Sorry this is a bit late--silly me, I spelled "listserv" with an "e" at the
end...
>And if you had the lifestyle and the income of the Tinks (and I
>personally know a few myself who are in exactly this position and for
>whom the biological clock is ticking) - ask yourself; which would you
>choose? Kids or no kids?
Whoa Melanie, that was quite an essay!! ;-)
Here's a simpler version: Many women who are better off/better educated will
spend their 20s trying to finish grad school and/or get their careers off the
ground; therefore they do everything they can to wait until their late
20s/early 30s to start their families. By then they're a lot less likely to
have more than a couple of kids. Which isn't to say that no one ever decides
not to have kids because they enjoy their lifestyle too much, but I think
that's overly simplistic. Plus, it reminds me of anti-abortion arguments I
hear a lot of around here (I live in Alabama)--career women are too selfish
to have kids, so they "kill their babies" rather than screw up their chances
of getting that big promotion. Ugh.
I guess the bottom line is that in an ideal world, we'd all be able to have
as many kids as we want whenever we wanted them. Given the chance, most women
(and men too, if they're the egalitarian sort) will opt for smaller families
because that gives them the best chance of having lives of their own *and*
enjoying parenthood.
So--can anyone think of stories/novels dealing with birth control? "Even the
Queen" is the only one that comes to mind right now for me.
Nicole
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:30 PDT