in Greece (I might as easily say “for in the entire universe”), a woman who doesn’t want children is anomalous, aberrant, and suspect. To choose not to have children is to stretch too far outside the inherited rule that procreation is both a biological and a civic requisite for full and proper membership in the human race. Conversations about this with elderly Greeks more often than not prove circuitous and fruitless, and so I lifted my own hands slightly to the sky and said, “Right. God’s will.” When I asked the farmer whether he had children, his answer was, surprisingly, no. His reason: I
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