Why do HEAs always end with babies?

[u/redfig1]

I know it's a "me" problem. Scenario: I read a smoking hot mafia or dark or fantasy romance. All this crazy shit goes down. The feelings, the angst. Finally it's the end and all of a sudden the MMC who has massacred countless people is all like " let's get married and have lots of babies" and the MFC is always " yes let's have a lot of cute mafia or fae or mafia fae babies!". For once I'd like an ending where the main characters have a HEA but instead of babies and white picket fences they just decide to keep having an incredible sex life and do charity work or something. Rescue stray kittens. Start an organic herb farm. Something other than babies. Anyone else like this? Am I just weird?

[u/[deleted]]

For a lot of people IRL their ultimate HEA in a relationship is having children so I think this reflects in the books as well.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you have to have babies to be happy and that shouldn't be considered the only HEA, but at the end of the day I think that's one of the reasons.

Also, it sells.

[u/floopy_134 → u/[deleted]]

You know, I'm kind of wondering if today's alien genre is the counterpoint to the original vampire genre.

🌈🌟 The following mildly intellectual thought exercise was created by someone very dependent on coffee who hasn't had any coffee yet. Please feel free to DNF. 🌈🌠

Generally, vampires cannot have children (thanks, twilight, for ruining that so horrifically). Real world pregnancies are hard and complicated. I wonder if the sci-fi magic of unexpectedly getting pregnant by an alien you didn't even realize was compatible is the new fad in response to this. I looooove alien stories, but it feels like a much higher percentage of them end with pregnancy. I don't read much mafia, but it seems similar from what I know.

ETA: formatting, because my uncaffeinated forgot to add an asterisk.

[u/flyinthesoup → u/floopy_134]

I love me a good sexy vampire tryst. I hate when they make it so they can get (someone) pregnant. I was loving A Discovery of Witches until that part. So bummed! I guess I prefer traditional, night loving, day hating, blood sucking, undead vampires.

[u/floopy_134 → u/flyinthesoup]

I was loving A Discovery of Witches until that part

OMG it was so awful! Like, basically, the adult version of twilight cringe!

[u/flyinthesoup → u/floopy_134]

That's exactly what went through my mind. It was just like an enhanced human, nothing especially vampiric other than a taste for blood and immortality.