Personally, ever since having a baby of my own, I've found myself with a renewed interest in reading stories about women with babies. Not necessarily romance novels with the single woman with a baby who meets a guy... maybe because that's not the stage of life I want to read about. What I want to read about is what happens after "happily ever after." Once the happy couple marry, I want to know what happens next in their lives. Do they have kids soon? Do they wait? Do they disagree about when to have kids or how many to have? Do they have trouble *having* kids? What are the kids like?
I do agree with whoever pointed out that it's a different stage in life, and that people can even change after having children. Once Lois has a baby, she's not going to be Season One or even Season Four Lois again, even if she keeps being a journalist. She's going to have to cope with childcare, she's probably going to start thinking twice about jumping in without testing the water. Her priorities are going to change. She's going to have to divide herself between her children and her career, starting with sleepless nights tending a baby and then going in the next day without her full mind able to focus on the job (because, no matter our intentions or our caffeine ingestion, we cannot work as well on limited sleep). And that's just Lois! Clark is going to change as well, perhaps in different ways because every person reacts differently, but change all the same.
I do see a child as a product and a validation of a couple's love, but I'm not sure that I'd say that it "completes" their love. But for many (most) couples, it is the natural next step. So I think at some point, wanting to read stories where a fanfiction couple (say, Lois and Clark, for instance...
) has a child seems only logical.
I think the best sequel stories, like continued seasons or just a series of stories after the show ends, would have some stories in which children are the focus, but only when appropriate (because the story has to do with the children), some stories in which they don't appear at all, and some in which they are almost "accessories." Why? Because I think that's how children are in real life. Sometimes it's all about them. Sometimes their parents have adventures without them. And sometimes their parents have them along, but the focus is on what the parents (or perhaps older children) are doing, and the baby is just along for the ride. Maybe babies who sleep in strollers all the time oh-so-conveniently aren't realistic, but then, how often do you see characters stop to run to the bathroom in the middle of looking for a bad guy? It happens in real life, but it's not important to the story, so it gets left out. And sometimes, so does the baby!