100 Questions to Ask Before Having a Baby
Twenty questions for two people deciding whether, and when, to have a baby: money, leave, nights, childcare, careers, faith, both sets of parents, and what either of you would want if it did not go to plan. Better spread across several conversations than forced into one evening.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
When you picture us with a baby, what time of day are you picturing?
Most people picture a weekend morning. Nobody pictures four in the morning on a Tuesday in February, which is where the actual disagreement lives. Ask what the picture leaves out and you get an honest start.
- 2
What is the real reason you want one now rather than in three years?
Listen for whose timeline it is. Answers driven by an age, a parent's health, a friend group or a lease are legitimate, but they are different from wanting a child, and naming which one it is saves a lot later.
- 3
What does an ordinary week look like with a newborn in it: who is where, and when?
Force it into hours rather than feelings. This is the question where an assumption surfaces that one of you will simply be at home, and it is far cheaper to find that out now.
- 4
What do the first twelve months cost us, and which account does it come out of?
The recurring costs matter more than the pram. Childcare, a bigger car, lost income and the month before leave starts are the four lines people leave out of the estimate.
- 5
How much leave can each of us actually take, and what does our employer do in practice?
Policy and practice differ, and the gap is visible in what happened to the last person on your team who took it. Ask each other to check rather than guess, because both of you are probably guessing high.
- 6
Who gets up in the night, and how do we decide that fairly?
Night duty is the single biggest source of resentment in the first year, and it is usually settled by whoever wakes first rather than by agreement. Deciding the rule while you are both rested is the whole point.
- 7
Whose work slows down, and for how long?
Somebody's career takes the hit, and pretending otherwise means it lands on whoever earns less by default. Ask what would make that person feel it was a shared decision rather than an assumption.
- 8
Do we want a nursery or a grandparent, and what strings come with the free option?
Family childcare is rarely free in practice: it buys influence over feeding, discipline and how often they visit. Ask whether the person being volunteered has been asked.
- 9
How close do we want to live to family, and would either of us move for it?
This is the question that quietly decides where you spend the next decade. Watch for one of you treating a move as obvious and the other treating it as unthinkable.
- 10
What did your parents do that you want to copy, and what will you not repeat?
People parent from memory before they parent from principle. The list of things they will not repeat is more useful than the list they admired, because that is where they will react hardest.
- 11
How should a child be handled at three, and at thirteen?
Splitting it by age stops the abstract argument about strictness. The teenage answer reveals whether one of you thinks in rules and the other in conversations, which is worth knowing before it matters.
- 12
What faith or tradition, if any, are we raising them in?
This is often left vague because it feels far away, then decided by whichever family moves first on naming, baptism or schooling. Agree what you are comfortable with before either set of grandparents asks.
- 13
What do we do about screens, and from what age?
An unglamorous question that produces daily friction. If you disagree, the practical version is who gets the final say when one of you is exhausted and the other is not there.
- 14
Does our home work for this, and if not, do we stay, extend or move?
Space, stairs, damp and the commute all get reassessed once a baby is coming. Pin down the trigger point now, because deciding it while sleep deprived and mid-mortgage is worse.
- 15
How would we handle it if getting pregnant took two years?
Fertility is uncertain for plenty of couples, and treatment is expensive, slow and hard on a relationship. Agreeing in advance how far you would go, and what you would tell family, spares you deciding it under pressure.
- 16
If a scan raised something serious, how would we work through that decision, and who would we tell?
There is no right answer here and it is not a conversation to have for the first time in a hospital corridor. What you are looking for is whether you could make a decision together and who you would each want in the room. The medical detail belongs with your doctor or midwife.
- 17
What would we need if our child had a disability that lasted their whole life?
Ask it plainly. The useful part is practical: who would reduce hours, what support exists where you live, and whether either of you has assumptions about family stepping in. Bring the specifics to a doctor or a support organisation rather than settling them between you.
- 18
What does our relationship need in that first year so that it survives the first year?
Couples plan for the baby and not for each other. Name two or three concrete things: a night out, one morning each of unbroken sleep, a rule about how you speak to each other when neither of you has slept.
- 19
How many are we talking about, and how far apart?
People agree on having a baby and discover much later that one meant one and the other meant three. Spacing matters too, because it decides how long the childcare bill runs and when either career can restart.
- 20
If one of us changes their mind about any of this, what happens then?
The hardest question and the right closer. What you want is a commitment to say it out loud early rather than let it turn into years of quiet resentment or a decision made by delay.
Working through these together
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
How to run the conversation
How to run the conversation
- 1Split the list across three or four evenings. Money and childcare in one sitting, family and faith in another. Doing all twenty at once turns it into an argument about stamina.
- 2Answer the money questions with actual figures in front of you: payslips, the childcare costs where you live, and what your leave policies say in writing.
- 3Write down what you each said about nights, work and childcare. These are the three that get remembered differently later.
- 4Leave the fertility and scan questions for a calm evening with nothing after it, and do not start them late.
- 5Revisit the whole list if anything large changes: a job, a move, a diagnosis, a parent needing care.
The questions couples skip
The questions couples skip
- Who does the invisible work: appointments, forms, remembering the vaccination schedule, knowing which size clothes fit. It rarely splits evenly and it is rarely discussed.
- What happens to friendships and to time alone. Both shrink, and the person who loses more of theirs usually did not expect to.
- Whether either of you expects the other to stop drinking, travelling for work, or playing sport for a year.
- What you would do if one of you found the first year much harder than expected, including who you would tell and how quickly.
If you disagree
If you disagree
- Separate the disagreements about timing from the disagreements about wanting it at all. The first is negotiable and the second usually is not.
- A no that is really a not yet should come with what would need to change. A no with no conditions attached is an answer, and it deserves to be treated as one.
- Do not settle a fundamental difference by having the baby and hoping. It is the one area where the person who was talked into it does not quietly come round.
- If you keep circling the same argument, a counsellor who works with couples is a reasonable next step and not a sign of failure.