraid to admit this because, you know, you know, it's just going to sound like natalist propaganda or whatever, you know. But I do feel like, well, maybe, you know, they're...

I don't know why it's so hard to say. I do wonder about, like, what meaning I can find in my life. Like what am I building? What am I living for? It can just feel exhausting, you know? Like every day, like here we go again. Let's try and find some meaning, you know? And of course, some days it goes better than others.

Like when I'm having a really good conversation with a stranger that I'm interviewing, you know, then I'm like, yes, this is my purpose, you know. And making this project feels. really meaningful to me, you know, I hope that I can maybe help someone who's listening feel less alone, you know, because it can feel really lonely that, like, when you don't want kids, you always have to be so clear about it, you know, on the outside, because you don't want to give rope to people who are trying to convince you. So you have to be, like, really firm and clear and unwavering.

Yeah, yeah. But of course, on the inside, it's not necessarily like this, you know? No. And so even though I keep saying, I don't want kids, I am filled with doubt. No.

And especially because, like, okay, the opinion of strangers, I can tune that out, you know? But, you know, the way you thought about me and I don't even want to say try to convince me, because I feel like that's not really, I mean, that's totally what it was. But I just mean, like, you weren't pushy or annoying.

Like, yeah, like you would say something like, but Helena, you're so good at love. Or like having a child is creating a world with them. And you would raise your kids in a way that you like, you know. So if you like music and books, you would raise your kid with a lot of music and books. At any time, did it bug you that I didn't just accept when you said, like, you know, I don't want it because of X, Y, said. Yeah. I mean, initially, I think. Did you feel judged in any way?

I didn't feel judged by you. Good. But I judged myself. I always felt like, what the hell is wrong with me? that I don't want this. And I remember this one time, actually, when I did feel like you managed to make something shift in me, you know. It was after you had your second child and you were thinking, like, you know, should I have a third? Which always happened when you were on vacation, you know, and you were like, relaxed and well-rested.

And, of course, you'd get back to your life in Brussels and start working again. and be like, what the hell was I thinking? But the reason that you were even considering having a third child was that after Alfred was born, your second, you really noticed, like, immediately from the very moment that he was born, like how different his consciousness was from Nora's. Yeah. And you said, I'm just so curious to meet the others, you know. know, get to know them, get to know who they are as people. And it's so funny to me because, like,

that's not really talked about a lot, you know, like curiosity about who are these kids as people, you know? And I like people. Yeah, yeah. A lot. And I love getting to know them. Yeah. I mean, that's why I am a radio producer and an interviewer, you know. Yeah. It was around this time that I got to know our nine-year-old neighbor, a little boy who lived in the apartment across from ours. A few months earlier, his grandmother had died, and now this little kid was getting angry over nothing. He couldn't find his phone charger or something like that.

And he would get so angry that he would start screaming at the top of his lungs. Neighbors had started calling the police, so his mom wanted to do something. And we had chatted a few times in the hallway or the elevator and gotten along, so she asked if her son could come and hang out at ours sometimes when he had an outburst. I said, sure, let him come by. And he did. While David was away at the office, this little boy would knock on our door, his face wet with tears, and we'd talk about what happened, breathe a little.

Then I'd put on some music, and we'd dance where he'd jump on my little trampoline. and then I would get out my crayons and he'd draw. And the whole time he was there, I would be in conversation with myself. See, this is nice. I love this kid. I love his little glasses, the way he presses on his crayons as he draws. I love hearing about the fourth grade drama of who has a crush on who. And I love that he leans on me when he needs a calming presence.

I've never experienced that. I think of myself as intense, stormy, and the fact that he finds me calming makes me feel so capable. Capable of having a kid? A couple hours later, he would say, okay, I'm going home now and walk out. Once this opinionated, lively little man was gone, I could almost touch the silence in the room.

It made me feel a lot of things at once. Glad to be alone. and lonely, exhausted and fulfilled. But there was something else. My body was feeling relaxed, my movement slower, my mind oddly at peace, almost as if I was a little high. Was this what being around kids made you feel like? And then I noticed my period was late.

I was pregnant. Creation Myth is written, produced, hosted, and sound designed by me, Helena Dichrot. My story editor and senior producer is Veronica Simmons, editorial sound design support by Brendan Baker, who also mixed and mastered the episode. Special thanks to my friends, Sigrid Melchior, for our two decades-long ongoing conversation. The team behind Creation Myth further includes Anna Ashtay, who is our coordinating producer, Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager.

Arif Nurani is the director, and Leslie Merklinger is the executive director of CBC podcasts. This project was made possible with the support of VPM Media Corporation. I'll be back next week with a new episode. Thank you for listening. That was the first episode of Creation Myth from the new season of CBC's memoir podcast, personally. If you like what you heard, the second episode is waiting for you right now. Just search for personally wherever you get your podcasts or click on the link in today's show notes. And be sure to follow the feed so you don't miss an episode.

Thanks so much for listening and talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.