I have two children via donor insemination. I'm on boards where people express their anguish over being conceived this way and not being able to know their biological fathers. It seems to me that open adoption is the very definition of good parenting. It's very hard for the parents but ultimately in the best interests of the child.

As for "blood" being so important, I can tell you that my children have no inkling of any difference between their parents, the one who is biologically related and the one who had a donor stand-in are loved equally and their cousins on both sides are as well.

And all this nonsense about women needing to have their kids earlier. Great. That works fine if you're ready. But if you're not, if you haven't found the person you want to be with or even discovered your own desires to be a parent, it's a disaster.

This was a beautifully written essay -- and I dare say that Madison is a very, very lucky little girl to have two mothers in her life willing to make sacrifices to benefit her. But make no mistake -- Jessica is not her mother now. She is a beloved relative. And her mother is right to not deny her a relationship with that beloved relative who made an enormous sacrifice for Madison's happiness.

JohnnieGirl: Are you serious when you say that 30 is too old to start a family? Let's see: my own mother was 33 when I was born and my grandmother was 41 when she had her last child. Also, my boyfriend's mother was a whooping 35 when he came a long. Based on your comments, I guess it is a miracle that either that any of us were ever born.

As far as your comments about women having a '5 year window', I finished my undergraduate studies at 22 and obtained my MA at 24. After school, I held a number of exciting albeit low to middle-paying jobs. For many years, I did not even have a serious boyfriend for my years. Also, (GASP!) I simply did not feel that I was ready to undertake the massive responsiblity of raising a child in my 20s.

BTW, my situation is far from unique. A lot of young women find themselves in similar situations. Having a child simply because one is scared that their biological clock is ticking away is one of the dumbest reasons I think of for bringing a child into this world.

It is hard for me to understand the kind of presumption that would lead someone to make declarations about:

- When other people should have children.

- What counts as a "real" family for someone else.

- What is the "right way" for someone to go about caring for and loving a child whose original parent cannot care for them.

We call this bad boundaries - when you think you have the right to make judgments and poke your nose into other people's private lives. It's their family, their life. You don't get to decide whether it is "real."

Letters like these are the antithesis to the honesty, love, and respect for others Dawn Friedman demonstrates in her article. It is obvious why Jessica chose her and her husband to be Madison's parents, and so lucky that she didn't end up with these other kinds of people who fancy themselves such experts on love and family, and would teach her their small-minded ways.

What a wonderful article! I hope it means Salon is getting back to publishing well-written, mature, thought-provoking articles on parenting. Maybe the editors really did listen to all the criticism.

Laurel and Johnnie Girl--

What backwards place are you writing from, where only "blood" constitutes a real family? I'm sure there's plenty of people raised by their birth families who have been abused, mistreated or worse, that would have loved to have been raised by an adoptive family that cherished them and loved them as their own.

And you've got to be joking about the "five year window". Did you ever think about the fact that many children are up for adoption because their mother had them too young, and that someone with an education, a decent income and the domestic stability to welcome a child into their lives may not be able to achieve this at only 22 years of age?

Look at the world around you---times have changed, and the cost of living and supporting a child is astronomical. Maybe some of us would like to be sure that we are making the best and most educated decisions we can before repeating past mistakes of the generations before us (i.e. high divorce rates, "latchkey" kids, etc.) Our kids can only benefit from this in the future. That is, unless you're living in a place where it's not ok that you look different than your parents, and they are more than 20 years older than you.

Women can and do have kids after age 27. However, you have no way of knowing whether you will be one of the unlucky ones whose fertility declines early, and therefore it is risky to assume you'll be fine if you start after 30. I personally know three women (close family friends, all with exciting and stressful jobs) who started to try at 33, 36, and 38 and were painfully thwarted. They had no underlying medical problems, just old eggs!

Having children because you are worried that your biological clock is going to wind down before you can get knocked up is an *excellent* reason to have children, if you need that tick tick tick to motivate you to get beyond your doubts and ambivalencies. The women who claim not to hear it are the ones who end up childless at 40 after very exciting careers, and no way to go back in time to their fertile 20's.

Women can and do have kids after age 27.

Yes, they do. And I, for one, am grateful that I am now risking infertility in my 30s rather than living with the consequences of having had children with the crappy boyfriends I had in my 20s, before I knew better. Even more than that, I am grateful not to have saddled children with the consequences of my youthful mistakes because I selfishly wanted to "make sure" I had "my own" kids before the clock ran out.

If the clock runs out on me, so be it. I'll still be proud of my choice to wait until I felt mature enough to be responsible for a family to start one.