Reply #82: Now THAT is a very interesting question.

[Withywindle]

I've long suspected that the desire, the biological/psychological drive to have children is something that is hard-wired into SOME people and not others.

I think this because I'm a 41-year-old woman who has never felt anything resembling a desire for a child. Babies produce no "instinctive" tender feelings in me and I don't find them very interesting. I think there are inanimate objects that have more of a maternal instinct than I do.

Yet, lots of women say they *do* experience strong feelings about babies; as a very intense longing, as "baby rabies," a sort of hunger. I have no reason at all to disbelieve them just because I've never experienced it.

I resent being told, or having it implied that there's something "wrong" with me, because I don't really experience it as a lack...because it's just usually not something I have much reason to think about. You can't really miss what you've never had.

I do wonder, though, if producing a certain percentage of people who are missing the baby-want "gene" for whatever reason is one of nature's clever ways of population control.