Web Original: Suburban Mom Roundtable

We invited five women, all in different stages of their lives, to come together for a conversation that no five men would ever need to have — what’s a girl to do when kids come along?

VICKI: I was just talking to a woman the other day who is a stay-at-home mom and said her mother keeps telling her, “Hide money! What if he leaves you? You’ll have no money!”

RENEE: I just started a “girl’s” account at the bank. And it’s not for “what if he leaves me.” It’s because if I want to buy a $500 handbag, I don’t want to hear it.

JESS: I know a lot of married couples who do that—have separate accounts.

VICKI: We totally have separate accounts.

SANDY: We do, too. I wouldn’t let him have my money!

III. THE LATCH-KEY KID TELLS ALL

KATIE: I always was in daycare. Sometimes we had nannies. It depended. I remember we had a Chinese nanny when my brother was two, and he only knew Chinese. When she would leave, he would only talk to us in Chinese. I had my own key when I was in second grade, and I would just let myself in and chill on the couch. But every Tuesday afternoon, my mom would take us to the Zoo. That was our day. We loved it. But other than that, daycare.

VICKI: Are you even thinking yet about what you’ll do when you have kids?

KATIE: Every woman who works with me says, “Have your kids now. Get it done.” They have kids who are in high school and college, and they’re in their early 50s and they want to travel and they want to do things, and they can’t because they’re still running kids back and forth to soccer. All of them say they wish they had done it earlier.

SANDY: That’s a sin, because we were told 30 or 40—have your kids then. And now you’re having kids in your 20s. That would have terrified me if I did that. There was no way I was ready to be a mother.