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To: epicure who wrote (330)	3/4/2001 4:54:53 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) of 51716

I promise to try to believe you if you say you have never ever not even for one second regretted it. I'll tell you what I thought and what I felt and you can draw your own conclusions. I think to experience regret you either have to be denied an opportunity or have made a tough decision--one that could have gone either way--and then doubted the decision. Neither of those applied. RE opportunity. I was married for ten years. I suppose we could have produced children. I just started taking the pill and never stopped. We never talked about having kids. I think we both just knew we didn't want any. There were subsequent relationships. And I guess I could have had a kid on my own like Murphy Brown. RE my decision. I think I just knew I didn't want kids. Nonetheless, I did think it through. I very clearly remember thinking about it because I was aware that most women just had kids because that's what one did. I was never like that. I always thought about what I did. The decision was very one sided. 1. I came of age when zero-population growth was a a big thing. So that was an influence. It seemed to me that if there was a risk of too many people, then those who didn't really want kids shouldn't have them. 2. I didn't think I'd be a particularly good mother. I felt like I wasn't really a together adult until I was in my mid thirties. I don't know that I would have had the patience to deal with the terrible twos. I recall thinking that if I were rich enough to have a full time nanny like royalty I might have considered it. I also had no experience with kids. There would have been a huge learning curve and I didn't know how to approach it. Even now I don't have a clue what to do with a kid. In retrospect, I'd probably have been an OK mom, certainly better than many women are one. But not a great one. 3. I also might have done it if the who process took maybe 10-12 years. Feminism was just starting up at that time and I was feeling my oats. My mother had no life outside of me. She got really boring and stale really fast. I never thought and still don't think you can have it all. If I had had kids, I would not have had a career, I would not have developed as a person, gotten an advanced degree, had amazing experiences, been all over. I wasn't willing to give that up. I couldn't have been a supermom and I didn't want kids enough to make the sacrifice. That was the original decision. In my mid thirties I developed fibroid tumors. I recall discussing with the doctor whether or not to have a hysterectomy. We opted to rebuild my uterus just to keep my options open, but I never felt inspired to exercise them. A few years later when the fibroids grew back, the doctor pulled it all out. Best decision I ever made. Should have done it the first time. So you see that the decision was pretty one sided. There's nothing there to regret. As to how I felt about it, not much. I recall pondering whether my parents were disappointed at not having grandchildren. I never brought it up and neither did they. A few times when I'd hear about a high school chum becoming a grandmother I'd think about how old my kids would be had I had any. It was just a passing thought. In my late thirties in was in a relationship with a divorced man with two daughters in another state. I recall thinking that if he and I would get married, it might be nice to have a couple of step daughters since they were old enough to have a conversation with and their primary home would be with their mother. I could have loved them as daughters same as I loved their father. (That was a long distance relationship that lasted about five years. That was as close as I ever came to kids.) While I was a manager, I had a style that was very attentive to the developmental needs of my staff. I still do quite a bit of mentoring. That seems to scratch whatever maternal itch I have. That's all there is. I coo appropriately when people bring out baby pictures, but my interest flags after a minute or two. Unless I'm in the world's deepest state of denial, I can say that I've never regretted it. Karen

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