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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Sun May 12, 2013, 08:17 AM May 2013

Growing Cost of Having Kids Is Tipping More Women Towards Ambivalence about Motherhood

http://www.alternet.org/gender/growing-cost-having-kids-tipping-more-women-towards-ambivalence-about-motherhood



***SNIP

Happy (or Unhappy) Either Way

Interestingly, however, among those choosing childlessness, No Ways are the minority. Instead, I suspect that the majority of women who grow to old age without having children will do so not out of resolve, but out of a deep sense of ambivalence. Most women who are considering childlessness are Either Ways.

Callie, like Samantha, is a 34-year-old professional, but she’s an Either Way. This is how she describes her life:

I'm married and in a long-term stable very happy relationship and the question is, is it the intention that we go on together, [have a child] and see what happens… or is my life so full and happy the way it is that I don't want to do anything that could jeopardize that? I really do think that it’s gotten to a point where I'm going to be happy either way.

Knowing that she would be happy either way, however, didn’t alleviate what Callie experienced as a rather crushing pressure to decide. But she just couldn’t; so she decided not to decide. She is leaving it up to fate. She and her husband are going to let nature take its course (that is, use no birth control) for exactly three years. If she gets pregnant and has a baby, they’ll be parents; if she doesn’t, they’ll settle in to enjoy the pleasures of a childfree life.
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