One Christmas, home from college, I went to a holiday gathering of families with my parents. After dinner we played a game where husbands answered frank questions on behalf of their wives. When my parents’ turn came, the host asked my father, “How many children did you want when you got married?” My dad, ventriloquizing my mother, snapped, “Zero. My mother went to a now-defunct nursing school, met my doctor dad at the Mayo Clinic and signed up for his dream — an upper-middle-class life out west with horses and kids. Sure, she didn’t want children or large animals, but it was a safe choice, one she could manage.

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