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CareerWise
Of course, there is absolutely no doubt that
speaking careerwise, it was the right decision:
the child-free option, unburdened,
free to progress, without interruptions,
a choice she had to make, she scarcely
hesitated.
She was going to rise beyond the glass ceiling
into the realms of management - and she did,
unburdened - there were no heights she could not
scale....
unburdened. She would not follow her mother's
path.
Times had moved on. She had to compete
on equal terms. And she accepted the terms as
given.
It was not her part to reshape the world. It was
not her fault
that in her family, as so many others
of her generation, she was
the last woman.
Moneywise, it was an inevitable decision:
he'd done the calculations, they all added up
one way.
In a position like his, the cost of a child
up to leaving university (and there was no doubt
that any child of his would have taken a degree)
topped two hundred thousand pounds. No child's
worth that.
Lifestylewise, look at the loss. The holidays
only to be taken in the school vacation. The
cars.
Stuck with a peoplecarrier, dear Christ!
No, no. He did not hesitate.
The cost of his partner's sterilisation at a top
clinic
- money well spent.
And when he died (he did not live to retire)
in a speedboat accident, his parents, last of
their line,
invested a lot of money in biotechnological
research
so that their lives could be infinitely extended
by genetic engineering cloning or cannibalising
the cells of foetuses
into the future.
What future? |
