#206: Hosting parties, having babies, being “original”

Jan 26, 2025

Good morning!

Welcome back to Dear Baby. Today I’ll be answering three reader questions on friendship, babies, and writing. The first is about learning to be more social (and throw parties) as an adult who doesn’t have tons of friends; the second is about knowing when you’re ready to have kids (this answer includes a lightly cringe entry I discovered from my journal titled “AFFIRMATIONS,” which includes all the reasons I decided I was ready, lol); and the third is about whether “originality” is a worthy preoccupation as a writer or artist, and how I navigate the fear of saying what’s already been said. Thank you for tip-top questions as always! You can submit more here or call 802-404-BABY.

Also, thank you so much for all your incredible children’s book recommendations in the comments last Friday. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Rec of the Week spark so much input! Blown away.

1. On throwing parties

“Dear Baby, I’ve been thinking about this a lot since you last shared that article from The Atlantic about Americans needing to party more. Excluding family holidays and similar, I think I’ve been to three parties in my entire life (F29), all like 10 years ago. I had a really difficult time socially in college which is when that culture sort of...appears out of thin air? And now I live in a small town where I don't have any friends my age. I've been lucky to have developed friendly acquaintances around town who are funny and kind, but they are all middle aged and parents (no shade, they just have different priorities…or do they?). I'm an introvert and fine with that, but I feel like if I told someone like my boyfriend I wanted to change things up—proclaimed ‘I WILL HOST PARTIES NOW’—he would tell me I'm trying to be a different person than I am. I don't feel the need to be a different person; I just long for the connection that parties are evidence of (at least the parties I’m interested in). But being a person who hosts parties feels like a catch-22: I have to have people to invite to them. This is related to so many other things you've talked or written about like friendship, loneliness, ‘am I doomed?’, etc. And I guess I am asking another version of ‘am I doomed?’”

Two things I’ve learned about friendship over the last decade of writing about the topic is that there are people looking for friendship at every age and season of life, and there are always more of them than you realize. I say season because friendship isn’t always linear—a rich, fulfilling social life during high school, college, or any era of your life doesn’t guarantee the same later on when you’ve changed priorities, moved to a different city, broken up with someone, had a baby, or gone through any number of common shifts in adulthood. I’m sure you know this on some level, and I respect that your question is distinct from a “everyone is hanging out without me” social spiral, but I wanted to first establish that your longing for connection is ordinary (in a good way) and above all, not doomed.

You refer to yourself as an introvert and you seem to assume this means your desire to throw or attend parties is somehow false. When you imagined your boyfriend’s judgement, I was reminded of the Jungian theory that everyone in our dreams is just a version of ourselves: Do you really think he would respond that way, or is he just a stand in for your own inner critic? Either way, I think this is a limiting way to see yourself. I’ve spoken before about my wariness of introversion as a social litmus test; I think it’s become an over-generalized term that tries to capture too many different social phenomena, like social anxiety, neuroticism, or even depression, which shouldn’t really be regarded as inherent, immutable traits. You may not agree—I trust you understand your own nature—but I don’t want a label to hold you back from doing something you are explicitly saying you want to do. Labels are only as useful as they are liberating. And anyway, introverts can throw lovely parties. Anyone can!

You say you’re more interested in the connection parties facilitate than the parties themselves. I wonder if you’re also intrigued by the qualities required of hosts: confidence, joviality, risk tolerance. It takes a lot of self-possession to put yourself in charge of other people’s time for a while; maybe your longing to party is also a longing for the sense that you’re worth other people’s time. I’m sure you’re self-possessed in many ways already—it likely took some confidence for you to make peace with being an introvert and learn to thrive in a culture that venerates the opposite—but it can also be a trap to settle into your comfort zone. I think about this every time I go to something in New York that turns out to be annoying or over-stimulating. It’s almost always worth the trouble to disrupt my patterns a little, if only so I can return to my status quo with a new appreciation for it.

You made a good point in your question: if you want to host or attend more parties, you need to make more connections first. I keep thinking about risk tolerance with you—you may need to cultivate it as a less outgoing person (if you see yourself that way, although I don’t think all introverts do). Plainly speaking, if you’re not getting the invites you want, you have to become the inviter. Inviting someone to hang out in early friendship is always going to feel a little awkward and risky, even to more obviously social people. This is where fakery is very useful: Confidence performed in these situations is enough, and can be weirdly self-fulfilling.

I’d recommend more active hangouts to avoid some inevitable friction: going to the farmer’s market, a show, a painting class, a hike. And as you become closer, instead of falling into the trap of always getting dinner (still great), I recommend activities that make you feel like a team: running errands, helping with a project, trying something new, etc. I love my friend Gyan’s advice to always help your friends move, or do other unpleasant things, because difficult experiences are more bonding than easy ones (think of how you made friends as a kid). It may seem easier to just get coffee, a drink, or a meal, but in repetition those things lack texture. You only see one side of a person.

When it comes to inviting two or more people to hang out who aren’t already close, I find it often goes better than expected, even if it’s not ultimately something you want to repeat with the same people. A group puts less pressure on every pair of people to have good chemistry—as long as everyone has enough in common, there will be plenty to talk about. I also recommend throwing people together in a group chat if a hangout goes well (if you’re a group chat sort of person). It can help establish an easy rapport that might otherwise require tons of quality time you don’t all have.

Facilitating this stuff can take guts, but you may be surprised by how many people are grateful you took up the mantle. I never forgot when a friend of mine thanked me years ago for always facilitating group hangouts, because making plans made her anxious. I appreciated her gratitude, but I also remember wishing I could say: Of course, but please share the burden sometimes! I knew she’d be completely fine planning stuff, she just needed to get over the initiation hump.

One thing to remember is that making new friends and bringing people together won’t always work out as you want it to. There will be friendships that fizzle (wanted, unwanted) and groups that don’t really work, and none of that means you suck at this or aren’t meant for it. If you believe some people are “your type” then it follows that others aren’t, it just requires some experimentation to figure out who’s who. When you get to the point of feeling ready to throw a party—a dinner party, a game night, a movie night, a dance party, whatever you’re feeling up for—remember that you’re doing people a favor. You’re giving them an opportunity to meet new people and disrupt their patterns. Whether they come or they don’t, have fun or not, you’ve invited them into your world, and that’s a lovely thing to do.

2. On knowing when you’re ready for kids

“Hi Haley! My partner and I have been together for three years and last week he told me he wants to have a baby by 35. For context, I am 29, he is 33. We have a beautiful, loving, and supportive relationship and both know we want to spend the rest of our lives together. I’ve always known I wanted to be a mother, and ever since I met him, I’ve known I wanted to have kids with him. So why am I in such shock? When he broached the conversation, he was quick to assure me that timing was ultimately my decision but that he wanted to let me know that he felt ready. Am I ready? How do you know? How did you know? Also curious to know what raising Sunny in different states from your parents has been like. Do you feel far from your mom? I’ve lived in a different country from my parents for the majority of the last 10 years, and I don’t want to uproot just to be closer to them—OUR WHOLE LIVES ARE HERE—but I find myself thinking about the distance more than ever since my partner said ‘I am ready.’”

I’m guessing you’re in shock because it’s shocking for a big, amorphous idea to suddenly become specific. If you decide you want kids, no matter how long or gradual your process is for getting there, at some point your answer has to actually change over from “no, not ready” to “yes, ready,” and that’s such a monumental leap there’s no softening it. I’m sure that’s true when you’re the one receiving the news, too. When Avi and I decided we wanted to start trying, I was reeling for weeks. It just felt so sudden. I was worried the choice was flippant and impulsive, like we’d just taken a running start off a cliff without looking down. But I had to remind myself that we were in our mid-thirties, had been together six years, had been considering the question for about as long, and that one year earlier, had agreed we wanted them and just weren’t sure when. What more did I expect?

I must have assumed we’d hem and haw a lot longer about our readiness, but in hindsight I understand why we didn’t. Parenthood isn’t exactly a logical pursuit. There is so much you can’t really know about it ahead of time—like what it will feel like, whether you’ll be a natural, what will change, what won’t. For me, readiness wasn’t in getting answers to those questions, but in finally accepting I wouldn’t get them in advance, and embracing as my guide a sort of gut-driven curiosity to find out what the hell it was all about. There were other things that helped me feel ready, but that was the main one. And that’s no small thing. Certainly there were times in my life when knowing I needed to “accept the unknown” wouldn’t have translated to me feeling it in my bones. It took years for me to build the required confidence. But once I had, the answer was clear and sudden. My doubts after that point were just fear.

Because I love you all, I’m going to share a note on my iPhone that I created in the days following my and Avi’s decision to start trying that I totally forgot existed until five minutes ago. I wrote this list because I needed to remember in moments of doubt that we weren’t insane, that this was in fact a good idea, and that we had plenty of reasons for believing we were ready. I love the panic-stricken title, AFFIRMATIONS. Clearly I was struggling to hold onto my reasoning and thought it bore repeating. I think this relates to the reality of the baby decision, which is that ultimately, any readiness for children is hypothetical, and you have to take whatever forms you can find. The shape of your readiness (or lack thereof) may be totally different by the way. This list isn’t prescriptive, I only share it as an artifact:

AFFIRMATIONS, 2022

This decision isn’t logical, it’s emotional, and that’s a good thing. That’s what it means to be alive! I’ve set my life up in a way that can allow me to make an emotional decision like this, and really lean into it. The enthusiasm I feel is a bit romantic, and it should be. That’s what will get me over the hump of such a huge decision that I know will always scare me. [ed note: Shout out to my therapist for this one.]
I know I will find new reasons to be afraid and doubt the choice, and I accept that as part of the process of any big decision. Unwavering confidence would be delusional. Importantly, the doubts have started to feel like the visitor and the desire like homebase.
“The power of ‘the Eye of the Heart,’ which produces insight, is vastly superior to the power of thought, which produces opinions.” -E.F. Schumacher
There is no such thing as a perfect time, but there is such a thing as a “good enough” time. Right now is a good enough time. Flexible work hours, great salary, great relationship, supportive family, two bedroom apartment, no debt, decent savings, time to emotionally prepare, and most importantly: Both of us want this.
My fears around this would not be different in a year or two years or five years. Waiting would not solve them.
All my favorite life decisions have been 75% careful consideration, 25% blind leap into the abyss.
Of course there will always be benefits to waiting longer (more time to ourselves, time to line up with other friends’ timelines), but there are also benefits to not waiting (our ages, our parents’ ages), and those are becoming more pressing.
I don’t want to live life as if I have all the time in the world. My life is precious and I want to seize it.
Constraints create meaning. As wonderful as it sounds to have all the time and money and freedom in the world, those are not the conditions for meaningful experiences. I will always have to seek meaning through commitment and struggle, whether as a parent or not.
I can do interesting things after I have a kid. There will be long stretches when that doesn’t feel true to me, and the challenge during those times will not be to become an interesting person as fast as I can, but to trust that I am already interesting, and that lulls in my creative activity or general interestingness are natural and necessary. [ed note: lol]
I am a competent person. I trust that I can handle almost anything.
I have a loving and supportive family who will continue to love and support me no matter what. That is very lucky.
I am a family-oriented person. During lockdown I didn’t miss traveling or partying as much as I missed my family.
I have always been good at tackling life challenges and I perform well with a busy schedule. Some of the most satisfying and exhilarating stretches of my life have been during unbearably busy times. I also enjoy routines, even though I resist them.
I will always adapt. I will adapt to having severely less free time. At first it will seem impossible, and yet, over time, I will surprise myself by adjusting.

This is funny to read now—so tactical! I was lucky to feel stable (in various ways) so I could focus my worries on trivial things like whether having a kid would make me boring. Also interesting that I didn’t include my evolving relationship with the vestiges of my youth, like nightlife and travel and the New York “scene,” which I recall being an important part of my thrust toward parenthood. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy those things anymore, but I remember feeling like, finally, gratefully, I’d had plenty of them, and that my yearning was rerouting toward quieter things. For the first time, I sensed that retreating from my social life a bit wouldn’t feel like missing out. This was an exciting way to feel, and an unexpected way too, as even a year earlier I didn’t feel that way at all. Actually, a lot of things in that list weren’t true a year earlier, or even less. Despite considering the question for a while, my readiness cohered quickly.

Avi took this photo of me the morning after a wedding, hungover, on a train to Chicago on my 33rd birthday. Later that night we’d decide to start trying. Life comes at you fast!

Maybe I’m making it sound like everything was all set for me, so why doubt it for a second? But there were a few lingering concerns. Avi had just started a new career venture and wasn’t making money yet, I didn’t have local friends with kids or a nearby support system for raising our own (our parents lived out of state; most of my close friends weren’t even thinking about kids yet), my job required consistent and rigorous output and had no benefits like paid leave or health insurance, we loved our life in Brooklyn but didn’t have line of sight to where we’d be long-term, etc. These weren’t huge setbacks, but they were enough to make us wonder if another year wouldn’t have us in a better position. You can wonder that forever (see affirmation #4).

Looking back, I do think we were ready. But here’s how some of those concerns panned out: Having a baby during the first years of Avi’s career change, which would have been exhausting on its own, has been pretty difficult. In hard moments, we wish he could have been more established before we did it, if only for his sake, but that’s just not how life unfolded for us and ultimately we’re glad we didn’t wait. I ended up making friends with kids, plus having a couple friends who had kids at the same time, but my main social group is still childless and that’s been a hard balance at times, although not enough to make me regret anything. As for being far from my mom, I long to live closer to my parents, but sadly we’re too plugged into our respective cities. Luckily they’re still incredibly engaged (daily FaceTimes) and we see them fairly often, so I would say the distance is less about feeling emotionally far and more about feeling practically far. As for my work, you know the answer to that (up, down, around). And Brooklyn is feeling more like home than ever.

I’ve tried to give you as many ideas as I can fit in this format so you can bounce some of them off your own. But your process may look different. I’m sure it’s a little jarring to hear that your partner has done all this thinking without you. I think it’s understandable to want to know how he came to that specific conclusion on his own when it’s such an obviously joint decision! Maybe his “readiness” is less literal, more an impulse he’s feeling that’s so far incomplete—I would assume so, especially since he pushed it a couple years in the future. I’d suggest asking him to lay out everything that brought him to this conclusion and start involving yourself a little more.

One thing you definitely don’t want is a partner who doesn’t understand how much of a sacrifice having kids is, so I think bringing this into the realm of “are we ready?” versus “am I also ready?” will make the inquiry a lot more realistic. This needs to be a team process, not a matter of you catching up to him. In a way, deciding to have a kid is like running off a cliff without looking down, but you want to do it knowingly, eyes wide open.

3. On being “original”

“I know you've talked about how you've built a knowledge base that allows you to reference other authors/thinkers' work, which I found really useful for my own writing practice. But how do you know that your ideas are original/fresh takes? For example, I often worry when writing that I'm saying essentially the same thing as someone before me (that I haven't read). I know each writer gives their own unique lens on an issue, but I don't want to inadvertently copy others' ideas in my writing. Is this an actual barrier or just an insecurity?”

My impulse is to say I don’t mind whether my ideas are original, but that’s not exactly true. I don’t want my writing to feel redundant or derivative of popular ideas that have been circulating forever, but to me that’s less about having wholly original thoughts and more about being in conversation with the world around me. Taken too literally, this is a tall order. But you can try to be in conversation with someone, and I think work tends to be much better when it is.

When I say “in conversation with,” I just mean having a curiosity about a subject that extends beyond your assumptions about it—to let in a little air, then bring readers along with you. Someone once asked me how to get over the hump of publishing work knowing they may not like or agree with it later, and what I told them may apply to you as well: It helps to stop thinking of writing as a product and start thinking of it as expression. In The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick writes, “Good writing has two characteristics. It’s alive on the page and the reader is persuaded that the writer is on a voyage of self-discovery.” Her focus is not at all on originality, but on authenticity of voice and aim. I think a lot about a criticism she had of one of her own old essays, which is that she was trying to clarify and mystify a subject at the same time, which rendered her an unreliable narrator. What was her goal, really? To discover something or to prove something? To me, these are more interesting questions to consider than: “Am I the first to say this?”

Everyone will have a different way of judging whether their ideas are worth sharing, and a distinct voice in sharing them. For me, I care a lot about whether I’ve been thorough in my thinking, which means pressing myself to make sure I believe what I’m saying, that I’m not oversimplifying anything or contradicting myself. (Conversely, I love my podcast because I don’t hold myself to this same standard, and fun things come out of that.) When I’m writing, I’m always surprised by how often my answer to, “Do I really believe this?” is not exactly. I’m getting better at asking and answering this question all the time. One of the challenges of taking in so much information online is that many of us have inherited a lot of views we haven’t second-guessed in a while. When I sense tension in popular notions, moving towards it rather than away tends to lead to ideas that feel “fresh” to me. Your approach may differ, but what’s important is that you don’t feel like a hack when you’re writing. I think you’ll find your internal barometer for this is stronger than you think.

If you have advice for the questioners, please weigh in!

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