Your starter for ten...

Gosh, Wood Street Girl here, and this is my first post and first foray into sharing my innermost thoughts with the masses. I notice that people who blog regularly rant, question, laugh at themselves, laugh at others, comment and observe in turn. Where should I start? One big question I have been mulling over for the past few months is whether feminism has become an opiate of western womanhood, which tends to wear off when women realise they cannot 'have it all' and in fact, must make a choice between the killer career and a family. I don't mean to imply that opting for one precludes the other, but instead that woman must accept that the lesser priority will suffer (sometimes significantly). More to come on this one, but if I ever meet Germaine Greer I have some issues to resolve.

A more recent question is, do people regret having children? even a bit? A blog I follow wrote with a degree of shock, that today his eldest started high school and something to the effect of, as a parent, 'doesn't time fly when you were having fun'. Is having kids so great? As a childless woman, from the outside looking in it, life with children seems to go in cycles; ecstacy and joy seem to turn to frustration and personal limitation not just within single days but across seasons in a parent's life. Is what children bring worth what you have to give up? And what gives adults confidence they will be good parents? In response to the rather pathetic view that people who choose not to have kids are selfish, I heard a woman say 'I'd rather be called selfish than a bad mother'. Is that just a clever response to a narrow minded opinion or do young (and not so young) women today really doubt their ability to parent?

I read a commentary on a book written about a woman who genuinely regrets having her kids. In fact the book was written by a single (or at least childless) woman, and was simply the product of her imagination, however she was flooded with letters from women who emphathized with the sentiments of the book. Wow. Do women really feel this way? If so, why? Thoughts please.

For myself, God willing, a family is definitely on the agenda for me (and Wood Street Man), as some knawing voice says that children are not just a way to make me feel loved and needed, but will in time lead to them having happy, fulfilling and productive lives. But is this feeling a biological trick to keep us reproducing? Who knows, and in a sense who cares, because since God first said 'be fruitful and multiply' I don't remember Him changing his mind.