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.
I’m never anti-baby or anti-kid in a romance, but authors have to work to make these characters feel real; if they’re not they don’t work for me.
I just read a great one in Promise Me Sunshine which I am reviewing this week.
Same. It’s not the kid that’s the concern but the author’s skill in portraying them. I want realistic kids – not perfect, adorable angels – and a reason for them to be there other than as a plot device or prop. One of my faves with kids is Hunter’s Moon by Karen Robards. It’s an old romantic suspense about an older sister raising her younger siblings. I also liked the kids in Ilona Andrews The Edge series and Hidden Legacy series. Eileen Dreyer (under her pen name Katherine Korbel) wrote a fantastic novel called A Rose for Maggie. That was the only realistic portrayal of someone with a special needs child I have ever seen in romance. It rightfully won a RITA.
It’s always the writing! (Now I want to read A Rose For Maggie)
It’s dated (it came out in the ’80s/’90s and reflects that), but it’s good.
In romance novels I hate the secret baby trope or suprise baby, I dislike The dream hunter by Laura kinsale that has this trope. As for in real life on the topic of children and romantic love I’m not a very sentimental woman either and can come across quite cold when you first meet me. And personally I’ve always been on the fence about having my own children.
I like the secret baby when believably done. I don’t like that story when a child is deliberately hidden from a parent who would want to know.
This is how I feel about it; you have to sell it to me, but if you do it well I’ll buy it.
Can I just point out that there are plenty of m/m romances where
and in which
As in most things, it all depends on how it’s done. I’ve read and enjoyed a number of romances where babies and/or young children have been a major part of the plot and disliked others. Case in point – Annabeth Albert’s most recent book (Over and Above) revolved around the pregnancy of the daughter of one of the leads and it was sadly uninteresting. But I just finished a re-listen of her Up in Smoke, in which one of the leads suddenly discovers he’s a dad when the babymum’s brother turns up with said infant out of the blue. The stsory revolves around their having to quickly learn how to care for a baby and coming to co-parent, but while the baby is obviously a big part of the story, there’s just as much space (if not more) devoted to the romance, so I didn’t feel like the baby had completely taken over the story. She also does a great job in At Attention of writing believable under fives and not having them overwhelm the romance.
Like many, I suspect, I hate the “babylogue” (term applied by Juliana Gray at the end of her Princesses in Hiding series) when all the previous couples show up with their offspring for no other reason than that the author wants them to.
Because I read mostly m/m, the decision to have a child is almost always (see above!) a conscious one because of course, neither of the protagonists can suddenly get pregnant! So what you’re saying about having the decision whether or not to have a child being given equal emotional weight to the ILY is probably the norm in m/m.
With all that said, I’m not generally a fan of babies/kids in romance novels – I love my kids to bits, but have never been sentimental about babies and am perfectly happy when my romances are child free for whatever reason.
Caz makes the points I was going to make about M/M romances and children. One might be surprised at how often they come up as something the characters want/don’t want, and occasionally one (generally bi) man already has a child or two and can be either a single dad or co-parenting. But whether it’s M/M or M/F, I want the children to be written like children, and for them not to be the center of the story. I read romance for romance and while I might make an exception for a slighter weaker romance when, say, a suspense plot is particularly good, it’s not my preference. I also don’t want every M/M or M/F romance to focus on growing a family. It irked me when I was reading mainly M/F romances that so many contemporary ones seemed to imply that fulfilment for a woman meant a baby.
While I decided to have a houseful of kids, mine have always known they didn’t “owe” us grandchildren. No one should have children because they feel obligated to. At this point in time it doesn’t look like any of mine will have kids (three due to chromic illnesses), and while I’d love to be a grandmother it doesn’t make or break my life.
I’m probably an outlier but I like a (well-developed) kid in the plot as a character. Kids are funny and fun and weird as hell, and I think portraying them with sensitivity and perceptiveness can really add a lot to a story. I also really like having parents with children as the mains, at least in contemporaries. That’s because I like stories about people who are on the older end, and older people tend to have kids.
Plot moppets, bother me, but I am a sucker for a Sound of Music type situation where the kids are humorously awful in an attempt to scare away a nanny/governess, at least in historicals.
I doubt you are an outlier!
You are not an outlier (unless I am as well); and for exactly the reasons you mention. 😉
What a lovely post! I think romance is the only fiction genre in which all kinds of motherhood/parenthood are explored. Not having children is a respected option. And you celebrate that trait with a very insightful post. Thank you.
Having said that, as a reader, I prefer romance novels without children.
It depends. I absolutely agree about writing kids as kids and as real characters with a purpose in the plot. But pregnancy does happen in real life so a book that isn’t completely fluffy needs to address it happening vs. not happening. In a contemporary, I don’t want a clinical safe sex lecture. But if the characters do nothing to prevent pregnancy, then it seems unrealistic that pregnancy wouldn’t happen. And when it doesn’t happen in a historical, that annoys me. I like historicals to be at least vaguely accurate about the time and place. Otherwise, it is a fantasy novel in costume.
I so agree about acknowledging the risks of pregnancy. It’s one reason I hate the second season of Bridgerton. There’s no way Kate would have risked premarital sex.
And in the book, she doesn’t.
The books are much better in my opinion which is just that!
I feel like an outlier in some online communities because I generally loves babies and kids in romance when they’re written well. At least in the romance communities that I frequent on Reddit, preferences for childfree romance are expressed frequently and strongly. Sometimes these readers are parents who want an escape from children when reading for pleasure; sometimes they are childfree people who simply don’t care to read about pregnancy or babies. My perspective is probably different from others as well in that I want to be a parent, but it’s not happening. I’ll freely admit that this makes certain romances a form of escapist wish fulfillment for me, and I think there’s space for that.
I remember when Ready or Not by Cara Bastone came out last year, there was some controversy over the depiction of the heroine’s unintended pregnancy; she didn’t weigh the consequences enough, her decision was impractical, etc. The discourse got pretty heated, with some implying that you must be some type of anti-choice trad wife if you enjoy this type of storyline. It was so condescending. I understand fantasy vs. reality, and as a woman in a red state, I very, very much understand the implications of that decision in real life. Sometimes I just want to read about working class characters who get to have a happy ending that resonates with me.
Romance reading really should be a judgement free zone. We enjoy what we enjoy and no one should ever feel looked down on for those pleasures.
Yes! It’s an expansive genre, and that quality should be encouraged.
I am pro-choice and yet I know if I’d gotten pregnant while I was single I’d have kept the pregnancy. There would have been no agonizing over it, I knew that’s what I, personally, would want to do. And when my doctor thought our second child had some developmental issues, we chose not to seek further testing because if what they suspected was correct, there was no treatment, only the option for an abortion. It turned out they were correct and my son died at birth, but I’ve never regretted our decision to carry to term. I would also not judge someone who chose differently. If stories reflect real life, then there are real people like me who support a woman’s right to choose and would still not choose that for herself.
100%.
That last part. Thank you for your comment.
There are also those of us who would make different choices if our circumstances allowed for it. And it can be pleasurable and cathartic to read about those scenarios in fiction, just as it can be escapist for other people to read childfree stories. There was a “depiction equals endorsement” tenor to the conversation that felt judgmental, incurious, and restrictive.
I am sorry to hear that. I was trying to make it clear that all kinds of stories are valid. I hate to think I sounded judgemental, incurious, and restrictive.
Oh no, I should have been clearer! I was referring to the discussion on Reddit about the Cara Bastone book that I mentioned in my first comment. I’m embarrassed now.
OH NO!!! Don’t be embarrassed. It’s my job here to make people feel at ease here. I need all the feedback I can get. I’m happy it wasn’t us who made you feel judged. I have found the romance community on Reddit to, upon occasion, be very dismissive. So I hear you!!
I appreciate you writing this ! As a new mother myself I am now particularly sensitive to how little good representation there is of mothers and children in a genre that is supposed to be women centered. I think this negative view of motherhood and children, something that is so tied to femaleness, is an insidious form of misogyny that has gone unexamined so far. Much of our culture still devalues mothers and their work and the desire to have children, beyond a few platitudes and trite cards on mother’s day. We pay lip service to motherhood being valued but we don’t want to consider the reality of it, in all its joy but also how hard it can be and how the labour of it is still very unbalanced (and the impact it still has on your career).
So yes to more representation of all women in romance, including those who want kids and who enjoy having kids, and remain people throughout !
I’m happy to hear that.