on encountering voluntarily childless women, people still regularly threaten, “You’ll regret it one day!” They are betraying some very weird thinking. Can we force ourselves to do something we haven’t the least wish to do solely in order to head off a hypothetical regret hovering in the distant future? Such an argument ties these women right back into the system they are trying to escape, the unbreakable cycle of anticipation which is induced by a child’s presence and through which hopes of guaranteeing the future can eat up the present: take out a loan, work yourself to death, fret about the
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