LESLEY: Let me finish the sentence. Then you can tear it apart. Marital satisfaction decreases dramatically after the birth of a first child. So that’s what that says. So maybe you have to be single to really, really have another child.

CYNTHIA: Well, I was married. But Mary, Lesley and I were already established in our professions when we had our children, which makes a big difference. To be 25 and have a baby is a very different thing than to be 35 and have a baby. And I think that, you know, it’s easier to say it’s joyful when you have plenty of money to hire help, when you have enough professional status to be able to say, “No, I don’t think I’ll do that one. I’ll do this one.” I think it makes a difference.

LESLEY: Well, and we also feel better about ourselves when we’re established and we’re not clawing so much.

MARY: But, you know, I think also we’re probably older and wiser and we are more patient because we understand the value of the children. So we’re willing to put up with a marriage that’s maybe not terrific. And when you’re free of that marriage, for some reason, you are really happy with your children.

LIZ: When you’re really free and alone, it’s true. Like, what Joni said, joking, about her dog.

JONI: I wasn’t joking.

LIZ: No, I mean, you know, caring for another human being, or an animal who depends on you, is just a universal thing.

CYNTHIA: And you’re happy, in part, because you’re involved in a really wonderful relationship. I think, that you have to have somebody in your life to love, or you don’t have happiness, don’t you think?  Look, it’s hard to have children and not have any resources, which is the way most people have children.

JONI: That book talks about expectations. Expectation is really the definition of happiness. If you ask somebody, “What is a great meal?” who has just had a great meal, they’ll say, “I don’t need much.” You have somebody that’s starving … it’s all different. So that happiness is really measured by what you already have or don’t have yet.

CYNTHIA: That’s interesting.

JONI: It’s a little bit like what you’re saying – you already achieved, so having a child come into your life after you’ve achieved is easier.

MARY: If you’re very young, and you have a mad passionate love affair with somebody and you get married – first of all, there are a lot of books out right now that suggest that men are very quickly over that period. I mean, that lust lasts about 18 months total. I mean, that’s the longest —

LESLEY: Just for men?

MARY: Yes.

LESLEY: Not for women?

MARY: Oh, no, no, no. They were talking lust and the length of lust.

LESLEY: But I’m saying, why just the men? I would think it’s also true of women.

MARY: I think women probably start right off caring for a man on maybe a broader scope because most of these books will tell you that men, it’s essentially all about sex. And that when you do have a baby and you’re young, and a man is still at a high peak sexual period in his life, that kind of destroys some of his illusions about marriage and about love. And that after that, there’s a lot of adapting; there’s an awful lot of learning – growing up and figuring out. It’s: Do I really want to be with this person and go through the whole business of a small child? especially when young men are in their 20s. And there’s probably a lot of truth if you’re looking at it through the eyes of 20-year-olds, and especially through male eyes.

LIZ: There’s a lot of ultimate disillusion.