Postponing, Ergo Skipping Motherhood Not Neccesarily Failure . . .

Recently, we reported on a study in England that Educated Women in UK Less Likely to Be Mothers. One woman responds:

Given that my seemingly hazardous decision to "wait" primarily means that I avoided having babies in any of my previous relationships, I don't rue a darn thing, thank you.

I can't imagine anything worse than still being tied to some of the men I've had relationships with - for me, or for any child unfortunate enough to have resulted from those doomed affairs.
. . .

Wanting children by hook or by crook - or by IVF - is not a foregone conclusion just because you're a woman. I have never said I don't want children, but I would like them to arrive into a happy home.

Reports like the one I mentioned at the outset seem to me to presume that the decision of when to conceive is entirely in a woman's hands: as if I and millions of women like me have been dillydallying, careless and negligent, through our adult lives.

The trouble is that the implication I have faced all too often in society at large is that women who forego having children are selfish hedonists bent on pursuing their own desires at the expense of their obligation to help ensure the survival of the species.

But not having children isn't necessarily a selfish decision.

Over-population is an enormous problem, not just in terms of the well-being of the population which already exists - many of whom don't seem to be doing too well, not only in Africa and Asia, but also at home.

Perhaps I ought to help care for the babies who already exist and give them access to some of the privileges with which I have been blessed.

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