"On November 3, 1975, Ann Landers received a letter from a young couple undecided about having a baby. They asked the columnist to conduct a survey of her readers. They wanted to know, from parents with young children and older couples as well, whether parenting was worth it. "Were the rewards enough to make up for the grief?" they asked.



Landers took their request to her readers: "If you had it to do over again, would you have children?" she asked. The response? An astounding 70 percent of the respondents said no!

I am 40, and my husband is 45. We have twin children under 8 years of age. I was an attractive, fulfilled career woman before I had these kids. Now I'm an overly exhausted, nervous wreck who misses her job and sees very little of her husband. He's got a "friend" I'm sure, and I don't blame him. Our children took all the romance out of our marriage. I'm too tired for sex, conversation or anything.



Sign Me Too Late For Tears



"I've lived for 70 years and I speak from experience as a mother of five," writes another. "Was it worth it? No. ... Not one of our children has given us any pleasure. God knows we did our best, but we were failures as parents, and they are failures as people."



She signed her letter "Sad Story.""

My daughter brought this to my attention, it was in her religion book at school. She asked me about it and I told her I was surprised at the percentage but that in the "old days", women just got married and had kids because that's what women did so I'm sure there were a lot of women back then whe had kids even though they weren't really interested in it and if they were young today they probably wouldn't have kids. I told her if my mom were a young woman today she probably wouldn't have kids. My mom had 6 and she wasn't a bad mom or anything, but she was so disappointed that all three of her daughters stayed home with their kids. She just doesn't understand it. There's day care now and women can have careers, why anyone would stay home with kids when they could be having a career is beyond her. If she were young now she would be a total career woman, working 70 hours a week and loving every second of it.

Do you think fewer women today regret being parents because there is more choice about whether you want to be a mom or not? Or is there still just as much pressure for women to be moms as there used to be? Are women still seen as having something wrong with them if they don't have a maternal instinct?

