ABSTRACT
Amongst my friends and acquaintances who are lesbian, and who grew up, as I did, between the mid-1940s and early 1960s, I do not know any lesbians who became mothers except as a result of heterosexual relationships that, to begin with, were accompanied by marriage. Amongst these friends are those who would have liked to have children, but did not desire heterosexual relations, or were afraid of parental and/ or social disapproval, who are now reconciling themselves to another loss-they are growing old without the company of their grandchildren. Some of these women now look upon the evolving generative mores in lesbian culture with envy and admiration for women who were determined not to allow society to sacrifice their wishes to become parents. Even in the world of psychoanalysis, supposedly a world in which we are trained to understand difference, until a few years ago, when the Institute of Psychoanalysis adopted an Equal Opportunities policy, lesbians reported difficulties in being accepted to train as psychoanalysts (Ellis 1994).
