Country artist Kelsea Ballerini has struck a chord with “I Sit In Parks,” a song about yearning for motherhood after being told that chasing career success would deliver deep and lasting happiness.
“I Sit in Parks” feels less like a song and more like a mirror held up to an entire generation of women who were told they could have it all if they chased achievement first and dealt with the marriage and family stuff later. It gives voice to the quiet grief of realizing the consequences of that choice.
And while Ballerini hasn’t said the song was autobiographical, that’s how many fans are seeing it.
Her lyrics begin with the image that many women know well but rarely speak about:
“I sit in parks, it breaks my heart, ’cause I see / Just how far I am from the things that I want / Dad brought the picnic, Mom brought the sunscreen / Two kids are laughing and crying on red swings.”
These lyrics aren’t about envy of another woman’s designer clothes or corner office. They speak of a deep, vulnerable ache for motherhood and family life.
“We look about the same age / But we don’t have the same Saturdays,” the song goes on. “Did I miss it?/ By now, is it/ A lucid dream? Is it my fault/ For chasing things a body clock/ Doesn’t wait for? I did the damn tour/ It’s what I wanted, what I got/ I spun around and then I stopped/ And wonder if I missed the mark.”
Ballerini’s frank admissions have emboldened women to weigh in on social media.
“Wow. The picture painted by Kelsea Ballerini in this song is tragic. How many hearts has feminism broken with its lies?” one person observed.
“This is grim,” another commenter said of the song. “I feel so sad for the girls who got duped into putting off the most important things in life.”
“My gosh, this is one of the saddest things I’ve ever read. I’m 45 with a 15 month old, so this almost became my reality. An entire generation of women has been sold a bill of goods under false pretenses,” a third commenter replied.
“As a single girl in her thirties, I’ve never related to a song more,” a popular comment on the YouTube music video for the song says.
“I wasn’t prepared for this. As a single girl at 39 this song hits so deep,” another person wrote.
Predictably, there were plenty who shot back, saying they were perfectly content in their choice not to have kids. But the marvel of Ballerini’s song isn’t just the message, but also that it’s coming from a mainstream artist.
It’s telling that at the same time this single started gaining traction, the radical pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights began circulating an old interview with singer Stevie Nicks discussing how her abortion in the 1970s “allowed her to continue her career at the height of Fleetwood Mac.”
Nicks described her unexpected pregnancy as a “nightmare scenario” that would have “destroyed” the band. During that interview, she spent no time reflecting on how her life would have unfolded if she hadn’t decided to sacrifice her child on the altar of fame. It’s a much more common outlook that other celebrities have spoken of, while Ballerini’s wistful reflection on what could have been is almost never heard.
“So, I sit in parks, sunglasses dark, and I/ Hit the vape, hallucinate a nursery with Noah’s Ark/ They lay on a blanket, and God d*** it, he loves her/ I wonder if she wants my freedom, like I wanna be a mother/ But Rolling Stones says I’m on the right road/ So I refill my Lexapro, thinking…” she sings.
Interestingly, Ballerini was married young and got divorced within five years because her husband, Morgan Evans, wanted to have children right away while she preferred to freeze her eggs and delay becoming a mom, as The Daily Wire previously reported.
“That was something that we had talked about early on, and that was something that I was changing on,” the singer said during a 2023 appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “Cause he was ready. He was like, ‘I don’t want to be an old dad,’ is what he kept saying. And I was like, ‘I’m not there yet, and I can’t do that to save this and give you something that I’m not ready for.’”
Ballerini said she “wasn’t ready for kids” and decided to visit a doctor to discuss egg freezing, which she planned to do before turning 30. She didn’t discuss the appointment with Evans until later.
“It was not a good day,” Ballerini said of telling her husband about her plan. “And I think that was when I was like, there’s a fundamental difference here that has happened, that has shifted. And it’s no longer like, I don’t see this person, I miss this person, I’m alone, I’m lonely. It’s like, he wants something out of life … [and] I’m not there.”
The “Half of My Hometown” singer said she filed for divorce not long after that conversation in August 2022.
There’s a chance Ballerini wrote the song to make money, knowing it would make headlines and she could capitalize on the buzz it would generate. There’s a chance she doesn’t regret her decision to chase a career rather than becoming a mom sooner.
But either way, based on the reactions and comments, there is a group of women who feel duped by the subtle yet relentless messaging to build their careers and identities first and worry about marriage and family later… or never.
In practice, biology never agreed to that timeline. These women were told that motherhood was a detour from fulfillment, not part of it, and that it was equally if not more noble to collect passport stamps.
They were told motherhood was a cage. That freedom was the goal. Yet in this song, the woman with all the freedom and fame is also the one with a broken heart.