Those without children lack a stake in the future

Women without children are also the best of mothers,often, with the patience,interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot always sustain. I come to crave our talk and our daughters gain precious aunts. Women who are not mothering their own children have the clarity and focus to see deeply into the character of children webbed by family. A child is fortuante who feels witnessed as a peron,outside relationships with parents by another adult.

When one has not father, or mother, or brother, and all one's friends have barely bread enough for themselves, life cannot be very easy, nor its crusts very many at any time.

Never have children, only grandchildren.

A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children.

(Pericles:) [A] man's counsel cannot have equal weight or worth, when he alone has no children to risk in the general danger.

(Book 2 Chapter 44.3)

I'm talking about not having kids in the first place. That's the problem.

Once upon a time there was a lady. She had no children, and no happiness either. And at first she cried for a long time, but then she became wicked . . .

Ah, there are no longer any children!

It’s not only working parents who are looking for more hours in the day; people without children are also overworked, maybe to an even greater extent. When I was in business school, I attended a Women in Consulting panel with three speakers: two married women with children and one single woman without children. After the married women spoke about how hard it was to balance their lives, the single woman interjected that she was tired of people not taking her need to have a life seriously. She felt that her colleagues were always rushing off to be with their families, leaving her to pick up the slack. She argued, “My coworkers should understand that I need to go to a party tonight — and this is just as legitimate as their kids’ soccer game — because going to a party is the only way I might actually meet someone and start a family so I can have a soccer game to go to one day!” I often quote this story to make sure single employees know that they, too, have every right to a full life.

唯女子與小人爲難養也！近之則不孫，遠之則怨。

Whoever escapes marriage
And women's harm, comes to deadly old age
Without any son to support him.

Ah, never to have married, and childless to have died!

(Those who have no sons rarely attach any importance to the priorities of those who do, but they resent them deeply.)