Deirdre's post about kids is a perfectly valid <rant> to insert into the
discussion; but as a childless woman, I found myself saying, at every
line: "You chose this. You chose this. You *chose* to limit your options
(in one sense) and your plans; and you even made some choices about how
you *chose* to raise your kids and what you decided to tell your
colleagues about your choices. Such as: don't call me after 8 p.m., I will
not come, solve your own problems unless you're about to burn the lab
down."
Every parent I have ever known (my own included, and mother a full-time
career person just as much as father) has said 'kids are more exhausting
than anything else you'll ever do.' So people who have them must know what
they are getting into.
So I'll help support the child-ridden; I think kids are great and the
people who have them are fortunate in their set of options and unfortunate
in other ways, too; but nobody held a gun to your head and made you have
'em. None of the correspondents on this list live in Bosnia or Bangaldesh
or Pakistan where childbirth as a result of rape is much more commonplace
than in the prosperous West; we are discussing what are unthinkably *easy*
problems by comparison with those of much of the rest of the world.
People who have kids, male or female, are lucky to have had the *choice*.
Those of us who are childless and think our lives are just as valid as the
childed life tend to remember this, perhaps, more than parents do,
perhaps?
cheers
k
(Dr.) Katherine J. Kaye
School of Geography
Oxford OX1 3TB
ubi Deus, ibi pax; ubi caritas, amor.
