"You're Just Selfish!" (WAS moved from Main List: on not having children)

[ssk7882]

Cindy wrote of the ambitious career woman who reaches the 
proverbial "top" only to realize...

> And she gets there. And she looks around. And she 
> realizes that it isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's 
> kind of hollow, really -- just the TV and a pint of 
> Ben and Jerry's. 
 
Yeah, but people who devote their lives to child-rearing get exactly 
the same phenomenon. It's called "empty nest syndrome."  And people 
who dedicate their lives to things other than career or children get 
it as well.  Unsuccessful would-be artists past the age of 35 are 
what help to keep the bars in business.  

But when I questioned the whole "biological clock" notion, I wasn't 
talking about mid-life crises, and I wasn't talking about *Regrets.*  
Everybody gets Regrets, men and women, breeders and non-breeders 
alike.  

No, I was referring to this idea that it's commonplace for women who 
don't even particularly *like* children to suddenly start adoring and 
desiring them overnight due to some weird hormonal thing that happens 
to them when they get older.  You know, the whole "Oh, you may think 
that babies are gross and irritating now, but you just wait -- you'll 
just *love* them when turn 30 and your biological alarm clock goes 
off" thing?  That's the one that I find highly dubious.  Maybe it 
does happen to a few unfortunate souls, but then, you know, so does 
being struck by lightning. 

What you're talking about seems to me to be a shift in *priorities,* 
which is a very different animal than a shift in fundamental likes 
and dislikes.  I prioritize intimacy and commitment more highly now 
than I did when I was younger...but I never actually *disliked* 
intimacy and commitment.  I merely ranked it a bit lower in the queue 
at an earlier stage in my life.  That's not at all the same thing as 
undergoing an abrupt transition from a state of actively disliking 
something to a state of desperately liking it.


Elkins