Of course the subject of children surfaced often during our newlywed days, but only when responding to rude inquiries regarding our plans to procreate from everyone and anyone: Ben's family, my family, friends, random mothers in the park, even our dry cleaner.

"We're not going to have children," one of us would matter-of-factly reply, and then we would tolerate the inevitable chatter that followed about how much children enrich your lives.

Once, at a book party, an editor came right out and told me that if I didn't have kids at some point, then my life "would be devoid of meaning." Now that's a pretty extreme statement. I think I said something like, "Well, gee, I might as well off myself now then, huh?" She pretended not to hear me and kept going on about her children.

Another common response was the sympathetic nod from people who believed that we were actually concealing a painful truth: our inability to conceive. Like the time a friend of Ben's from college slipped me a business card with her fertility clinic information scrawled on the back. I handed it to Ben who promptly announced to his friend that he had had a vasectomy several months into our marriage. This wasn't true-I was on the pill-but there was something about his statement that both shamed her and shut her up.

And the final recurrent motif was the whole, "Who is going to take care of you when you're old?" query. Ben and I would say, "Each other." They'd (unbelievably) respond, "But what about when one of you dies?" At which point, things would really become cheery. Occasionally I'd point out that nursing homes are filled with people whose children never visit. That children are no guarantee of anything. You could have a kid who becomes a poor, struggling artist. Or a kid who grows into a selfish, ne'er-do-well adult. Or a kid who has special needs that render him unable to care for himself, let alone his elderly parents. Bottom line, Ben and I agreed that worrying about your care is a stupid, selfish reason to procreate anyway. We preferred to work hard and save our money, rather than burden a future generation.