Meghan Markle & Prince Harry Reportedly Want Kids "Right Away," & Can’t We Just Let Them Live?

All eyes have been on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle since their wedding last month. And as anyone who's been married knows, the questions about when they were going to have kids were coming at them from all sides before they had even left St. George's Chapel together. But now, there are reports that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry supposedly "want kids" soon, which, let's just be honest here, are probably pretty bogus and don't have much merit.

Not that it would be terrible for the young couple to want to have kids and start their family soon after tying the knot. But since they're not even back from their mysterious honeymoon yet, it's probably better to just give them a little space and just let them live. A royal insider told Us Weekly that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex "both can't wait" to start having kids and added that Markle will "start trying as soon as she can." The source continued, "Harry and Meghan won’t rush into anything. They have a lot on their plate right now. But they both think that when the moment feels right, that will be the time to go for it. They’ll make fantastic parents.”

It's not like they haven't said that they don't want kids. In their first interview as a couple with the BBC following their engagement, Prince Harry said that kids were definitely a possibility. "You know, one step at a time. Hopefully we’ll start a family in the near future," he said at the time.

There have also been other instances in which the couple has hinted at kids, according to People, so it seems that they are thinking about a family. But it's the obsession with when, how, what they'll name them, or where they'll go to school that's a little out of control. It started on their wedding day, when news commentators wondered out loud whether they would "hurry" to have kids, given the duchess' age. (She's 36 years old and he's 33 years old.) Talk about bad manners, right?

Maybe decades ago, when women were shunned for working out of the home or remaining single well past their "child bearing" age, it was socially acceptable to speculate about the royal family's fertility. It's not anymore and it's one very icky thing about our culture that really needs to stop. What is this, Gilead?

Markle, like women everywhere, is a really successful, intelligent, and driven person, too. She will make all of her reproductive choices when she darn well feels like it. So can we leave her alone for a minute? There's no reason for "anonymous royal insiders" to push her or to share what could or could not be their thoughts on a very personal decision.

It is true that it's easier to get pregnant when you're younger, according to Women's Health. And that obstetricians label any pregnancy after 35 years old a "geriatric pregnancy" or tell the woman she's at an "advanced maternal age," which are both just terrible terms that shame older women for waiting to have children.

There's also a higher risk of miscarriage, Down Syndrome and chromosomal abnormalities detected in the fetus for pregnant women over the age of 35, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. But Markle didn't just wake up yesterday — every single woman knows these things and it's very likely that the duchess does, too. What's more, women having kids in their 30s is more common than ever before, according to Science Alert.

Obsessing over Markle's 36-year-old uterus not only objectifies her as a baby-maker and nothing else, it also puts her in a super awkward and possibly traumatic experience if it turns out that she or Prince Harry have fertility issues, like 10 percent of American women and 9 percent of American men do, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fertility isn't just a woman's "problem." Of course, we don't know anything about their fertility, obviously. But the constant baby watch can be harmful to couples who do have issues, so it's just a better practice to get over our fascination with people getting pregnant right after they get married. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex included.

Starting a family is a really personal decision that everyone has a right to make on their own terms. Just because she's the most famous new bride in the world these days doesn't mean everyone gets to pressure her and her new husband into procreating or incessantly hound them about when they might want to.