I wasn’t quite sure how to answer, because I had never really looked at the situation in those terms. “Regret” in the purest sense is usually limited to free choices – situations over which we have some control. I can regret eating an entire batch of raw cookie dough. But I can’t really regret the snowstorm that left me stuck in the house with a hankering to bake. The weather is out of my control.

So I interpreted her question as really asking me if I regret not getting married during my “prime childbearing years,” since that was the part of the equation that was within my control. I told her I don’t regret it -- that every time I faced that decision it was with prayerful discernment, and that God hasn’t led me down the wrong path yet.

But that wasn’t her question. She wanted to know specifically if I regretted not having children, even though I wasn’t married.

That has so never been an option for me.

Apparently, however, she hadn’t ruled it out as an option. Neither, I suspect, have a lot of Catholic women whose biological clocks are beginning to wind down. They know they want children, and they know their time is limited. What’s a girl to do when the big 4-0 (or 3-5, or 4-5, or whatever age they perceive as their deadline) looms and the right man still hasn’t made his appearance?  [continue reading...]