I thought I could be a ‘cool mum’ – just strap my baby to me and keep living life as usual. I was so wrong | Tara Kenny

For many heterosexual women, having kids was once just something you did; a quotidian rite of passage.

Today , it’s more likely to be a conscious, carefully weighed choice.

Millennials are procreating later in life, or not at all.

The millennial woman who has enjoyed a protracted adolescence might return to a more nebulous but equally vexing question: Will I still be cool with a kid?.

Tara Kenny is an arts and culture writer based in Naarm/Melbourne .

She was shocked to discover that previously pleasurable activities were often joyless and depleting as a new mother.

But she forged on, convinced that to limit spontaneous socialising in adult’ environments would sound the death knell for her pre-child identity.