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To: epicure who wrote (330)	3/4/2001 4:54:53 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to 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

To: epicure who wrote (330)	3/4/2001 6:55:08 PM
From: YlangYlangBreeze	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 51716

Okay, tell the truth now. Haven't you even for a minute regretted having them? Sometimes I feel so trapped, so defined as so and so's mother, so and so's wife, so and so's caretaker. I, meaning my identity, could just slip down the drain and noone would be the wiser. On the day my first child turned 18, I bawled my eyes out. Not because he was leaving the nest. Not at all. Because I looked at my (sweet, much loved) younger child, who was eight at that time and realized that I would be done now, but I had at least ten more years of feeding my soul with a demitasse spoon to someone who takes it totally for granted. Babies are swell, from a distance, but even walking into a room with a sleeping one is uncomfortable because you know that at any moment it WILL go off. Time bomb. Tick tock. The demanding little tyrant will open it's mouth like a fire alarm and sound until it is rocked and fed and amused. You can commit manslaughter and get off in less than 18 years. I don't think I had any idea what I was getting into. I feel it is my duty to suggest to young people that they can have a possibly even more satisfactory life without them. If you love a man, and bring a child into it, it does not bring you closer, why spoil it. When you feel all frisky junior is tapping at the door. Goodbye quiet evenings alone together, cooking breakfast in the nude. A 21 year old I know said that by the time she's 30, she'll have done everything she wants to do, and be ready to have kids. By the time I'm 200 I couldn't do everything I'd like to do. Join the Peace Corps, study ornithology, arcaeology, paleantology, geology, learn thai, hindu, italian, swahili, see all seven continents, walk the pacific crest trail from mexico to canada, walk all the way around Bali... My son and I relate much better now that we can interact adult-adult, most of the time. The baby bird routine gets old. I am so ready to be his friend. I like him. You gals know I love my kids, and I know I don't have defend tha t love to you. It's not that I regret having "those kids." I think they would have been born even if I hadn't born them. But sometimes it's quite a load, and I feel lost under it. I'm not even going to re-read what i've just cyber scrawled.