I've known since I was very young that I never wanted children--no defining event, I just knew--and the only reason people have stopped pressuring me to have them is because I've turned forty and they figure they'd be more apt to get somewhere guilt-tripping some twenty-five-year-olds. When I was in my late teens/early twenties and said I didn't want them, it was always an insufferably smug, "Well, you'll change your mind about that, you'll see," and when I was thirty-five it switched to increasingly hostile, yet still smug predictions that I'll be "left to rot in a nursing home" while they, themselves, will be lovingly cared for round the clock by their adoring adult children. Given that I know some women in their sixties who have a half-dozen children who only call home when they need money, uh, yeah, we'll see.