What gives people permission to ask if and when you're having a baby? Source/ Pinterest

The question after the question: Why does marriage still start a public countdown to children?

We've rewritten almost every rule of marriage. So why, post-wedding, does your reproductive timeline seem to become public property?

27 OCTOBER 2026

by Jes Salter

What gives people permission to ask if and when you're having a baby? Source: Pinterest

It's one of those questions that leaves you totally blindsided. It's so incredibly rude and intrusive, not to mention deeply personal, but you've got a mouthful of mince pie and you know it's just not worth letting rip at a family Christmas party. It is, of course: when are you having children?

This is the question you get on repeat almost as soon as you’ve got married. The lighthearted comments about wedding dresses and the ceremony - both things that are visible and public - morph suddenly and without permission into something much more intimate.

Some people truly mean it as a kind and loving inquiry. They care about you and your partner, about your marriage, and feel invested in whatever future you’re eyeing up. And if it’s the right person, asking at the right time (not at a party), with the right intentions, then perhaps you do want the chance to talk about it.

But there are others who seem to fling questions about your fertility - and sex life - around as if it’s a natural follow-on from chat about the weather, or the horrendous traffic on the A1.

The trouble is that the woman standing with her mouth agape doesn’t always have a simple, casual answer. She may have been trying for eighteen months, tracking her cycle between menu tastings and seating plans. She may have frozen her eggs. She may want a few years of marriage first, a stretch of travel and late dinners and a white sofa. She may have decided not to have children, and now faces a decade of justifying that choice across buffet tables. Or she may still not be quite sure. Every one of those answers is private.

It's one of those questions that leaves you totally blindsided. It's so incredibly rude and intrusive, not to mention deeply personal, but you've got a mouthful of mince pie and you know it's just not worth letting rip at a family Christmas party. It is, of course: when are you having children?

This is the question you get on repeat almost as soon as you’ve got married. The lighthearted comments about wedding dresses and the ceremony - both things that are visible and public - morph suddenly and without permission into something much more intimate.

Some people truly mean it as a kind and loving inquiry. They care about you and your partner, about your marriage, and feel invested in whatever future you’re eyeing up. And if it’s the right person, asking at the right time (not at a party), with the right intentions, then perhaps you do want the chance to talk about it.

But there are others who seem to fling questions about your fertility - and sex life - around as if it’s a natural follow-on from chat about the weather, or the horrendous traffic on the A1.

The trouble is that the woman standing with her mouth agape doesn’t always have a simple, casual answer. She may have been trying for eighteen months, tracking her cycle between menu tastings and seating plans. She may have frozen her eggs. She may want a few years of marriage first, a stretch of travel and late dinners and a white sofa. She may have decided not to have children, and now faces a decade of justifying that choice across buffet tables. Or she may still not be quite sure. Every one of those answers is private.

“Others seem to fling questions about your fertility - and sex life - around as if it’s a natural follow-on from chat about the weather, or the horrendous traffic on the A1.”

"I'm sorry to say it doesn't disappear when you've had your first, or even second, child" Source: Pinterest

With the NHS estimating that around one in seven couples may have difficulty conceiving, there’s every chance that an apparently harmless question lands somewhere painful. But no one should need a painful reason to keep the answer to themselves.

It’s a bizarre hangover from a time when a woman’s life was expected to follow a particular course: marry, take her husband’s name, perhaps give up her job and have children fairly quickly. Now we have the freedom to pick and mix. Marry, don’t marry. Live together first. Keep your surname. Question when or whether you want kids. We’ve become used to couples making their own decisions about so much of married life. Yet the baby question persists, as though this part is still up for discussion.

The old timetable has shifted, too. In England and Wales, the median age for women entering an opposite-sex marriage was 33 in 2023, up from 29.4 in 1999. Meanwhile, 2024 saw the fertility rate fall for the third consecutive year to 1.41 children per woman, the lowest since comparable records began. Yet whatever decisions we make, getting married still seems to give everyone permission to ask about your next step.

I was lucky on lots of counts. I already knew I wanted children (I actually wasn’t that fussed about getting married first), and I was relatively young, at 31. Mainly, though, I had a big, publicly-stated bucket-list goal to achieve six months after I got married: the New York Marathon. It gave me an easy get out of jail card to that question: who in their right mind would attempt that while pregnant? A few months after the race, I was pregnant. I was able to announce it (something I found excruciating, actually) a year after our wedding.

While I had a comparatively short time to field ‘the question’, I’ve watched friends wrestle with whether they want babies at all. Others live with conditions such as endometriosis and worries about what that might mean for conceiving. For some, the absence of a little blue line on the pregnancy test is a horrible, monthly disappointment. All while fielding this innocent-sounding, but terribly laden question: “When is the baby coming?”

I shudder to think that maybe I was a part of this before my own wedding: who did I ask that awful question, thinking it was permitted chit-chat? I don’t know. If it was you, I apologise profusely and blame inexperience. I do know that after fielding just under a year of uninvited comments, I never again asked another woman unless she brought it up herself. The same goes for asking a stranger over dinner if she has children; it feels too invasive and personal. Odds are that if she does, the fact will slip in soon enough.

I'm sorry to say it doesn't disappear when you've had your first, or even second, child. I remember being in the fog of what I now recognise as postnatal depression, barely holding it together, with well-wishers asking me when there would be another baby. I remember not knowing how to get to the next nap time without crumpling, never mind any further than that.

Marriage has modernised in so many respects; it would be lovely if this question caught up. Those keen to make conversation can feel safe asking about the honeymoon. Those on the receiving end of unwanted questions could, if they have more nerve than me, try the one-liner I kept formulating in my head. “And you, Margaret, how’s your sex life?”

With the NHS estimating that around one in seven couples may have difficulty conceiving, there’s every chance that an apparently harmless question lands somewhere painful. But no one should need a painful reason to keep the answer to themselves.

It’s a bizarre hangover from a time when a woman’s life was expected to follow a particular course: marry, take her husband’s name, perhaps give up her job and have children fairly quickly. Now we have the freedom to pick and mix. Marry, don’t marry. Live together first. Keep your surname. Question when or whether you want kids. We’ve become used to couples making their own decisions about so much of married life. Yet the baby question persists, as though this part is still up for discussion.

The old timetable has shifted, too. In England and Wales, the median age for women entering an opposite-sex marriage was 33 in 2023, up from 29.4 in 1999. Meanwhile, 2024 saw the fertility rate fall for the third consecutive year to 1.41 children per woman, the lowest since comparable records began. Yet whatever decisions we make, getting married still seems to give everyone permission to ask about your next step.

"Marriage has modernised in so many respects; it would be lovely if this question caught up." Source: Pinterest

Why should marriage make the rest of your life private property? Source: Pinterest

I was lucky on lots of counts. I already knew I wanted children (I actually wasn’t that fussed about getting married first), and I was relatively young, at 31. Mainly, though, I had a big, publicly-stated bucket-list goal to achieve six months after I got married: the New York Marathon. It gave me an easy get out of jail card to that question: who in their right mind would attempt that while pregnant? A few months after the race, I was pregnant. I was able to announce it (something I found excruciating, actually) a year after our wedding.

While I had a comparatively short time to field ‘the question’, I’ve watched friends wrestle with whether they want babies at all. Others live with conditions such as endometriosis and worries about what that might mean for conceiving. For some, the absence of a little blue line on the pregnancy test is a horrible, monthly disappointment. All while fielding this innocent-sounding, but terribly laden question: “When is the baby coming?”

I shudder to think that maybe I was a part of this before my own wedding: who did I ask that awful question, thinking it was permitted chit-chat? I don’t know. If it was you, I apologise profusely and blame inexperience. I do know that after fielding just under a year of uninvited comments, I never again asked another woman unless she brought it up herself. The same goes for asking a stranger over dinner if she has children; it feels too invasive and personal. Odds are that if she does, the fact will slip in soon enough.

I'm sorry to say it doesn't disappear when you've had your first, or even second, child. I remember being in the fog of what I now recognise as postnatal depression, barely holding it together, with well-wishers asking me when there would be another baby. I remember not knowing how to get to the next nap time without crumpling, never mind any further than that.

Marriage has modernised in so many respects; it would be lovely if this question caught up. Those keen to make conversation can feel safe asking about the honeymoon. Those on the receiving end of unwanted questions could, if they have more nerve than me, try the one-liner I kept formulating in my head. “And you, Margaret, how’s your sex life?”