The Liz Moody Podcast - Kids Or No Kids? Sharing My Choice And ALL The Reasons Behind It

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

The most personal pros & cons of having kids episode yet: mine and Zack’s! Realistically, how do you go about making a decision that you know will change your life? Zack and I walk through our decision on whether or not we will be having children and all of the research, data, and conversations with experts and friends that went into it. Lots of factors play into the decision to have children, from work-life balance to financial strain, not to mention concerns about whether you would enjoy parenting itself in practice. Ultimately, while data and research can help us make informed decisions, they cannot make our decisions for us. We had to make this decision for ourselves knowing that there is no true wrong or right choice. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome.  Listen to the previous Pros & Cons of Having Kids episodes: The Pros & Cons Of Having Kids The 2nd Pros & Cons Of Having Kids Episode: Pooping During Labor, The Real Cost + Sex & Body Image After Birth How To Know If You Should Have Kid(s) + Debunking Myths About Parenthood with Merle Bombardieri, MSW, LISCW What It’s REALLY Like To Be Childfree By Choice with Ruby Warrington & Vanessa and Xander Marin All The Fertility Qs You’re Too Nervous To Ask: Answered A Raw, Honest Story About IVF, Surrogacy, & Having A Rainbow Baby This episode is sponsored by: Puori: go to puori.com/LIZMOODY and use promo code LIZMOODY for 20% sitewide. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 312. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. I have been debating whether or not I want to have kids for years. And I have done many, many episodes about the subject, which I know you guys love. We have tons of personal stories from child free by choice people, people who always knew they wanted kids, people who have struggled with fertility and approached parenthood in different ways, and even a therapist who helps people make this choice. I will link all of those episodes in the show notes. Today, finally, I am joined by my husband, Zach, to share the decision that we have reached in our own life. We did not fall into either of the camps where we definitely knew that we wanted kids or we definitely knew that we didn't. We were firmly undecided until very recently. So we're going to get into all of the things that we consider, the pros and cons that we weighed and the decision that we ultimately made. Hey, I'm excited. It's so interesting because I have thought about it a lot. Yeah, you've been doing these episodes now.

Since we lived in New York. For a couple, for three years maybe? Yeah, maybe longer. I mean, when did we leave New York? 2020, it's 2025. Now, is that when the first one came out? The first one, I recorded the first one in our New York apartment. So that would have been either very early 2020 or late 2019, the teens.

Yeah, so that's crazy. We've been talking about it forever on the podcast because it's a decision that I did not know my answer on. It has huge implications in your life. And it's so interesting because during the time that I've been sharing my decision-making process or my lack of decision-making process, a lot of people online have been like, if it's not a hell yes, it's a hell no. Like if you don't know that you want to be a parent, then you shouldn't be a parent. And I think the intention behind that is like parenting is hard. Don't do it if you're going to kind of be half-assed about it. But on the other hand, like I put a lot of thought into where I go on vacation.

And if I sign up for a new class and the next book I'm going to read, you should see the research that I'm doing before I like commit to a book that I'm going to read. Yeah, it's kind of hard to imagine you would make any decision in your life without like, I don't know, an hour or two of planning and thought and like the idea that you could make an irrevocable complete rest of your lifetime decision. Just like just like go for it. I actually like I personally find it mind bogglingly how casual some people are about the decision. I'm like, this affects the rest of your life.

And I also tell people all the time that if you want to take a risk, by and large, you should take it. And we are able to go back on choices a lot more than we typically think that we are able to go back on choices. Like you can try moving to New City. And then if you don't like it, then you can move back. If you want to try a new job, maybe you get a different job after. If you don't like, there's a lot of opportunity in life for trying things.

Having children, you can be like, oh, that was fun for like a few years. Like, bye-bye. Yeah, that's real. It's real frowned upon. It's really frowned upon. So it's like the biggest decision, I feel like. And I feel like a lot of people come to it from this perspective of like, oh, I've known my whole life.

I like, I'm really jealous of those people, if I'm being honest. And I don't know a lot of them, right? Like I hear people say it online. I mean, my sister. Great. Good for her. But I know so many people that they take some steps in one direction and like, oh, but maybe this because maybe this.

Because your priorities shift throughout your entire life. important to your shifts about your entire life. Oh, that's so interesting. I feel like most people I know either kind of like know or don't know in my real life. And then online, I met with a lot more people who are like, this is a big decision. I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like my time is running out in a biological sense. If I want biological children, which is something that I've personally felt a lot of anger about. Like I for yourself. For myself. I have felt, yeah, not about other people. I feel a lot of compassion for other people. I feel a lot of compassion for other people because I'm a woman in my 30s.

I'm 38 years old and I'm acutely aware that at the time in my life when I am most expected and have the most opportunities to build my career, I also have to make these huge life decisions about things that will detract from my career in significant ways. And it feels shitty. Like it just feels super unfair. And you're very career motivated. but, you know, insert all sorts of like life experiences too. Like, you know, from traveling and experiencing the world and other aspects of your life.

When you're young is when you can do all sorts of special new things that actually get more difficult generally on net as you get. And you can still do them, but it's definitely easier to have adventures. It's easier to pick up and move cities. It's all these things. And having a kid complicates these things. I've heard people say, like, I want to be a dad. I don't want to be a mom. I vibe that.

And I vibe that. Like if I didn't have to carry a child, if it wasn't my body, if I didn't have to think about postpartum, which I'm really, really nervous about as somebody who has had many severe mental health struggles in my life. And if I didn't have to think about how all of those things would interact with this career that I've built that I really love and that I'm really, really proud of. So I figured we'd dive into kind of our thought processes around all of these things. and then we'll share, obviously, the decision that we ended up making.

And true to form for me, for all of you who know how my brain works, one of the ways that I explored this topic was to dive into what the data said. And the data is really... Mid? Bad. Okay. Let me just... It's not 50-50.

It's some data is definitive. It's not great. Okay, so a few things that we considered. First of all, the cost of having children. Current stats show the data. it's $310,000 from birth until one child is 18 years old. That feels really low to me. Wrong. It feels wildly expensive and super low at the same time.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a lot of money. There's less money amortized over 18 years. Years. But like our friends who, like neither of us would quit working completely. We're not in the financial position to do that, nor do we have the desire to do that. And our friends who pay for child care alone, like you're going to be way over that number, whether you're doing daycare or a nanny.

We have friends that do both. It's so expensive. So the cost is definitely something that we've talked about a lot in terms of how do these expenses line up with essentially almost like a Rami T'sati version of like our rich life. Like what are we making money for and what do we want our life to look like? And how do the expenses of having a child fit in with that? We have a financial planner. And I think when you started doing these episodes, like, we hadn't, like, run the numbers for ourselves. But we did sit down with our financial planner and, like, model what one kid going to, you know, he said, like, let's model in private school because that might affect, like, house purchase you want to buy.

There's all these, like, little things. Yeah. So, like, you can buy a more expensive house to be in a better school district or you can buy a less expensive house and plan on private school. Yeah. Which is my biggest pet peeve. I just got a little bit. say this while I'm on Mike. Sure.

My biggest pet peeve in this country. I'm God, I have so many of them. But a huge, huge one is that ostensibly, like, everybody has a fair shot. And then we tie property taxes to how much money schools get. Yeah. And I'm just like, that is wild. Like, who decided on that? It's absolutely insane.

And it keeps all of the social hierarchies in place when you just pay normal taxes. It goes into a pot. And then it gets distributed to all of our public tax funded schools around the country that feels like what we promised to do. You know what I mean? It's a country. Anyway, carry on. We modeled it out with financial. And it was shocking. It was shocking the difference that it makes for what you need to save to just retire. Like retire on just a basic retirement plan that will leave you not impoverished at like the age of 65. Well, and you and I are both entrepreneurs. So our businesses don't have this steady, stable income coming in. Like we've done really well for

ourselves and I'm really proud of everything that both of us have built. But I don't feel like my career has a ton of long-term stability that I can for sure count on. And I feel like yours is similar. And it just, it is more nerve-wracking in that way, although I will say, if you're nervous about the financial part of having a child, I do think modeling it out is a really good move. We have gained so many insights just by being like, instead of being like, oh, can we afford this? Can we not? And kind of noodling on it in your head forever. Just any big decision literally model out the numbers. And of course, you're not going to get everything, but it gives you so much more clarity. Yeah, absolutely. It gives you like 60 to 70% certainty versus like 10% certainty. And then the other financial factor that I've really

struggled with is the idea of a maternity leave. My job has no maternity leave at all. So I both have the loss of income component. And then I also have the, I guess, fear of like our family needs my income. And And if something happens in my pregnancy where I have a hard time working, if postpartum is something where I'm stressed and nervous and I'm like, I got to get back to the office, that is really anxiety-inducing for me. I asked a high-up person at Meta what they recommend for content creators in terms of maternity leave because the algorithm prioritizes recency. So if you don't post for a while, there's data that like both people literally forget about

you. Like when I was starting my podcast out, I was every other week. and people were like, you have to switch to every week because if it's every other week, people literally forget about you in that two weeks fan. I mean. But that happens with content creator. So both people forget about you, but then also the algorithm prioritizes recency. So if you don't post for a while, you essentially get punished for that.

So I asked us higher up at meta. I was like, what do you recommend for maternity leave? And she was pregnant. And she's about to go on her wonderful meta for employees has an incredible maternity policy and paternity policy. And she was like, oh, well, she pointed me in the direction of a content creator who essentially was like Instagramming from their hospital bed. Yeah, yeah, of course.

I was going to make that as a joke, but that's actually happening. Every single moment with their newborn. And she says, this is what we recommend for content creators. This is what we feel like performs really well. And it was like, oh, cool. Like, sounds great. Wasn't quite what I was asking there. And to that point, if we look at the data,

one study found that parents in the U.S. are significantly less happy than parents in other developed nations that provide more generous family policies such as paid parental leave. This feels obvious, perhaps, but we've gotten to witness it firsthand. We have a lot of friends that live and work in Europe. They are getting months off, not weeks off, months, like sometimes up to six months off. And the way that that influences the freedom that they feel to make these choices for their families is huge.

And I do, I find it really frustrating that. finances and things like maternity leave, paternity leave play such a huge role in these decisions. And it feels like we have no support from our government. Like my, you know, you and I have been vacillating on this decision. I have tons of friends where they've wanted to have kids and they know that this is just their life's calling and they're struggling so much to figure out the financial component. And that's just like, it's awful. Yeah.

We also know friends who have, you know, they've basically expected things to go perfectly and then things don't. And it actually ends up making things like really hard. They think they'll work through their first two trimesters. And then boom, they're on bed rest on like trimester number one. And it's like, oh, we actually really were planning on having that income this whole time right there. So like knowing the range of how something can go because like it can go great. And you can be, oh, like, oh my God, I'm so productive. I'm hitting the gym.

I'm doing whatever. Which we have friends who were like that completely. Of course. And then you're like, you're like, oh, man. And that looks like the biggest, biggest blast. Me, medium blast. And then you have people that are like, it's all super stressful and super stressful. I think that's like, it's like without a support system and without a safety net, your mileage really may vary by a lot.

Yeah. And I find that frustrating for myself, but I would say even more so for I recognize my own privilege in the situation. And I just think it's like horrifically unfair. And this is something that we need to figure out on a governmental level. Speaking of that, the U.S. Surgeon General's Office literally put out a public health warning for parenting. That's normally something that's reserved for things like smoking and alcohol, but they did it about the health dangers of parenting. And there's a lot of data to back this up. Depression and anxiety tend to be higher among actively parenting adults. One third of parents with children under 18 rate their stress level as eight or higher on a 10-point scale.

two-fifths of parents report being so stressed that they feel numb. Three-fifths say stress makes it hard to focus. Two-thirds are consumed by money problems. And in each case, parents report markedly higher rates of stress than non-parents. Right. And this Surgeon General's warning was like specifically focused on, if I remember correctly, how stressful it is to be a parent in also like just like the expectations, like the modern societal expectations of being a good parent, which is new, right?

Well, I think that it's a few things. I think the Surgeon General's report was just like, this is dangerous. This is a public health crisis. We need to address this. But there's a few factors at play here. One is there's loss of community support. We used to raise children far more in community than we do now. Then we also have learned so much about essentially like the science of parenting. Like this is how your kid's brain works. So you want to support your kid's brain in this way. Don't do this because that could have this reaction. So we're taking in all this information. Since we have the information, we feel like we have to action that information, whereas in like the 60s 70s, we didn't know, so we didn't feel like we were failing by not actioning it. So it's higher pressure than ever before. You have less support than ever before, and people are not in a financially great situation in their general lives. So then if you add in the stress of child rearing on top of that, it becomes a really bleak picture. Yeah. And one of the things I've been hearing from my friends when they talk about it is like, well, you have to also plan on like affordability getting more difficult.

Or like, as we've kind of like seen over the last number of years, like things can become like rapidly less affordable quickly. Like incomes aren't really like holding up to what your buying power can be. And the same thing goes with, you know, things like colleges, right? So like college is huge curve since, you know, we went to school or anything else like that. But also from a competitive perspective as well, it feels the expectation of the parent is that the opportunities are going to become more scarce. It feels scarce to me. Like I'm like, could I have gotten into any of the colleges that I got into now? You know, it feels, that feels very real to me.

Certainly it would be more competitive. In general, this is a hard subject to get data about. It's hard to report. It's hard to get rid of all the conflating factors. But it tends to point to that parents tend to be on net less happy than people who do not have children. And particularly women, tend to be less happy than men, although that has come together more over time, too, as men have taken on more of the parenting duties. So that's the bad from a data perspective. Essentially, that it's really expensive. In the U.S., at least, there's not a ton of governmental support, despite the government declaring a health emergency, so maybe they should jump in and give some support. But there's not a ton of that. We've lost our communities while having increasing pressure.

and that results in a lot of stress, a lot of like, how do I do this all? Okay, so let's get into some of the neutral to good. So there's one study from Princeton that found that parents and non-parents have similar levels of life satisfaction, but parents experience both more daily joy and more daily stress than non-parents. And I think this gets into, in a very real way, the decision that we ended up making. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the of the most innovative products that I have come across in years, and I'm so obsessed with it.

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And after thinking about this a lot, I mean, it comes back to the question, what do you think makes life worth living? That's what this question is for me. Like, what are we here to do with our lives? And for me, and I think for you, I think this is something that we've bonded over throughout our entire relationship. It's to have as many robust experiences as possible. Be more specific than robust, because I feel like... We want to feel the range of things.

We even talked about this when we were experiencing grief recently, that we felt like it was giving us access to a range of emotions that we'd never felt before. and even while we were sobbing and feeling so awful, physically ill, we were grateful for access to this new range of emotions. Yes, that's really well put. And something that I think I have found to be just like a wild thing that we've kind of like, you know, I basically had awe over again and again. It's just like there is such a depth to the range of human experiences. So for me, happiness, which is what so much of this data is trying to measure, isn't the

goal meaning is experiences are different ranges of emotions are and with all of that in mind we have decided this is so weird it's weird it's weird because we're like just like quietly in a podcast you did together and it's like it's like ah where's the drum he's got a drum rule but um um um we've decided that we would like to have a child great a child it said which the one child thing was really interesting to me. If you haven't listened to my episode with Merle Bombardieri, she is a therapist who coaches people specifically on the choice of whether or not to have children. And she says that for many people, for many people sitting on the fence, the right choice is we shouldn't have children. I'm not saying by any means the right choice for everybody

is to have children. But for many people who are what they call fensitters, which is what we have been, one child is a nice way to mitigate some of those financial implications, to mitigate. some of those free time implications, all of those types of things, while getting to experience this new part of being a human being. Opens up access to a new depth of experience while also not necessarily short-changing your ability to have other new depths of other experiences. Yeah, it feels like a nice compromise. Ah, a well-balanced thought-through decision.

And I want to say this clearly. I don't think you need to have a choice. child to experience the full range of human experiences. Can you actually say that for sure, though? I mean, I don't know. I don't know. How could you know? I don't know.

And I think every experiences, like every new beginning comes from, wait, no, that's Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings. But every experience comes with the loss of another experience. Like every time you're saying yes to something, you're saying no to something else. If you're saying yes to a night out with your friends, you're saying no to a night and by yourself. If you're saying yes to a job, you're saying no to other career opportunities. And so I do think that there are experiences you're going to get as a person who does not have any children that will be different than the experiences that people who have

children are going to have access to and vice versa. Absolutely. And I mean, like, we just got like real philosophical, right? Like, like, what is the full range of a single human's experience? And it's, it's nothing like another person's ostensibly. Yeah. Right. Like there's so much you can't have, so much that you can't have, so much that you can have from something that somebody else might find totally trivial, right? Like the loss of your cat for you might have a depth of experience that somebody else has, they don't tap into anything like that, which. So I think that there's something about like I am particularly interested in the experiences specific to having a child. Okay. I am interested in seeing the world through fresh eyes.

I'm interested in engaging with the process of neural development and learning. I'm interested in getting to parent, probably a psychologist is going to listen to this and be like, oh no, this is bad. But like getting to parent a kid in the way that I kind of wish a little bit that I'd been parented. I'm excited about that. I'm also, I'm a person who loves taking care of other people and I'm excited about that. And I know people also hate when people compare their pets to children, but I loved the family that we had with Bella and how we talked about that and how we felt about that. And I can only imagine what it would be like with a human.

I feel like it's important for you to have a human child so you can say, I've had both and they're both important. And that's, and I told you so. Yeah, I really do. So I can stop apologize. Like, I usually had a cat, but I really love her. 18 years from now, you know, a hypothetical child is going to listen to this and be like, oh, God, damn it. They really approve their cat.

Did they have it? Did they have me to prove a point about their cat? Yeah, so I think I'm particularly interested in the experiences. And I feel also like I've been lucky enough in my life to have access to a lot of the experiences that not having a child has brought. We've gotten to travel a ton, we've gotten to live all over the world, we've gotten to do a lot of stuff that feels very experientially rich. And so I feel like I'm kind of ready in some ways for like a different adventure, a different type of experience. God damn right. Also to the point of every yes is a no to something else. Bob Wadinger said something

to me when I interviewed him. He is the director of the Harvard School of Adult Development Study that We talk about all the time on this podcast. It's just, it's so relevant. It's so relevant, which is just that the single biggest predictor of human health and happiness over time is the quality of our relationships. So he works on the study. He directs the study that figured out that by analyzing data from over 80 years. Thanks, Bob.

He's also just like the loveliest human being to chat to. And I was talking to him about how to avoid the sense of regret. of if you choose to have a kid and you regret that, and if you choose to not have a kid and you regret that, and for anybody listening who is like, you'll never regret having a kid, I will say I am on the receiving end of so many anonymous messages about this topic.

People may not admit non-anonymously that they regret having their children. Thousands of people have admitted to me anonymously that they regret having their children. Anonymous polls are wild. They're really wild and people will send me these long, heartfelt messages and it's always, I love my child. But first of all, if you feel that way, you're 100% not alone.

And I do think we need to destigmatize that feeling. But also if you're like, just have a kid. There's no way you regret having a kid. That's not true. I've heard from enough people to know that's not true. Well, and I think the inability to feel even like partial regret, a little bit of regret, the societal stigma around it. has to be an exacerbator, right?

It has to be making that worse for those people. Oh, 100%. So I was talking about this and I was like, how do we mitigate regret? And he was essentially like every choice in life is going to have its own regrets. We need to maybe not try to optimize to get rid of regret in our life,

but learn how we can live with regret comfortably and learn how to live with the fact that we have one life. And at some point, we have to make these choices and we have to live in the life that we are living, essentially, instead of looking, well, what about that life? What about that life? What about that life? Like, life comes with regret. Life comes with choices.

Life comes with uncertainties. And getting comfortable with all of those things is going to be so much more powerful than sitting around and talking and talking and talking forever about which choice is going to come with zero regret. You're not going to win. I 100% agree with you. And I think it sets you up for failure to think that there's, perfect solution in this world. And I think we tried to do that for a while with our should we have

kids or not decision. I was like, there has to be a perfect interview I could do. There has to be a perfect data set that I can reference so I can come to a perfect decision for us for our lives. Because we were both undecided when we met, which is a really nerve-wracking place to meet and get married and all of that. I mean, I think we were uninspected when we met. We were very, we were so young. We were 21. And then we got married when we were 29 and we were just like, woo. We just weren't talking about any serious. We weren't talking about like retirement. We were just like kind of like living our best lives.

You know what I mean? And so then when all of a sudden when these decisions come up, I was like, there has to be a right one. And I think one of my biggest learnings in this whole process is there is not necessarily a right decision, but at a certain point you need to make a decision and live in that life. And that life is going to have great things and it's going to have harder things. And you need to trust in your resilience to. to deal with all of those things.

You did the best with the information that you could gather. I do think gathering some information is, you know, it doesn't mean I'm going to be a bad parent, despite what people on the internet like to tell me. You shouldn't be a parent. People will tell you you're a bad parent, no matter of way. No matter what. No, I'm really looking forward to that.

That's going to be great. But gather your information, and then I do think, like, there's never going to be a perfect choice. That was a big lesson that I learned. Do you regret over researching? Like, over... No, I don't.

I don't because I feel so much better about my choice coming with the information that I have. I'm not going to be surprised. I mean, I probably will at the level of it. Yeah, I shouldn't say. You know, I'm aware that is going to be very stressful. I'm aware that it's going to be very taxing. And I'm preparing for that. We're trying to prepare our finances. We're trying to carve out what a maternity leave might look like for me, what a paternity leave might look like for you. So I feel like having the knowledge that I have makes me not wholly prepared because I don't think you can ever be wholly prepared, but it makes me more prepared and I feel good as an anxious person having some preparation.

That's good. I mean, honestly, feeling good as somebody who needs to feel like they have a lot of things figured out is probably a really good place for you to be. So one of the ways that we have prepared and one of the things that we kind of came to in all of this is that I'm not ready to have a child right now. I don't feel like my career is ready for it. I don't think our finances are ready for. I don't feel ready despite my body being like, hey, girl, you're 38.

So one of the things that we have done is we have frozen embryos. We. We. It was a joy. More for you. But yeah, so we, that was part of the preparation. Like using the information that we had, we were like, okay, we want one kid. We don't want to now.

what are our options? We went and saw a fertility doctor, Dr. Amy, who is from our fertility episode of the podcast. The Egg Whisper. The Egg Whisper. She is phenomenal. And she helped kind of like talk through our options and see what was available to us. And we decided to freeze embryos. And we will get into that whole process, including the shots and the retrievals and how many we got.

And what all of that was like in the next episode of the podcast. It was a wild ride. It was a wild ride. So we'll share all of that in the next episode. But that's the plan now. So we have, and we'll also share, like, kind of our timeline around everything and what the plan is with the embryos. Let's just end on what is one thing that you would say to people who are struggling with this decision right now. I was going to say, talk to your partner and, like, really try to get an open communication channel.

But I also wanted to not alienate the people who are maybe, you know, doing this without a partner because those people are there too. And to those people and to everybody, I would just say, I would say, talk to talk. to your people, right? Like talk to your family, talk to your friends, talk to whatever community means to you because even if you're doing this alone, you're not going to really be doing it alone. Even your healthcare professionals are people that are going to be in your life for it. And I like talking to people because you have to solidify what you want, right? And some people, I talk, or I think by talking, right?

So being able to kind of like hash things out helped me become a lot more kind of like, like, like close to our decision myself, you know, so, so clearly talk to your partner, talk to your community, and actually just like think through your wise behind all this stuff and, and what's important to you both about, you know, whatever your eventual outcome is, but also, you know, the lifestyle, the process, what you need to feel safe, what you need to feel happy, what doesn't matter to you and do that. I would say there's no wrong choice because I do think that society can make us feel like there's this one path that we should all be taking in life. And if we deviate from that

path, there's something flawed about us. And I don't think that's true. I don't think that there's a wrong choice. And I don't think there's a right choice. And I think sometimes searching for the right perfect choice can do a disservice to the messiness that is life. So I kind of wish somebody had told me when I first started thinking about this. There's not a wrong choice, but there's not a right choice, but you do at some point need to make a choice, and you are strong enough to thrive with whatever that choice is. That's really nice. Unfortunately, that is all for this episode of the Liz Moody podcast.

While this is a personal conversation, it's also a really universal one that's still unfortunately weirdly taboo. So I would love if you would share a link to this episode with anybody you know, honestly, just so that people can feel less alone in whatever decision they're making or that they have made and so that we can bring these conversations out into the world and make them not shameful. I felt like something was wrong with me because I did not know whether or not I wanted kids. And everybody's like, you know, if you don't know, then you probably shouldn't have them. You'd probably be a terrible mother.

And I just think having these conversations is so, so important. And not feeling alone is so so important. So please share this episode far and wide. And make sure that you are following the Liz Moody Podcasts on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or on YouTube. Following the podcast means that the episodes will show up right in your feed. You will never have to go hunt for one. You'll never have to miss out on one. You'll never have to not hear information that could absolutely transform your life.

Also, we are able to bring you this show completely for free because of the brands that you heard in this episode. I am so, so picky about the brands that I work with. I turn down so many brand partners, and I stand behind every single recommendation that I make here. You can save money on amazing products while supporting the show by using the discount codes that we share. There is a full list of all of our active ones at Liz Moody.com slash codes. You can head over to Liz Moody.substack.com to sign up for our brand new newsletter. I'm so proud of our newsletter. It's called The Takeaway.

You're going to get key action steps for each episode. you're going to get downloadable transcripts. So if you want a transcript of all that data that we shared here to share for discussions or whatever, you're going to find that at lizmoody.substack.com. You're going to get tons of bonus content. That is lizmoody.com. Also, come hang out on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody.

You're going to get tons of behind the scenes content of my everyday life and daily reminders of little science-backed ways that you can live your best life. Okay, I love you. I hope this episode was helpful. I hope this episode made you feel less alone, and I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. The number one rule of habits

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