Is Having Kids Worth It in 2027?
My Honest Answer as a Mother
Is having kids worth it in 2027?
A few years ago, I don’t think this question would have sounded quite as normal as it does today.
Having children used to feel like one of those expected stages of life. You grow up. You build a career. Maybe you get married. Then children come somewhere along the way.
Now people are questioning that path much more openly.
And I understand why.
Children are expensive. Life itself is expensive. Careers demand more from us. We value independence. We want to travel, build businesses, enjoy our relationships and sometimes simply have enough time to sit quietly without somebody calling our name from another room.
Then there is everything happening around us. Economic uncertainty. Housing costs. Education. Childcare. Technology. Social media. Worries about what kind of world our children will grow up in.
Parenthood can look like a very expensive way to become permanently tired.
And as a mother of two, I can’t exactly tell you that impression is completely wrong.
There are days when I am tired.
There are days when I look at how much we spend on school, transport, food, clothes and all the unexpected little things children suddenly need and think, Wow!
There are days when I am trying to work, be a mother, be a wife, run a home and somehow still remember that I am also a person with my own plans.
So when somebody asks me,
“Knowing everything you know now, would you still choose to have children?”
My answer is yes.
Not because motherhood has made my life easier.
It has not.
I would choose it again because, for me, it has made my life feel fuller.
And there is a big difference between the two.
Why Are More People Questioning Parenthood?
I don’t think people have suddenly become selfish or stopped caring about family.
I think we have become more aware of what parenthood actually requires.
Previous generations didn’t always discuss the mental load, the career sacrifices, childcare costs, relationship changes or loss of personal time so openly.
Today we do.
We also live in a culture where independence is celebrated.
Build your career.
Travel.
Buy the house.
Start the business.
Protect your peace.
Enjoy your money.
Have experiences.
Don’t settle.
And I do understand the appeal of all of those things.
I value my own independence too.
I enjoy working and building something for myself. I have goals that have absolutely nothing to do with being someone’s mother.
I like having choices.
I like earning my own money.
I want to travel.
I want to experience things.
Becoming a mother didn’t suddenly delete that woman.
But children definitely changed the amount of freedom I have to pursue those things whenever and however I want.
That is the part we should not romanticize.
You can’t simply decide on Friday evening that you are disappearing somewhere for the weekend.
Every financial decision has more people attached to it.
Your time is not entirely your own.
Even when you are working, part of your brain is remembering school activities, meals, uniforms, appointments, things that need buying and approximately 57 other things nobody else seems to know are happening.
So I don’t think the question “Are kids worth it?” is a ridiculous one.
I actually think it is a responsible question.
The mistake is, expecting a simple answer.
The Financial Reality of Raising Children in 2027
Let’s get the obvious part out of the way.
Children cost money.
A lot of it.
And the spending doesn’t stop after the baby stage.
The costs simply change names.
First it might be nappies, formula, baby equipment and childcare.
Then suddenly it is school fees, transport, uniforms, books, activities, shoes they somehow outgrow almost immediately, birthday parties, meals, devices, medical expenses and a hundred tiny purchases that rarely look significant individually.
Add them together and it is another story.
I recently wrote about this in The Real Cost of Raising a Child in 2026, because I wanted to look honestly at what family life actually costs beyond the cute baby clothes and birthday photographs.
And going into 2027, I don’t see money becoming a smaller part of the decision.
For many couples, “Do we want a child?” is no longer the only question.
It is also:
Can we afford childcare?
Can we afford a larger home?
Can one of us reduce our working hours if necessary?
What happens to our savings?
Can we still travel?
How much will education cost?
What happens if one income disappears?
Those are legitimate questions.
I don’t believe anyone should be shamed for looking at their financial situation before having children.
Love is essential.
But love doesn’t pay a school bill.
At the same time, I wouldn’t reduce the decision to a spreadsheet either.
Because if I looked only at what my children cost me financially, the calculation would completely miss what they have added to my life.
And that part is much harder to put into numbers.
What Nobody Tells About Becoming a Parent
Before children, people warn you about sleep.
“You will never sleep again.”
We have all heard that one.
What people talk about less is how parenthood occupies your mind.
It is not only doing things for children.
It is remembering them.
Planning them.
Anticipating them.
Worrying about things that haven’t happened yet.
Wondering whether you are doing enough.
Wondering whether you are doing too much.
Trying to raise good human beings while occasionally questioning whether you even know what you are doing yourself.
The mental load can be enormous.
Then there is the guilt.
Working mothers know one version of this particularly well.
When you are working, part of you wonders if you should be giving your children more time.
When you are spending time with your children, another part remembers the work waiting for you.
You can somehow feel guilty in two places at once.
I have had periods where my own work needed to happen around family life rather than the other way around.
School mornings happen whether I have deadlines or not.
Children need you whether a client needs something urgently or not.
There are evenings when your energy has already been used by everyone else and only then do you finally get time for your own work.
That is reality.
Motherhood also changes your identity
For a while, it is very easy to become:
Someone’s mother.
Someone’s wife.
The person who remembers everything.
The person who gets things organised.
And somewhere inside all of that, the woman you were before motherhood can become quieter.
I think finding her again matters.
I don’t want my entire identity to be “Mum.”
I still want my own work.
My own ideas.
My own achievements.
My own income.
My own interests.
My own future.
And strangely, having children has made me value those parts of myself even more.
And yes, children change marriage
I don’t believe having children fixes a relationship.
They absolutely should not be brought into a marriage to save it.
If anything, children can expose weaknesses that were much easier to ignore when there were only two people.
You are both tired.
There is less spontaneous time together.
There are more responsibilities.
Money becomes more complicated.
Someone usually feels they are doing more.
Romance can easily become
Did you pay that bill?
Who is picking them up?
Did you pack the school bag?
Not exactly a love story.
But there is another side that I have experienced too.
Children created new seasons in our marriage.
There is always something changing.
Someone starting school.
Someone learning something.
A birthday.
A family trip.
A problem we are trying to solve.
A funny thing one of the children said.
A future we are planning for together.
Without children, maybe my marriage would have been wonderful anyway. I can’t know the alternative life I never lived.
But when I imagine that version of my own future, I sometimes wonder whether, after enough years, our life might have started feeling predictable.
Work.
Home.
Weekend.
Travel.
Repeat.
Children definitely didn’t make marriage simpler.
But for us, they brought another dimension to the life we were building together.
The Things Money Can’t Measure
This is where the “Are kids worth it?” calculation becomes almost impossible.
Because how do you measure the return on an ordinary Tuesday morning?
How much is it worth when your child tells you something completely ridiculous and you laugh about it hours later?
What is the value of watching a tiny person who once depended on you for absolutely everything slowly develop opinions, humor, confidence and a personality of their own?
How do you price the first day of school?
A sleepy hug?
Their excitement when you come home?
Watching them master something they struggled with?
Hearing them repeat something you once taught them?
These aren ot dramatic movie moments.
Most of parenting is not.
Most of it happens inside extremely ordinary days.
Making food.
Finding missing socks.
School runs.
Homework.
Baths.
Arguments.
Random conversations.
Trying to get everyone out of the house on time.
And somehow those ordinary days become your life.
That is the strange thing about parenthood.
Sometimes the things that feel repetitive while you are living them become exactly the things you know you will miss later.
I don’t always stop and appreciate every moment.
No real parent does.
Sometimes I just want everyone to go to sleep.
But every now and then I look at my children and realize:
This stage will end.
The little voices change.
The hand that automatically reaches for yours eventually stops reaching quite so often.
They become more independent.
And suddenly you understand why parents can complain about how exhausting something is while simultaneously wishing time would slow down.
Two things can be true at once.
Parenthood can be exhausting.
And you can still be incredibly grateful for it.
Is Life Better With or Without Kids?
I don’t think there is one honest answer to this question.
And I don’t think there should be.
There are people without children who live incredibly meaningful, connected, interesting lives.
They build careers.
They create things.
They have strong marriages.
They travel.
They contribute to their communities.
They love nieces, nephews, friends and extended families.
They enjoy their freedom.
And they are genuinely happy.
Not having children doesn’t automatically create an empty life.
Just as having children doesn’t automatically create a meaningful one.
Children cannot be responsible for giving an adult their entire reason for existing.
That is too much weight to put on them.
What I can tell you is what is true for me.
If I imagine having all the independence I wanted, earning well, travelling, building a successful career and achieving my goals but never becoming a mother, I think eventually I would have wondered:
Is this it?
Another promotion.
Another client.
Another purchase.
Another destination.
Another year.
Then another.
I know some people would feel completely satisfied with that life.
I don’t think I would.
That doesn’t make my choice better.
It just makes it mine. And that is probably one of the most important things I have learned about this whole debate.
You shouldn’t have children because society says you are supposed to.
But you also shouldn’t avoid having them simply because modern life tells us maximum freedom is the ultimate goal.
Freedom has value.So does commitment.
Achievement has value. So does belonging.
Independence has value. So does being deeply needed by another human being.
We get to decide which combination makes life meaningful for us.
And I think this is also why we should be careful when looking at other people’s lives from the outside.
Someone may appear to have everything sorted. A good income, travel, nice things, freedom and a comfortable lifestyle.
And still be quietly longing for something we know nothing about.
Some couples desperately want children and struggle to have them.
Others actively choose a life without children.
Others spend years unsure.
What someone shows the world and what they privately hope for can be very different things.
So I don’t think any of us can look at another family, couple or individual and decide whether their life is complete.
Would I Still Choose Motherhood If I Could Start Again?
Yes.
I would still choose to have children. Even knowing what I know now.
Knowing the sleepless nights.
Knowing the expenses.
Knowing the worry.
Knowing how much planning school and family life requires.
Knowing that sometimes my own work has to wait.
Knowing that there will be days when I desperately want five minutes where nobody needs anything from me.
I would still choose this life. Because for me, I think something would always have felt missing otherwise.
I could have built my career.
I could have earned more.
Travelled more.
Had more freedom.
Made more decisions based entirely on what I wanted.
From the outside, that life might have looked very successful. But I know myself.
After enough years, I think some of those achievements would have started feeling a little empty.
You reach one goal and immediately create another.
You visit one place and plan the next.
You earn an amount of money that once seemed exciting, and eventually it becomes normal.
I sometimes think my marriage might have felt different too.
Not necessarily unhappy.
Just more predictable.
The same two people moving through similar routines year after year.
Children interrupted that routine completely.
Sometimes very loudly.
But they also brought movement into our lives.
New stages.
New memories.
New worries.
New things to celebrate.
They made ordinary days matter in a way I couldn’t have understood before becoming a mother.
A school morning.
A birthday.
A conversation in the car.
Helping with something they don’t understand.
Watching them become themselves.
Trying to give them a childhood they will one day look back on warmly.
Those things became part of what makes my own life feel worthwhile.
And perhaps this is the part that is hardest to explain to someone deciding whether to have children.
Before becoming a parent, you can understand the sacrifices intellectually.
You know you will lose sleep.
You know children cost money.
You know you will have less freedom.
Those things are easy to imagine.
What is almost impossible to imagine beforehand is what you receive emotionally in return.
Not every day.
Not every minute.
But across the years, I value my independence. I still have ambitions.
There are many things I want to achieve for myself.
Motherhood didn’t replace those things.
It added another layer of meaning to them.
Now when I work hard, part of what motivates me is the life we are building as a family.
When I think about the future, I don’t see only myself in it.
And if I had achieved everything I wanted but had no children to come home to, I think eventually I would have asked myself
What was all of this for?
Again, that is my answer.
It doesn’t have to be yours.
But if I could go back, knowing exactly how demanding parenthood would be, I would still choose them.
I would choose them again.
So, Is Having Kids Worth It in 2027?
If you have reached this article because you are trying to decide whether you should have children, I wish I could give you a formula.
Income + relationship + age + career + freedom = answer.
Unfortunately, human lives don’t work like that.
Having children will cost you something.
Money.
Time.
Sleep.
Spontaneity.
Parts of your freedom.
Possibly career opportunities.
And sometimes a version of yourself that you were very comfortable being.
Anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t describing parenthood honestly.
But “What will children cost me?” is only half of the question.
The other half is “What kind of life do I want to build?“
Not next year.
Not during the baby stage.
Not while everyone else’s lives are looking exciting on Instagram.
Think further ahead.
Ten years.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Imagine both lives.
Imagine the freedom of not having children.
Really imagine it.
The quiet.
The flexibility.
The money.
The travel.
The career opportunities.
And if that picture makes you feel peaceful and excited about your future, pay attention to that feeling.
Then imagine the other life.
Children around the table.
School years.
Noise.
Expenses.
Teenagers.
Family holidays that probably don’t go according to plan.
Adult children eventually walking through your front door with entire lives of their own.
And pay attention to what that picture makes you feel too.
Neither future is guaranteed to make you happy.
Neither future is morally better.
And parenthood should never be something you are pressured into because somebody tells you that you will regret it otherwise. But don’t make the decision based only on how difficult the first few years look either.
Parenthood is not only raising a baby.
You are building a relationship with another human being that changes across your lifetime.
So, is having kids worth it in 2027?
For me? Completely.
Not because my children made life perfect.
Not because motherhood made every day happy.
And definitely not because having children is the only way to live a meaningful life.
It is worth it because when I look at everything motherhood has asked from me, and everything my children have added to my life, I know which side of that equation matters more to me.
They made my life harder in many ways.
They also made it richer.
And knowing everything I know now, I would still choose this beautiful, expensive, exhausting, noisy life.
Every time!
Frequently Asked Questions About Having Kids
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