Lately, I’ve been thinking about babies in romance novels. Not as plot twists or conveniently timed disruptions—though a surprise pregnancy can still complicate things in interesting ways—but as a future a character chooses with clarity and hope.
I am, generally speaking, pro-baby. I believe families are good for individuals, for communities, and for the world. They stretch our perspectives, connect us across generations, and remind us that intimacy does not stop with romantic love. Families and the support they offer can be a lifeline like no other, and those who have lived the longest often understand that best.
That belief does not mean I think everyone should have children. It does not mean I think people who do not—whether by choice or circumstance—are missing something essential. I believe in autonomy. I am a feminist, pro-choice, pro-career, and fully committed to the idea that people deserve to shape their lives in ways that are right for them. At the same time, I believe the desire for children can be powerful, complicated, and deeply human. We do not need to sideline that desire to prove we have evolved.
One of the great achievements of modern romance is its ability to imagine a wide range of futures. Some characters do not want children. Others do, but cannot have them. Still others feel unsure, ambivalent, grieving, or completely content without them. That narrative freedom is a gift, and the genre is stronger for it.
Within that expansive framework, I want to celebrate the stories where a character wants a child or a family and is allowed to want it without defensiveness or apology. These desires are not included as shorthand for virtue or domesticity. They are treated as emotional truths, shaped by personality and circumstance, and no less complex than the decision to fall in love. The best of these books do not reduce parenthood to an epilogue. They allow the question of family to live inside the story—as a hope, a risk, and a choice.
I am especially drawn to romances where the desire for family exists alongside ambition, humor, sexuality, frustration, and joy. In these stories, the longing for a baby does not flatten the heroine into a type. It deepens her. And when a male character imagines becoming a parent, he does so not out of duty, but with thoughtfulness and care—sometimes even awe.
These books are not sentimental. They are specific. They acknowledge that children do not simplify relationships or resolve tension. They complicate the narrative in ways that make the romance more textured and emotionally earned.
Romance as a genre has moved away from the era in which a baby was simply the last stop on a woman’s journey. That evolution was necessary. The genre needed to shake off assumptions and open space for characters to want something else—or nothing at all. That freedom matters, and I value it.
Still, the freedom to choose should also include the freedom to revisit familiar hopes with new insight. When a story about a woman who wants a family is shaped by character, not convention, it does not repeat the old mold. It reclaims it. It becomes something grounded in agency, not assumption.
And when that character becomes a mother—whether she stays at home, works full-time, adopts, or co-parents with a queer partner or two—her story deserves our admiration. We should celebrate these characters not because they conform to tradition, but because they show how many ways motherhood can look, and how much strength and grace it takes to pursue it with intention. These are not side arcs or secondary victories. They are part of what it means to imagine a life fully.
So yes, I want more stories in which the decision to have a child is treated with the same emotional weight as the decision to say “I love you.” I do not want to return to a narrower vision of the genre. I want to keep expanding it.
Not every character needs to dream of family. But when they do, that dream deserves to be taken seriously—and told well.
The post the ask@AAR: What do we think about babies these days? appeared first on All About Romance.
