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Baby Battles

When He Doesn't Want a Child

By Shel Franco

made an appointment with her OB/GYN, and she asked her husband to come along. "He didn't want anything to do with it," she says. "He refused to push the envelope."

After another six months and a severely deteriorating relationship, the Clarks entered counseling. "At that point, we stopped trying to conceive at the advice of our therapist so we could concentrate on each other," she says. "It was like a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. As long as we were using birth control and I wasn't talking about parenthood, he was great. It took almost an entire year of counseling for me to work through my issues attached to mothering, and during that time, we learned that Kevin had his own issues to work through."

The Clarks conceived two years after they started counseling. "It's better than I ever imagined, because now I know we are parents for all the right reasons," says Clark.

With the help of counseling, you could find that your deep love is enough to pull you through until he is ready for a child, even if it takes 10 years. And if he is never ready, that just might be OK, too.

"A friend of mine married a man 15 years older than her when she was 25 years old," says LeClerc. "She had always wanted children but he had three already – and a vasectomy which he did not want reversed. They obviously discussed the problem, and she decided she could be content having a family of cats and dogs. They are still together 10 years later."

*Name has been changed to protect privacy.