Parents disappointed about your pregnancy?

[PnkPolkaDots]

Hi there,

I'm not pregnant yet this has been on my mind and it's bothering me (it even bothers me that it bothers me!). OH and I are not in a *bad* financial place, but we aren't rolling in the dough either. We pretty much live paycheck to paycheck, but are somehow able to put a chunk each month away (about 20-25% goes to our wedding money, rainy day stash, and general savings). We live very frugally with no government aid and are very careful to live within our means.

A big help has been how affordable rent is... we live in my parents' 2 bedroom rental house and they charge us below market value (we live next door to them and OH is able to let their dogs out during the day while they work and we watch the dogs when they go out of town, sort of in exchange for the lower rent). I work as a reading assistant (I'm a certified teacher but my position pays less) and while I have no student loan debt, I wanted to pursue a reading endorsement. I was turned down for a loan (I have an open loan for my car currently, I owe $4500 on it still) and wasn't going to do the program, but then my parents offered to pay for it (about $5,000) and I could just pay them back. So our total debt is about $9500 - $4500 to the bank, $5000 to my parents.

Now that you have the back story... I'm very self-conscious about my parents thinking we don't make enough to support a baby. I'm a reading assistant as I mentioned, and OH delivers pizza (yes, he has a college degree, but the recession nearly obliterated his field). We both want to be parents so bad and are willing to cut back on even more if needed. I have had two miscarriages and spent the last year NTNP to no avail, but we are on an official break until our wedding next summer. We really want to start trying as soon as we get married, but I dread breaking the news to my parents and having them being disappointed.

While it would be *better* financially to wait until we make more, I don't know when that will happen and I don't want to miss my fertile window to become a mom. I know plenty of people are having kids later these days, but that's just not me. I'm not a career woman, I'm meant to be a mother. Especially since I have miscarried twice and nothing happened during a year of NTNP, I worry it may take a while anyway after we start trying again. We will be 29 and 30 when we get married.

Whew! That's my novel. Thanks for bearing with me ladies If I have the wrong forum please feel free to move my post.

 

[Teri7489]

I worried about this and really shouldnt have. Hubby and I live in a one bedroom flat and had about £2000 of debt prior to trying. I had just finished my nursing degree and hubby just started uni. We didnt have great income but managed. I told my mum over the phone we were expecting and she squealed with happiness. We are still in our one bedroom and expecting baby number two. We enjoy life, have trips out and days in. No fancy holidays or expensive things but time with family is better imo. My parents adore our daughter and our situation is never mentioned. Your parents might just be the same with the idea of a little bundle! Xxx

 

[jlw617]

My mom was disappointed when we got pregnant with our second baby, but we were doing fine financially, really if you base it off of finances, unless you're filthy rich, you'll probably never be ready for a baby lol. The only reason my mom got mad was because she often makes things about her when it's not if that makes sense...with this current baby she was actually rooting for us, I told her when we got pregnant before but we lost that baby I think part of the what was different this last time is I'm just at an age now (32) where I just realize I have to do what's best for my family and to stop worrying what others think so much even my own mother.

 

[MyFavSurprise]

I've always been told that if you wait until everything is in place, finances perfect and debt paid, then you will never be ready, and I say if you are ready emotionally then you are ready. My son was unplanned and I ended up a single mother at 23 and somehow everything fell into place, he is happy and healthy and sitting here talking my ear off instead of eating his dinner haha. My SO and I just found out we're having another baby, we live in a 3 bedroom with 7 people, all family, but we are so happy. It will be tight and hard at times but I know everything will be okay. I just lost my job as well because work will not accommodate for the pregnancy, and we're stressed out, but nothing will ever change that we are going to have two beautiful children. It will work out. Happiness and family are the most important, right?

 

[jessmke]

To be perfectly honest, if I were your parents I would be pretty upset if you got pregnant while not really being able to fully support yourselves. Doesn't sound like you are getting a ton money directly from them, but the low monthly rent is a pretty big savings for you. I personally would not feel comfortable having a baby while owing money to family and allowing them to assist with my living expenses. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, just saying what I would do in your situation.

If you were entirely financially independent then of course your parents would have no right to be upset. But if it were me, I'd feel like I was taking advantage of their generosity if I got pregnant while relying on them financially. Obviously there's never a perfect time to have a baby, but if I were in your shoes I would at least wait until you paid your debt to your parents and would insist on paying market value rent.

 

[PnkPolkaDots]

To be perfectly honest, if I were your parents I would be pretty upset if you got pregnant while not really being able to fully support yourselves. Doesn't sound like you are getting a ton money directly from them, but the low monthly rent is a pretty big savings for you. I personally would not feel comfortable having a baby while owing money to family and allowing them to assist with my living expenses. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, just saying what I would do in your situation.

If you were entirely financially independent then of course your parents would have no right to be upset. But if it were me, I'd feel like I was taking advantage of their generosity if I got pregnant while relying on them financially. Obviously there's never a perfect time to have a baby, but if I were in your shoes I would at least wait until you paid your debt to your parents and would insist on paying market value rent.

Do you think you would still want to wait until you were 100% paid off if it meant risking being too old to conceive and never being able to have a child?

 

[jessmke]

To be perfectly honest, if I were your parents I would be pretty upset if you got pregnant while not really being able to fully support yourselves. Doesn't sound like you are getting a ton money directly from them, but the low monthly rent is a pretty big savings for you. I personally would not feel comfortable having a baby while owing money to family and allowing them to assist with my living expenses. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, just saying what I would do in your situation.

If you were entirely financially independent then of course your parents would have no right to be upset. But if it were me, I'd feel like I was taking advantage of their generosity if I got pregnant while relying on them financially. Obviously there's never a perfect time to have a baby, but if I were in your shoes I would at least wait until you paid your debt to your parents and would insist on paying market value rent.

Do you think you would still want to wait until you were 100% paid off if it meant risking being too old to conceive and never being able to have a child?

Personally, yes. Of course you will probably never be completely debt free, everyone has debt, but my problem would be relying on my family to support me so that I could have a baby at their expense. I have student loan debt that I am still paying off, and we have three mortgages (our home and two rental properties), so we are far from debt free, but we pay our bills ourselves and can handle the cost of a baby on top of everything else. If we couldn't and I had to rely on my parents to help us pay our bills I wouldn't be having a baby right now. I know my parents would be happy to help us out if we fell on hard times, but if they gave us money and then we purposely added another huge expense into our lives (ie. a baby), they would not be supportive and I wouldn't blame them. But obviously every family is different. Your parents might be more than happy to help support you if that's the only way you can afford to have a baby. In my family I was expected to be self sufficient once I finished high school, so I was just giving my perspective if I were to be in your shoes.

 

[Kiki1993]

If you can save while also paying off your debts i don't see why your prents would be disappointed. This generation has it much harder than the parents, they bought houses cheap, work plentiful and now it's the opposite. Bottom line, you support yourselves and honestly would you rather
1. pay off all the debt and then possibly miss your window
2. pay off your debts while pregnant and with a child.

Everyone has debts to pay; student loans, loans, mortgages, personal debts ... it would be kinda like me saying i wont have a baby till my mortgage debt is gone (when we get the mortgage) or until we pay of our car etc... not gonna happen, im waiting 18 more months ... i have been waiting sinc ei was 18 (all my family had kids at 16-17) .. i'm now 22, getting married at 23, and hpefully trying after the wedding which is 18 months away! ... only concern is we are having a late hoenymoon most likely the may after we marry so 5 months later! I'm just worried if 1, 5 months is "too pregnant" to fly, or if i'm under 12 weeks .. but i don't think we can afford a honeymoon straight away! Might just wait until i'm pregnant, book a week off work for when i'm about 15 weeks so that way i have the scan and in the "safe zone"

 

[MrsStutler]

There really is no perfect time to have a baby and there will always be *Something*

I still got some small level of disapproval from my in laws and parents when we announced my first, they felt we should have waited. At that time we were married for 2.5yrs, purchased a home and financially OK with both of us working (reasonably comfortable but not rich my any means).
With my second I was in the middle of nursing school (had to take off a semester) and we were living paycheck to paycheck, sometimes borrowing money to get by. Still, I knew our situation was not permanent and I wanted a smaller age gap.
When we announced our third pregnancy I got even more disapproval despite a great paying new job as a nurse and all I had accomplished in the previous three years.

If it's not one thing it's another so follow your heart and everything else will fall into place.

 

[MamaLoCo]

ehhh I would say, who cares what your parents think? But then again, you are living with them so they are kind of covering some of your expenses so you're not financially independent while still able to save for other things.

That aside, a lot of people move in with mom/dad when they have babies anyway because it is financially easier so...maybe you should just talk to them about how they feel about ever having grandchildren.

Hubby and I are fine financially...also not rolling in the dough but we've been able to manage while paying for my last semester of school ($500/mo) and half of my student loans ($132/mo) and be fine. We've never been on government assistance before and I doubt we even qualify.

I worry sometimes that my family thinks I'm not financially independent even though we fully are. All the same, my mom offered us one of their cars at half the payments (they'd pay the other half plus insurance) so we'd be getting a brand new car for only $200/mo. I know both our credit scores are higher than her hubby's so we could probably refinance at a lower rate but it won't beat $200/mo.

We really wanted to turn her down because we didn't want to give the impression that we need that help but it's not that she thinks we can't do it on her own, it's that she WANTS to do it for us and baby. Maybe your parents are helping you because they WANT to and they can.

Bottom line is - yes, it's irresponsible to have a baby intentionally if you know you can't support it...but if you have willing help and you know you're doing just fine to provide the essentials, there's no reason for you to forego your human nature to reproduce. If you were living in a hotel on welfare eating McDonalds everyday, that would be a totally different story. No matter how much money you have, we all tend to spend a little more when we make a little more so it's never going to seem financially feasible to have a baby. just try to save enough for your maternity leave if it's unpaid.

 

[MamaLoCo]

Also - and I don't want this to come off as the entire opposite of my previous post, but there are pros and cons to everything and I have to hit the Tough-Love aspect.

If you're worried about money, weddings don't have to cost a lot. You can pay a JP ten bucks and have it done. I noticed you said you save some towards your wedding costs...marriage has nothing to do with cake or feeding other people dinner and all that.
If you feel the need to prove proper financial independence and responsibility to your parents, then not overspending on frivolous things, like parties for other people or a dress you'll only wear once, would be a good place to start...especially if you're in debt to them.

I have over $20k in student loan debt and I'm having a baby in August but if I owed my parents and was living with them, I'd definitely take care of that first. You know your parents are going to spoil the crap out of that baby if you have one while living with them and...idk about you but I just wouldn't feel comfortable with that while owing them thousands of dollars.

Or you could try getting your own place, even if it's tiny...but it sounds like they're helping you a lot and paying market price rent while you owe them money for helping you with a bank loan might not seem like a good idea, even to them.

Your hubby can almost certainly find a higher paying job than delivering pizzas, or a 2nd job. I have a friend who doesn't get a day off (period) because she works Mon-Fri at one job and waits tables on the weekend Sat-Sun and that was her choice because she chose to take out a loan for a car. If you really want it, you can make it happen.

Lots of places pay more simply for having a degree, regardless of what it's in...they don't even specify what your degree should be in, just that you have one. The average pay for a delivery boy around here is $8...whereas a grocery store cashier could get hired in at $10/hr. I'm a department manager at a health food store and get $16/hr and I don't need my degree for this job at all...plus they offer protected FMLA and short term disability so not only can I use the Paid Time Off I've accrued, I also get 60% of my pay while I'm off on FMLA with my baby so I don't even plan on trying to find a job that requires my degree until after that.
I believe warehouse jobs usually start at around that much as well and that's always going to be double what you make to deliver pizzas...plus you don't come home smelling like pizza. I would definitely recommend he start looking at something like that because, and I mean NO offense by this, delivering pizzas is for high school kids and adults who are using it as a 2nd job for extra income. He can get a warehouse gig for twice as much or jump on an oil rig or something! I have friends who do the HARD jobs and they barely graduated high school but they make enough for their wives/girlfriends to have babies and stay home in their nice houses and buy them cars as "push presents" and diamond rings for mother's day.

If you're even considering being a stay-at-home mom, he's going to have to get a different job. Just because his degree as desirable as it once was doesn't mean he has to deliver pizzas.

 

[lilmisscaviar]

I agree with all the other posters. There is never a good time to have a child. I am on my fifth pregnancy, third child, and we have a mortgage to pay off so we are technically "in debt". However, my husband makes enough to pay our bills, the mortgage and food/diapers for the children so I can stay home with them, that way we don't have to pay for expensive day care. How we managed is that we don't splurge on things we don't need and most of my children's clothes were hand-me-downs from other moms who couldn't wait to get rid of them to remove the clutter in their house LOL. Most of them were very nice clothes, some of them didn't even look like they were worn but then they grow out of them so fast anyway. We also have a big garden and grow a good percentage of our own food and what we can't use right away we can to use over the winter. If you play your cards right, you can have a child on low income.

As for the whole thing about your parents, let me tell you that my family was disappointed with me when I first became pregnant. My mom's words to me were "I didn't think you'd ever have a baby." It was a shock to everyone at first, then once that shock went away shortly after my daughter was born, she became the light of my mother's life. I've found that most people usually are better to accept your first, then if you have a second they're like "Oh ok. She's pregnant again." Every baby after that though everyone's asking "When are they going to stop?"

 

[PnkPolkaDots]

Thank you for your input ladies!

After reading through everyone's responses, I really feel that it's just one of those things that I need to put thought into myself and figure out. I do want to clarify a few things that I don't think I explained too well though. I'm not trying to get anyone to change their opinion/feelings, but from reading posts I just wanted to explain a bit better.

- We don't live with my parents, but they own a rental property that is a small, two bedroom "grandma" type house. It happens to be next door to my parents, but it is its own lot and building. If I was still living my parents right now I wouldn't even be getting married.

- When I say we pay below market value.... market value according to Zillow would be $1,000/mo and we pay $900/mo. It isn't a huge difference, and once when I made a bit extra during the month I wrote my mom a rent check for $1,000... she refused to deposit it until I wrote her a new check for $900. When my parents first got the house 10+ years ago when I was in high school, they rented it out to a single mom (they didn't know her) and charged below market value. At that time I was shocked and told them they could get much more, but my mom said they didn't mind and were just happy that they were "in a place where they are able to help someone." I don't take this for granted and am very grateful, but my parents are the type that truly don't mind helping. If anyone's uncomfortable with the situation it's me.

- I never asked my parents for my school loan. I originally was denied my loan because I had to apply for a personal, not student loan (long story). I wasn’t going to do the program (I have a BA, it’s an extra endorsement) but when my mom asked me about it she insisted. It still makes me uncomfortable but I definitely didn’t ask. On that note, I’m considering stopping after this quarter anyway, so that would only leave me owing $1600, which I can pay back in about 2 months.

- OH's pizza delivery job... with tips he averages $22/hr. Until he gets a job in his field it's the most lucrative thing I can think of.



Thank you again ladies. I have some decisions to consider and make.

 

[PnkPolkaDots]

If you're even considering being a stay-at-home mom, he's going to have to get a different job.

I intend to substitute teach on the side, but yes, we are well aware of this.

 

[Cookie1979]

I thought maybe the in laws would react badly, but they seem over the moon. They used to look after our son 3 days a week and she did say straight away that they won't be looking after this one 3 days a week...we didn't ask them to so was abit put out by that. I have no idea how we are going to cope financially once the new baby is here and I have to go back to work, and for that reason I thought the in laws would have a problem with it, but they don't at all.

This is a new life and their grandchild you are talking about, they may well surprise you xx

 

[katherinegrey]

We had debts when we conceived both our children (still do) but it's 'manageable debt'. We pay a set amount each month and the rest is ours. We're paying our debts so I don't see them as an issue.
I think you should actually talk to your parents and explain. Say you'd both like a child after your wedding, however you know how much help they've given you and want their blessing.

 

[BabyCleo]

To me it sounds like you have every right to have a baby! I honestly don't see you as someone taking handouts left right and center. You both sound like you work hard, and have a good life ahead of you. Go for it!

 

[ellahopesky]

It's your decision to have a child, not theirs. As you say you're careful to live within your means, I don't see why they should have an issue with it - and ileven if they did, tough! It's your life, not theirs. Yes they've helped you out, but it wasn't under the condition that you wouldn't have kids! Do what you like. Tbh, nobody is ever ready financially for children, no matter how much you earn.

 

[cherryness]

I would say we arent in a great financial position , but I dont want to risk not having a family as honestly , in this world, if we waited we'd be waiting FOREVER for a perfect time. there is never a perfect time. we have student debt like everyone else and we dont own our house/rent. but we are comfortable. And to be honest it was two choices, go back and try make a career and miss that window for another child or have another and figure out the career later. I choose the latter. My husband has his career sorted, we are very happy in our marriage, and theres no immediate threat to his job etc. His mother, however, when she finds out... will probably judge the hell out of us... which is not fun but meh... its her issue if shes going to be a misery guts and not take joy from life. Shes a complete stress head though....But shes always been like that. my mum however, is always happy with whatever direction my life takes as long as im happy and secure. I say follow your heart and everything pans out in the end... might be stressful at points but thats life. It will ALWAYS have its mountains and valleys. If your parents cant be happy for you then thats their problem not yours! dont let their joy sapping ruin a special time in your life when it does come around if they do decide to get their judging hats on !