I'm still thinking about parenting and parenthood. When we moved into our first "family" neighborhood, our son was six and starting school. There were neighbors with kids, and a couple with boys about his age. Nobody brought a casserole, but one mother introduced herself and said they had three boys and that their kids "are my life." I walked away from that conversation thinking, "that's never going to be me." I wanted a child or maybe even children with that man; I knew that, and the one I had was beautiful and smart and complex. I loved him completely, but he wasn't my life. He enriched my life, but he didn't define me. I had dreams and desires and goals that didn't include him, maybe in the knowledge that he would grow up and move on and have his own life, or maybe I didn't even think that far ahead. I was just selfish enough to want my own life separate from being a parent. Two years later, when he had just turned nine, we had a daughter, and she, too enriched my life/our lives, but I hung onto my life as a student and finished college, much of it while simultaneously being her mother. When she was seven, I took a full-time job and had a career that I loved that lasted until after she finished college. I'll never know how much my attitude toward parenting influenced either or both of their attitudes toward parenting; he never wanted kids and she always wanted them. And, as I have written, she has two now and parents very differently than she was parented. I would love some feedback on this post; have you looked at your attitude toward being a mother (or father)? Did you have a "style" of parenting? Did you mirror your mother's or do the opposite? Can you look back and see what your parents did/didn't do and get a handle on how that did or did not influence your decisions and attitudes about your own children? If you are a grandparent, do you watch your grown children and see that their parenting techniques are different from yours? If so, how?