In the space of a generation, that tight social corset has largely vanished, thanks to an array of factors, including better education and job options for women and Greece's entry into the cultural mainstream of the European Union. Powerful social and religious taboos labeled childless women as barren spinsters, and cast suspicion on the sexual preferences of single, middle-aged men. Greece was known as one of Europe's most traditional societies, where the Orthodox Church's strict commandment to marry and multiply held sway. Just a few decades ago, Petropoulou and her friends might have been considered, well, odd. But it's not as if her sense of personal fulfillment depends on it. "If at 45 I'm still childless, I'll consider having a child on my own," she says. "But I won't marry anyone just to have a child." She loves her work and gets her social sustenance from her parea, or close-knit group of like-minded friends, who increasingly play the role of family for young Greeks. "With the years passing my chances of having a child go down," says Eirini Petropoulou, a 37-year-old administrative assistant at the Associated Press news agency. Their favorite topic of conversation is, of course, relationships: men's reluctance to commit, women's independence, and when to have children-or, increasingly, whether to have them at all. At the fashionable Da Capo Cafe on bustling Kolonaki Square in downtown Athens, Greek professionals in their 30s and early 40s luxuriate over iced cappuccinos.
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