I had two kids in my twenties, and I had professional women tell me I was too young to have one at 25. The fact that I’d been married several years and bought a house was irrelevant - I was even told that I should have dated several other men for a few years to know if the guy I was with was good.
It is no surprise they they hit their 30s and 40s never finding a good man, passing over good guys in search of perfection that doesn’t exist. I had two kids, while they bounced from relationship to relationship.
I’ve seen women in their mid to late 30s suddenly realize the biological clock is ticking and have one, wishing they had more, either deliberately doing it alone because they have no one or settling for a third choice partner because there is no one else interested in them. I know one woman who had 3 kids past 40, everyone else had one before the door closed or none at all.
The most annoying cases are when I had pictures of my kids, talked about their antics, and another woman comes to show me her “kid” pictures. Dogs in costumes, dogs on walks, animals in poses. It is a tragedy, and I was criticized for saying that’s not a child but an animal.
I remember a population control novel written in the 1960s talking about how free love would replace the maternal urge. Liberals were only a little off - pets could replace children if fashionable enough, and they don’t grow up and you can kill them and get a different one.
” Dogs in costumes, dogs on walks, animals in poses. It is a tragedy,”
We have many like that here, in San Francisco, where many clans come to die out. Its weird, how often one hears of people who are the “last” of one or more families, childless, wealthy with so many inheritances, with no heirs.