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Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

What If You’re Not Sure You Want Kids?

Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

Jo Piazza, Influence Inc.

Society & Culture, Parenting, Kids & Family, Personal Journals, Technology

4.3787 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What happens when you're not 100% sure you want to become a mother—but you go ahead and do it anyway? In this episode, we explore the space between certainty and regret, love and ambivalence, and what it means to mother without a clear road map. Host Jo Piazza sits down with journalist and author Ruthie Ackerman, whose new book The Mother Code unpacks her own winding path to motherhood—through egg freezing, fertility treatments, donor eggs, and a lot of self-doubt. They talk about why our culture demands total clarity from women about becoming mothers, how shame and silence shape that decision, and what it looks like to write your own "mother code" instead of following the one handed to you. Get Ruthie's book The Mother Code here. Join our newsletter community here. Pre-order EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Are you looking for the perfect summer read? Look no further than everyone is lying to you,

0:05.2

the Tradwife murder mystery that everyone is talking about. I would be lying if I said that I didn't

0:10.4

want you to order everyone is lying to you right now so that it shows up on your doorstep on July 15th

0:15.2

and you can devour it in one sitting while wearing a nap dress and stealing your neighbor's sourdough.

0:20.5

Everyone is lying to you is an absolute delight, but don't take my word for it.

0:24.5

Publishers Weekly said it is darkly entertaining and delivers the goods.

0:28.6

New York Times bestselling author Sarah Shepard called it a fun, twisty mystery that she was obsessed with.

0:34.8

And my own husband told me that I am a sick, sick person for writing it. I mean,

0:39.2

seriously, order now before J.D. Vance bans it.

0:47.8

I knew that I wanted to be a mom. I wasn't one of those little girls that longed desperately

0:54.0

to be a mother who was, you know,

0:56.4

constantly changing their baby dolls and putting them to bed and doing all of those things.

1:02.5

But by the time I was a grown-up, I pretty much knew. I knew that I wanted to get married,

1:09.4

that I wanted to marry the right person, and that if I found

1:12.8

that right person, which was not assured in my 20s when I dated literally every sociopath in New York

1:20.5

City and half of them in Philadelphia, at least half. But when I found that right person, I knew that I wanted to have kids with them.

1:29.1

It's a thing that I wanted to do.

1:31.3

And I originally thought that I wanted two kids.

1:34.9

That seemed like a very, very civilized number to me.

1:38.9

But after I had two kids and during the pandemic,

1:42.9

I just didn't think that I was finished. I'd see babies

1:48.3

and be like, oh, I miss that stage. And now, now that I have my bonus baby, my third baby,

...

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