I realize I’m about to step in it. And by “it,” I mean the “Marissa Mayer is a female CEO — and she’s pregnant!” discussion that inevitably leads back to the “Can women have it all?” exchange that began last month.

I’m a childless woman by circumstance. I had always planned, expected, hoped and dreamed that I’d marry and have children, but I’m now in my early 40’s and both milestones have eluded me. It’s not that I’m not maternal. I have always loved children and I’m a very devoted aunt. It’s not that I do not want to be married, either. It’s just that, like so many of my college-educated female cohorts of Generation X, marriage and children are to come later, if ever. It wasn’t because we delayed marriage and motherhood for education or our careers. It’s that we never saw getting a college degree or having a career that offered self-sufficiency as choices — as our brothers didn’t. And the overwhelming majority of us have children only once we are married…

When I launched Savvy Auntie four years ago, my first mission was to change the way we look at aunts in America today. Often imagined as a relic of a generations past, the term ‘aunt’ conjured up an image more “Auntique” than that of a modern, cosmopolitan woman. That’s not to say I didn’t appreciate and honor our Great-Great-Aunts, but where were today’s cool, contemporary aunt figures? As I explored this modern segment of American women who are not (yet) moms (The U.S. Census puts us at 47 percent of women through age 44), I realized there are all types of aunts….