I don't want children but worry my husband is getting broody

A 27-year-old woman enjoys her lifestyle too much to want children, but worries her husband is getting broody. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

The dilemma I am 27 years old and have been very happily married for five years. We always talked about having a family once my husband got a permanent job (up until last year he was completing his PhD) and, although I never felt broody, I always assumed that would come as I got older. However, although I do not dislike children, I increasingly have no desire for my own. Since the arrival of my nephew two years ago, my husband has become increasingly broody. I know I?am selfish, but I enjoy my comfortable life with plenty of time and disposable income to do the things I love.

My husband is loving and supportive, and I am not afraid he would leave me, but he would be really disappointed.? I can talk to him about most things, but I don't feel I can be honest with him about this, as it feels as if I tricked him.

Do I wait and hope I get broody, be honest with my husband and face his disappointment, or have children and risk being an awful mother?

Mariella replies How much we take for granted! Reading your letter brought to mind the millions of women across the globe for whom the wherewithal to make such choices remains a distant dream. For so many of our sex having a choice about pregnancy is as alien a possibility as discovering life on Mars. It's why Melinda Gates is charging around the universe offering her wisdom, and more helpfully her money, to long-suffering sisters whose short lives are punctuated by carrying children in double figures before they finally keel over. Imagine how much less you'd be enjoying your pleasingly self-indulgent lifestyle if every time you had sex with your husband (his choice, not yours) meant producing another child. A child whose chances of surviving into adulthood were as slim as yours of surviving each new gestation.

Therefore it was with mixed feelings that I read your letter. On the one hand I'm delighted that the rights we've been fighting tooth and nail for over the past century are finally offering women alternatives. 20th-century suffragettes would have been boggle-eyed with wonder at the lives we live now, unfettered from motherhood, dependency, domesticity and drudgery. Only 100 short years ago our fates, family size and government were entirely determined by the men we married. So why is that it I'm not waving my bra around my head and chanting "Germaine, Germaine" at this latest happy news from the frontline of 21st-century feminine freedom?

Instead, I'm anxious about the absence of profundity in your decision-making. You give me no indication of the "things you love", but they appear to centre on disposable income. Deciding whether or not to have kids is, happily, your prerogative. But to treat it so lightly, to squander the extraordinary gift women alone have been given, because you're enjoying your present "lifestyle" seems a hollow victory for those aforementioned campaigners for women's dignity and rights.

Whether or not you embrace motherhood isn't at the crux of my misgivings. I'm more worried about what's driving your life choices. Enjoying yourself is very important, but if it's solely predicated on your spending power then you are sentencing yourself to a puddle-deep experience on this earth.

You're 27! I saw a magazine cover the other day picturing a baby, newly born, with the headline "only 116 years to go". On this basis you've got another 70 years of marriage ahead. Discussing and making choices about how your relationship might evolve is at the core of its survival. You say your husband won't leave you and possibly you're right, but that doesn't make it any less necessary to work towards conclusions together. With the potential of seven further decades to go, it's quite a challenge to simply spin it out "having fun".

Neither should you predicate having a family on a whimsical emotion like feeling "broody". Plenty of women don't find themselves consumed by that urgent desire until so late into their fertility that it's too late. You may conclude parenting isn't for you, but what kind of mother you'll be is a mystery only revealed when you take that miniscule bundle of life you've created into your arms. Don't undervalue the choices you now have, or take for granted the happiness you presently enjoy in your relationship. To that end, communicating your fears is every bit as vital as having fun.

f you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow Mariella on Twitter @mariellaf1

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