From: lenona321@yahoo.com   
      
    Unfortunately, that 1973 essay about her decision not to have children   
   doesn't seem to be available anywhere online. Not even in snippet form at   
   Google Books.   
      
   A few excerpts:   
      
   "...I went through four years of Catholic high school, accumulating graces and   
   guilts, hearing with monotonous regularity that if I didn't have a religious   
   vocation, my job was to be fruitful and multiply. It didn't work. They broke   
   my spirit with    
   Joycean thoroughness, but I held stubbornly to one tenet. I was going to be an   
   old maid, and no one was going to stop me."   
      
   Then her mother started taking in foster babies/kids and telling Lindsey's   
   brothers to play with them or walk with them, but never to feed them or change   
   their diapers - that was KAREN's job. She objected when they told her it would   
   be "good practice"    
   for her; she pointed out that she wasn't going to have kids and since the   
   brothers probably would, THEY needed the practice, not her. But, of course:   
   "It wasn't fair, my mother said firmly, to expect boys to change diapers.   
   Period. I changed diapers.   
      
   "And slowly, the grown-ups attitude changed. It was no longer cute that I   
   didn't want kids..."   
      
      
   More later.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)