Is there a right time to have a child?

There was a time I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a father.

I'm an only child, and that, of course, has its own baggage. Not that my parents did anything, in particular, to feed into that, but I think it simply comes with the territory. I only had to worry about myself and what was next in my life.

I'm also Hispanic, and there are certain cultural expectations that you follow the "standard" path: get married and start a family. There are many cultures that follow this, but I'm only speaking from my perspective. Again, here my parents didn't really emphasize that with me – I also happen to be a third(ish) generation Texan and grew up in a fairly suburban area – but when you look at the research, young Hispanics have children at much younger ages than their non-Hispanic counterparts. An article from the Pew Research Center states that "More than one-fourth (26%) of Hispanic females are mothers by the time they reach age 19," and "they also marry at younger ages. Some 15% of Latinos ages 16 to 25 are married." I would have been a terrible father in my twenties, much less my teens!

There's a subsection of the internet that says something to the effect of "You should have kids in your twenties," and "Don't wait!" And for some (many?) people, this may be absolutely true, but I don't think blanket statements like these are helpful. Now that we are parents, we know there's no way to ever truly be ready to be a parent, but you can certainly be more prepared with some effort and experience.

I struggled with my mental health in my twenties. Going to college was my first real experience dealing with mental health issues. While I wouldn't say I was a "great" student in high school, I was smart enough to skate by, take some AP and dual credit classes, get some scholarship money, and finish somewhere in the middle of my class rankings. College kicked my ass – not necessarily from the education perspective, but certainly from a pressure and independence perspective.

One thing I didn't quite learn well enough before college was how to manage my own time (something I'm much better at now but still struggle with), and this came back to bite me time and time again. And this, of course, affected my grades, my preparation in lessons and ensembles (I was a music education major), and, in turn, my mental health.

After graduating, we moved to Chicago for my then-fiancé to work on her doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology. This move came with its own challenges as well: moving out of state, being away from family and friends, making new friends, working jobs unrelated to music, doing adulting, and figuring out life. It was at this time that I started my journey with therapy in earnest. It took me two tries to find a therapist I connected with (he was a musician!), and it's still one of the best things I did for my future self.

My late twenties brought me back to Texas to earnestly pursue my current career through more schooling, my first real job in music education, and then onward to my current conducting positions. All of this took a lot of time (now that I'm a parent, I can laugh about how "busy" I thought I was), energy, and growing up. I share all of this background to say that I was not prepared to be a parent in my twenties, nor my early thirties.

I mused to my wife the other day that I think this was the perfect age (for me, at least) to become a parent. Sure, I'm older than others with a similarly aged child, and I'm sure at some point I may be confused for my child's grandparent, but my wife and I have lived a lot of life and have had a chance to experience some really great moments in life. It is because of this I feel that we have more flexibility in our careers and can dedicate more time to spend with our child. I know not everyone is in a position to do this or would choose the same setup that we have. There are so many permutations of what a child's life could look like that I won't even pretend to cover that here, but this is how we choose to live our life now.

This is a lot of words just to say that everyone's situation is different and there's no perfect way to do parenting. We're all doing the best we can, and sometimes that's all we can muster. It's all a work in progress – let's enjoy the wild ride.

Thanks for reading.