Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

I regret not having more children

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issue 14 October 2023

Life doesn’t always work out perfectly. You can make the wrong decisions. You can leave things too late. I wish, though I’m not distraught about it, that I’d had another child, maybe two even, and given my small son siblings.

The tacit assumption was always that children are an obstacle to the noble process of self-actualisation

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of our shrinking population – the great global baby bust – and wondering why more women don’t express regrets.

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