The conversations couples rarely have, and why they matter most
Most couples spend months debating stroller brands, debating names, and planning the nursery. Far fewer spend those same months asking each other the questions that actually determine whether having a child will strengthen their relationship, begin to crack its foundation, or something else entirely.
That’s not a criticism. These conversations are hard. They surface old wounds, buried fears, and values that partners assume they share until suddenly they don’t.
As a therapist who works with couples navigating major life transitions, I see it regularly. Two people who love each other deeply, who are excited about parenthood, who have never had a serious fight about anything important, and who realize somewhere around the six month mark of new parenthood that they never actually talked about any of this.
What follows are the questions I think every couple should ask before having children. This post covers the foundational ones: what each of you carries in from your own childhood, the current state of your relationship, and your relationship to your own needs. The practical questions about career, mental health, extended family, and parenting philosophy are in Part 2 (coming soon).
Some will feel obvious. Some will feel uncomfortable. The uncomfortable ones are sometimes the most important.
On Your Own Childhoods, and What Gets Passed Down
This is where most people want to skip ahead. Don’t.
The research is clear. The way we were parented becomes the default template for how we parent. Not inevitably, since people do break cycles, but it takes awareness, intentionality, and often real therapeutic work. If you don’t know what you’re carrying in, you can’t make conscious choices about what to set down.
Questions to ask yourself:
1. How would you describe your own childhood? What did it give you, and what did it cost you?
2. Were your emotional needs consistently met as a child? If not, how did you cope?
3. What did your parents model about how to handle conflict, stress, failure, or disappointment?
4. Are there patterns from your upbringing, like emotional unavailability, harsh criticism, conditional love, perfectionism, or volatility, that you’ve noticed repeating in your own adult relationships?
Questions to ask each other:
5. What parts of how you were raised do you want to replicate? What do you want to do completely differently?
6. How did your family handle big emotions like anger, sadness, and fear? What did that teach you about expressing your own?
7. Were your parents emotionally present, or mostly going through the motions? How did that shape you?
8. Have you ever been in therapy, or done any kind of intentional work, around your family of origin?
Why this matters:
Unprocessed childhood experiences don’t disappear when you become a parent. They get amplified. A parent who learned early that love is conditional may unconsciously create similar dynamics with their children. A parent who was never allowed to be angry may shut down their child’s big emotions without realizing it. Knowing your history isn’t about blame. It’s about choice.
On Your Relationship as a Foundation
A child doesn’t fix a struggling relationship. Children add enormous stress, sleep deprivation, identity upheaval, and reduced time and resources to a partnership. What’s already fragile tends to fracture further.
Questions to ask yourself:
9. Am I bringing unresolved resentments or patterns into this decision?
10. Do I feel genuinely heard and understood by my partner on a regular basis?
11. How do we currently handle stress together? Do we draw closer or retreat from each other?
Questions to ask each other:
12. When things get hard between us, what does that typically look like? How do we repair?
13. Are there recurring arguments we’ve never really resolved?
14. What does each of us need from the other during high stress periods, and do we currently provide that?
15. Do we have a shared language for talking about our emotional needs, or do we tend to avoid that territory?
16. How do we feel about our sex life and intimacy, and how do we imagine those evolving after children?
Why this matters:
Couples therapy research, including the Gottman Institute’s work, consistently finds that relationship satisfaction tends to drop significantly in the first few years of parenthood for many couples. Couples who enter parenthood with strong communication skills and genuine emotional attunement are far better equipped to navigate that transition. The relationship is the container everything else is held in.
On People Pleasing and the Erosion of Self
This one is specific, but it matters enormously, particularly for high achieving people and for anyone who grew up in a home where love felt conditional or where keeping the peace came at the cost of their own needs.
Parenthood is an invitation to self sacrifice. Healthy self sacrifice is real and necessary. Children need responsive, attuned caregivers who can put their own impulses aside. But chronic self effacement, the kind that comes from a deep belief that your needs don’t matter, or that asking for things makes you a burden, creates serious problems in a co-parenting relationship.
Questions to ask yourself:
17. Am I someone who routinely suppresses my own needs to avoid conflict or keep others comfortable?
18. Do I have difficulty saying no, whether to my partner, to extended family, or to the expectations I feel from others?
19. When I’m depleted, do I ask for help? Or do I push through and then resent it?
20. Am I agreeing to parenthood because I genuinely want it, or because I feel I should?
Questions to ask each other:
21. How do we currently divide emotional labor in our relationship? Do we each feel the arrangement is equitable?
22. When one of us is overwhelmed, how do we signal that? And how does the other typically respond?
23. Are either of us conflict avoidant in ways that could become problematic when we’re sleep deprived and stressed?
24. How do we imagine making decisions together when we genuinely disagree about parenting philosophy, discipline, schooling, or family boundaries?
Why this matters:
Resentment is one of the most corrosive forces in a relationship. When one partner consistently sacrifices without acknowledgment, or when both partners avoid hard conversations indefinitely, the relationship accumulates damage that compounds over time. Parenthood brings these dynamics into sharp relief.
A Note on Having These Conversations
Reading this list and feeling overwhelmed is normal. You don’t have to sit down and answer every question in one sitting, and in fact you shouldn’t. These conversations are most productive when they’re ongoing, when both partners feel safe being honest, and when the goal is understanding rather than winning.
If you find that some of these questions surface significant disagreement, old wounds, or anxiety that feels hard to manage alone, that’s not a warning sign that you shouldn’t have children. It’s a signal that this might be a good time to work with a therapist.
Couples therapy before a major life transition isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about strengthening what’s already there, and building the kind of foundation that can hold the weight of what’s ahead.
Shoshana Polansky is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in trauma, couples therapy, and relationship issues. She works with individuals and couples in California, Florida, and online throughout the US. If you’re navigating a major relationship transition and want support, schedule a free consultation.
