“Oh God,” Jan groans. “I am never going to have children. Never – mark my words.”

“Oh really?” her mother asks, the corner of her mouth turning up slightly in a badly disguised smile. “Why is that?”

“Did we not just spend a day in hell?” Jan shakes her head in disbelief. “Having more than one child should be forbidden.”

It's a warm June evening and they're sitting on a terrace of their house, having just said to goodbye to Jan's aunt and her two sons and a daughter.

“Well, I think the visit was successful. I hope they had fun,” Mrs Levinson says.

“They did, absolutely. The oldest of my china dolls, not so much,” Jan points out with a grimace.

“You're seventeen, Jan. I think you can get over the loss of a china doll,” her mother smiles gently. “And they didn't mean to break it. It was an accident. They're kids, sometimes you just have to accept that.”

“Fine, I accept that. But I'm not going to have kids and you have to accept that too,” Jan says, trying to sound very controversial, a befits a seventeen-year-old.

“I understand that,” her mother replies, unmoved by Jan's declaration. “It's a personal decision.”

“Really?” Jan asks, not quite believing what she's hearing.

“Sure.”

“You're not bothered by the fact that you're not going to be a grandma?”

“Oh, I'm pretty sure your sister is not going to deprive me of this priviledge,” Mrs Levinson chuckles.

“Well, that's great. Sarah will have kids for you to gush over and I will concentrate on my career,” Jan states.

“What makes you think Sarah won't have a career of her own?” her mother asks. “Having kids and having a blossoming career are not necessarily mutually exclusive.”

“Well, I don't know, mom, women don't have it easy,” Jan shrugs. “You have to slave away, make sacrifices, to achieve something really significant, to be on the very top. And that's where I want to get, mom. To the top. The way I see it. there's no place for babies, diapers and formula milk on the top.”

Mrs Levinson smiles tenderly as she watches her young, beautiful daughter weave a net of elaborate plans for the future. Jan is intelligent and hard-working, she's the president of her class and her ambition knows no limits. Her mother has no doubt that Jan's future is bright, that she can achieve anything she wants. But she also knows that at heart, Jan is still a child and her vision of adulthood will change at least ten times in the next few years.

“Well,” Mrs Levinson starts, with a mischevious gleam in her eye. “The way I see it, my dear, there's room for at least two children on the top.” And when her daughter gives her a curious look, she adds: “You just have to hold one kid in one arm, and hold the second in the other. And that's not counting a baby carrier!”

Jan looks at her mother incredulously, before she starts laughing at her genius plan.

“Mom,” she says. “You're incorrigible. They should be paying you for pro-family propaganda.”

"Just tell me who 'they' are and I'll be picking up the paycheck in no time!"