A pregnancy begins.
Maybe it was deeply hoped for. Maybe fertility treatment came first. The obvious script says this is the moment for pure joy.
Instead, the mind produces questions like:
“Would this future child even want to be born?” “What if the person I bring into the world later wishes they had never existed?” “Did I actually want to become a parent, or did I want pregnancy to succeed?”
One positive pregnancy test, and the brain has opened a full ethics review board for existence.
That is what this article calls “Mewtwo mode”: the parent starts asking the future child’s existential question before the child can ask it.
It sounds like a joke. It is also a useful way to separate several things people usually compress into one sentence: “I want a child.”
0. First: “I’m not excited” is not the same as “I never wanted this”
Not feeling thrilled in early pregnancy does not prove that someone never wanted a child.
Prenatal attachment can change across pregnancy. Seeing the fetus on imaging, feeling movement, and other experiences may gradually make the fetus feel more socially real to the parent.[1][2]
But there is another possibility worth examining: some people have only a weak positive pull toward the daily reality of parenthood.
If “I want to meet this child, raise them, and live with them” is quiet, another question can become loud:
Why start this life at all?
That is where the existential soundtrack begins.
1. “Wanting a child” is actually several different wants
Ordinary language bundles many motives together:
- wanting to become pregnant,
- wanting fertility treatment to succeed,
- wanting to stop being “the person who cannot conceive,”
- wanting the social role of parent,
- wanting to meet a baby,
- wanting to raise a child,
- wanting family life with a child,
- wanting a shared life plan with a partner,
- wanting to satisfy a cultural expectation of adulthood.
These are related, but they are not identical.
Classic work on childbearing motivation separates motivation, desire, intention, and behavior into different stages.[3] Research instruments have also treated positive and negative childbearing motivations as dimensions that can coexist rather than as one single slider.[4][5]
So a person can simultaneously think:
“I want some parts of this,”
and
“I strongly dislike other parts.”
Human beings did not ship with one fertility slider. There are multiple settings.
A mixed-methods study likewise found that simplified measures of pregnancy ambivalence can misclassify people’s actual desires and their emotional responses after conception.[6]
2. Fertility treatment does not mathematically equal 100% desire for child-rearing
Fertility treatment can involve money, time, uncertainty, invasive procedures, and repeated disappointment. From the outside, it is tempting to conclude:
“If you went through all that, you must have wanted parenthood more than anything.”
But long treatment can turn pregnancy itself into an enormous KPI.
Tests. Retrieval. Transfer. Waiting. Results.
The near-term objective becomes: get to pregnancy.
Then pregnancy finally happens.
A video game would roll the credits.
Reality displays:
NEW GAME: PARENTHOOD.
“Wait. That was the tutorial?”
None of this means people who use assisted reproductive technology secretly do not want children. A review of pregnancies after ART found prenatal attachment was generally similar to or higher than in pregnancies conceived without ART.[7]
The point is simply that “successfully achieving pregnancy” and “wanting the lived role of parent” should not be treated as the same variable.
3. When positive pull is weak, ethics gets a front-row seat
Feelings like these create forward pull:
“I want to meet them.” “I want to hold them.” “I want to watch them grow.” “I want to share everyday life with them.”
Those feelings do not settle every question. Money, health, relationships, housing, time, and stability still matter.
But when the positive pull is weak, the order of mental operations changes.
Strong pull: “I really want this.” → “Can I handle the responsibility?”
Weak pull: “I do not strongly want this.” → “Then why create a life?” → “Would that person want existence?” → Mewtwo has entered the meeting.
The person may not be unusually obsessed with ethics. The desire channel may simply be quieter, which makes the ethics channel easier to hear.
4. Pregnancy is one of the strangest boundary conditions in human life
A fetus is not biologically the same individual as the pregnant person.
But it is also not living like a separate post-birth person. It develops inside the pregnant body and depends on placental exchange and the maternal physiological environment.
So pregnancy creates an unusual boundary: “my body” and “another developing life” are neither one person nor two fully independent bodies.
Psychologically, it becomes even stranger.
The fetus cannot talk. Its future preferences are unknowable. Yet the parent may already imagine a future independent person:
“Will they be happy?” “What kind of life will they have?” “Will they resent being born?”
So the fetus is physically deeply connected while being morally imagined as a separate future person.
No wonder the boundary gets cognitively messy.
5. “Ask the person first” is the one consent model that cannot work for birth
In normal relationships, a good rule is to ask people before making major decisions that affect their lives.
Birth is the impossible case.
There is no pre-existence consent screen that asks:
“Would you like approximately eight decades of human life?” “Accept terms and conditions?”
There is no checkbox.
Therefore, if birth requires verified consent from the future person, the system deadlocks.
That does not imply “consent is impossible, therefore anything goes.” Nor does it automatically imply “consent is impossible, therefore birth is unjustifiable.”
It means birth is a special case where ordinary interpersonal consent rules cannot be applied literally.
That is the core of the Mewtwo problem.
6. “I wonder how this child will live” is not the same as “I want to be a parent”
Curiosity and parental desire are different variables.
Someone may sincerely wonder:
“What kind of person would they become?” “What would their life be like?” “Would they be okay?”
That is interest in a future person.
But interest in children is not automatically a desire to occupy the parental role.
Liking animals does not mean wanting to run a zoo. Loving food does not mean wanting to open a restaurant.
Likewise, being fascinated by a possible child’s future does not necessarily mean wanting the 24/7 role of parent.
The reverse shortcut is also unreliable. A weak “baby fever” feeling does not by itself prove someone would be a bad parent.
Separate the variables before judging them.
7. No instant emotional explosion in early pregnancy does not equal a software failure
Pregnancy does not automatically download:
Maternal feeling: 100%. Paternal feeling: 100%. Ultrasound tears: enabled. Baby-name spreadsheet: 50 entries.
Prenatal attachment varies, and it can develop over time. A systematic review found that antenatal imaging can help parents experience the fetus as a more socially real individual.[1] A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis also found that several types of prenatal attachment interventions may increase attachment scores.[2]
And again, the ART literature does not support the claim that fertility treatment automatically produces weaker prenatal attachment.[7]
So this inference is too crude:
“I’m not excited now” → “I never truly wanted a child.”
Do not reduce a human emotional system to one if-statement.
8. Anxiety can also turn down the volume on attachment
There is another direction of causality to consider.
A systematic review of prenatal anxiety and maternal-fetal bonding found that greater anxiety was associated with lower emotional proximity to the fetus, with overall associations in the low-to-moderate range.[8]
Reviews of pregnancy after ART also describe heightened concern about pregnancy loss and, in qualitative work, uncertainty, mixed feelings, and sometimes slower development of maternal identity or fetal attachment.[7][9]
So it may not be:
“I feel little attachment, therefore I am anxious.”
It can also be:
“I am so anxious that I have little emotional bandwidth left for attachment.”
The sequence is not always one-way.
9. When asking “Do I really want this?”, do not demand a happiness guarantee
The brain often chooses an impossible test:
“Can I guarantee this future child will be happy?”
No.
No parent controls illness, accidents, heartbreak, personality, economics, social conditions, random chance, or the future adult’s own choices.
There is no certificate guaranteeing a life will be endorsed by the person who lives it.
A more answerable set of questions is:
- If nobody expected it from me, would I still choose parenthood?
- Do I want the years of ordinary parenting, not only pregnancy or infancy?
- Do I want a relationship with a person who will become a toddler, schoolchild, teenager, and adult?
- Can I accept that the child may be very different from the person I imagine?
- How strong is my positive pull to meet, raise, and live with this person?
- What exactly is the negative pull: loss of freedom, money, responsibility, fear, relationship strain, or something else?
- Am I confusing “we achieved pregnancy” with “I want the parental role”?
Those questions cannot predict the child’s entire future.
But at least they produce information about the person making the decision.
10. For someone already pregnant, this should not become a “Did you really want it?” trial
This framework should not be weaponized against pregnant people.
“You are not excited, so you are unfit.” “You used fertility treatment, so you must be happy.” “You do not feel bonded, so you never wanted the child.”
The evidence does not justify those verdicts.
Persistent anxiety, low mood, or loss of interest during pregnancy can also be a health issue that deserves support. For example, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends standardized screening for depression and anxiety at the initial prenatal visit, later in pregnancy, and postpartum.[10]
So if distress is strong or affecting daily functioning, the useful next step is not a private moral trial.
It is to discuss the symptoms with an obstetric or other appropriate health professional.
Feelings are data. They are not a court judgment.
Conclusion: when desire is quiet, birth ethics becomes the main character
“I want a child” can mean many different things.
Wanting pregnancy. Wanting treatment to succeed. Wanting the identity of parent. Wanting to meet a baby. Wanting to raise a child. Wanting family life. Wanting a particular life plan.
They overlap. They are not interchangeable.
When the positive pull to meet, raise, and live with a child is weak, questions about existence can arrive very early:
“Why create this person?” “Would they want to be born?” “Can I guarantee a good life?”
And then Mewtwo walks in.
There is no perfect answer. A future person cannot complete a pre-birth survey, and nobody can guarantee happiness.
So the realistic task is not to prove that a future child will definitely approve of being born.
It is to separate the variables and ask whether the prospective parent actually wants the role and the ordinary life that comes with it.
Interest in a child is not the same as wanting parenthood.
Happiness about pregnancy is not the same as wanting to raise a child.
Anxiety is not proof that the child was never wanted.
What looks like a broken “Do you want children?” button may simply be a settings menu with far more options than we usually admit.
References (10)
- Skelton E, Webb R, Malamateniou C, Rutherford M, Ayers S. “The impact of antenatal imaging on parent experience and prenatal attachment: a systematic review.” J Reprod Infant Psychol. 2024;42(1):22-44. DOI: 10.1080/02646838.2022.2088710. PubMed pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Coté JJ, et al. “Prenatal attachment interventions: a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis.” Arch Womens Ment Health. 2025;28(6):1447-1471. DOI: 10.1007/s00737-025-01630-w. PubMed pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Miller WB. “Childbearing motivations, desires, and intentions: a theoretical framework.” Genet Soc Gen Psychol Monogr. 1994;120(2):223-258. PubMed pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Miller WB. “Childbearing motivation and its measurement.” J Biosoc Sci. 1995;27(4):473-487. DOI: 10.1017/S0021932000023087. PubMed pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Factor Structure and Psychometric Properties of the Italian Version of the Childbearing Motivations Scale.” 2025. PubMed pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- The Misclassification of Ambivalence in Pregnancy Intentions: A Mixed-Methods Analysis.” 2019. PubMed pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Ranjbar F, Warmelink JC, Gharacheh M. “Prenatal attachment in pregnancy following assisted reproductive technology: a literature review.” J Reprod Infant Psychol. 2020;38(1):86-108. DOI: 10.1080/02646838.2019.1705261. PubMed pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- The association between maternal-fetal bonding and prenatal anxiety: An explanatory analysis and systematic review.” 2018. PubMed pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Experiences of transition to motherhood among pregnant women following assisted reproductive technology: a qualitative systematic review.” 2021. PubMed pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Patient Screening — Perinatal Mental Health.” Current guidance page accessed 2026-10-03 acog.org
