ABSTRACT
What does a woman want? Over our lifetime, at familiar developmental junctures, we experience myriad significant possibilities regarding education, jobs and career, intimate relationships, and motherhood. The choices we ultimately make and remake are all expressive of our own psychological and biological realities intersecting with those of the culture in which we live. Most often, for women in our country, motherhood is consciously chosen and carefully planned. But there are also many women whose lives are shaped not by choice but, rather, by the confines and limitations imposed by poverty, limited educational opportunities, chronic medical conditions, or a fractured family life. It is difficult and often impossible for them, their resources significantly limited, to choose thoughtfully to become mothers.
