Riding home in a taxi at 9:30 on a Wednesday night, I knew I was in trouble when I heard a voicemail message from Emily saying she’d forgotten her keys and would be waiting for me at the Starbucks near our apartment. What I didn’t know was how much trouble.

Sweeping into the coffee shop, I offered the breeziest of apologies. Emily was not charmed.

“I’ve been waiting here for two hours,” she fumed.

“It’s not my fault you forgot your keys,” I retorted – reasonably enough, I thought.

On the walk home, I rolled out the excuses. I’d been at a work party, a networking thing. The music was loud, and I didn’t hear the phone ring. I was on my way out when I ran into someone I knew. And so on. She wasn’t having any of it.

“You smell like liquor,” she groused.

Back at our apartment, the argument continued, to my astonishment. If it had only been the one time, it would be one thing, Emily informed me. But I’d been out every night in the previous two weeks (this was only a mild exaggeration).

Then came the punch line: “How are we supposed to have a baby in a few months if you never even come home after work?”

Aha! I thought. So that’s what this is about.

I should have known. When you’re 30 years old, like we are, and when you’ve been married three years, like we have, everything becomes about having a baby.

No matter what we’re talking about – our jobs, our friends, an upcoming vacation – reproduction is always just a free association away. It has even infiltrated our sex life: Yesterday, Emily confessed that her dirty thoughts about me now trigger a fantasy of me knocking her up.

And when we manage to avoid talking or thinking about it for a few hours, we can always be sure someone will remind us – if not our families, then our friends. (The other day, I got a call at work from my friend Nina. “Do you have something to tell me?” she demanded. I told her no, and asked why she thought I did. “I had a dream that Emily was pregnant!” she squealed.)

It’s not as though the obsession is unwarranted. On the subject of procreation, you could say that Emily and I are like two companies that have reached an agreement in principle but are still negotiating over the details.

For starters, we both know we do want to have kids, preferably two of them, ideally one of each sex. We also both want to be young parents, a desire that is, for me, rooted in my own childhood. My father was almost 40 by the time I was born. As a 12-year-old, I remember being faintly embarrassed by his bad back and outdated sense of humor, and envying the kids whose dads could throw a spiral and tolerate popular music.

Emily had the opposite experience: Her parents had her when they were in their twenties, and the relatively small generation gap shows in her close relationship with them.

But there’s starting young and then there’s starting now. I’m all for the former, but not quite reconciled to the latter, and that’s where our conflict, such as it is, arises.

Every time Emily tells me that another one of her co-workers is pregnant, or informs me, pointedly, that a couple in our social circle has stopped using the pill and started trying for a baby, I feel a little tug of apprehension, knowing what comes next: “Why does she get to have a baby? When can I have a baby?” (Echoes of my mother, circa 1987: “Why does Suzy Florsheim get to have a cleaning lady and I don’t?”)

It’s not that I don’t feel ready to be a father. Modesty aside, I’m great with kids, and a lot better equipped to raise one than plenty of first-time fathers I’ve known. It’s more that I’m not ready for my entire life to change, and I don’t quite understand why Emily – so similar to me in so many other ways – is.

Work is certainly part of it. I spent the first five years out of college toiling away at a series of low-paying, unglamorous jobs before finally landing one that paid me a decent living and offered a reasonable degree of fulfillment. Having finally gotten my career pointing in the right direction, I’m uneasy about the prospect of putting it on autopilot in order to focus on something else. Having a baby to go home to needn’t affect my nine-to-five performance, of course, but it would mean an end to the routine late nights and afterhours socializing that seem to be expected of anyone with an ounce of ambition in my field.

For Emily’s part, as a medical resident, she has the more demanding job, but her residency is of fixed duration, and taking a few months of maternity leave won’t set her back.

Money, too, is a consideration. Together, we earn enough to support the two of us, but add a third and it’s going to get dicey. Again, having finally gotten used to having a bit of cash left over at the end of the month, do I really want to go back to that post-collegiate feeling of “can I really afford this sandwich?” And that’s before factoring in childcare.

Readers with children, stop right now: I know what you’re going to say, and, please, save your breath. Yes, it is never a good time.

When I’m honest with myself, though, I have to admit the main thing giving me cold feet about fatherhood is what it will mean for my leisure time. I’ve spent enough time around infants and toddlers to know that they are, in addition to being a ton of work, an endless amount of fun.

Guys like me play for time, secure in the knowledge that the life we’re deferring, full of grubby little fingers and juice boxes, will be waiting for us at the end. We’re fighting a rearguard action, and we know it – but ultimately it’s a fight we want to lose.