"-Well, life didn't turn out as expected."Recently, I (the first author of this chapter) attended a school reunion where I caught up with former classmates, many of whom I had not seen for decades. When I spoke to one of the attendees, I was intrigued by her frank answer, quoted above, to my general question about how she was doing. Finns have preserved the touching habit of taking small talk seriously. So I asked her what she meant.
"-For a start, I have no children."Since my former classmates are now approaching 50, it was clear that the childbearing years were over for the women in the room. Most of the people gathered had a couple of teenagers at home, while some had older children who had already moved out. Some of the men had paired up with younger women and had toddlers. As so often in such social situations, how the children are doing emerged as the easiest, safest discussion topic in the noisy room. Even if the children have problems, they can be shared anecdotally, or glossed over by a superficial answer.The topic of childlessness is much more sensitive. Finns are liberal and secular in their attitudes towards family life. As early as in the 1980s, over 70 % of Finnish women surveyed said they did not believe that a woman has to have children in order to be fulfilled (Nikander 1992), and only 20 % said they thought that a person could not be completely happy unless he or she has children (Paajanen et al. 2007). Although there is no strong stigma associated with childlessness in Finland, it is still not easy to ask people why they are childless, in part because the reasons they might