Something about this letter scares me, and this is it -- "post-apocalyptic fantasies aside." What does that mean? LW tosses this off as if we all have such fantasies. Such fantasies accompanied by actual gun ownership sounds like a recipe for yet another very real tragedy.

Why are so many assuming the letter writer is the wife writing about her husband? The LW is very clearly the husband writing about himself, at times in the 3rd person. Some people are such careless readers, and yet jump in to offer life-changing advice in response to letters they must have just skimmed.

Hey Letter Writer, maybe these men who wait until age fifty before realizing they want kids are spoiled -- but so what, being spoiled means you can get what you want and they are getting it. What do YOU want? If you want kids, women approaching fifty can be spoiled now, too, through adoption or donor egg. If you don't want kids, you must rethink your dating pool and listen a little harder for the tic toc of the male biological clock so you can screen out the would-be fathers. I agree with the posts suggesting you might seek divorced men who already have kids (grown, if you don't want to be a step-mom) and don't want more -- plenty of those in your age range. Or younger men who don't have the nearing-fifty-never-married-now-want-a-kid syndrome that may in fact be generational. Or those old guys who are going to think you're a spring chicken by comparison. Not all men are as you describe, though it may be a trend -- but it also might be worth taking a look at why you have been drawn to a certain kind of guy. You don't mention if you're divorced; assuming here that you don't have kids but maybe you do; but this prolonged youth/delay in "settling down" seems to count for both genders, no?

Dear LW, I would worry less about being judgmental than about your inability to mask this judgment. Judgment of others is a natural response as we place ourselves in the greater context of society. Cleary you, too, are being judged, judging from many of these letters! Many may judge you for being too sensible, priggish even, for living by the book, for somehow missing the flower and fruit of life as you trod a narrow preconceived conventional path -- but that is your right, just as it is the right of others to live with more wild abandon. But you sound like a compassionate person. You don't want to make others feel bad just because you see inevitable negative consequences to their behavior, or because you think their behavior isn't "right." So why not learn to cover your judgment with another truth, the truth of your compassion? Show the face that comes from the part of you that feels for them. Show the empathy you feel. Keep the judgment, but keep it closer to the vest by focusing on the feelings of sympathy, and reminding yourself how bad you feel later when your judgment has shown through. Let your kindness shine through insead, because you obviously have it.

I feel compelled to write to you, LW, because your situation reminds me of my husband's (albeit he went through all this before we ever met). His parents wanted him to become a doctor. More than wanted. Pressured and pushed. This was their dream for him, their first-generation American son. He went to an Ivy League School, pre-med, towing the line. He freaked out, flunked one of those classes, dropped out of school for a year, could barely speak to his folks for that year, went back to school and pursued his true love. Architecture, funnily enough. He has never looked back. (And the family has fully recovered and did so quickly, I assure you.) Architecture is a calling, and if you love it, you LOVE it. So is writing, some of the other things you mention. SO much lies ahead for you. Pursue your dream, not your parents' dream. Simone de Beauvoir said something to her mother, when she was ressuring her to do somethign other than what she was doing, along the lines of "If I had two lives to live, I would gladly give you one of them. Alas, I have only one." I'm sure other writers will correct my butchery, but you get the gist. Please, please drop that pre-med track right now. And for what it's worth, I love and respect the medical calling, but the profession is not what it was. I have many family members who are doctors and have found it to be a disappointing and dispiriting profession, due to our country's hideous health care policies and HMO craziness and their general inability to practice medicine by spending time with patients instead of with bureaucratic paperwork.

Hey, some posters, read the advice again -- I think it's GREAT advice. He's saying TELL your parents you'll become a lawyer, join the Peace Corps (which LW wants to do) and THEN LW will know. He's saying, take some time to figure it out, and meanwhile to placate your parents when you get off the pre-med track, put the shiny, distracting LAWYER dream in their path. Genius. It's actually a loving way to buy freedom and time to think and get away from the commanding voice of loving but smothering parents.