I feel it would be appropriate to note on this site that my grandmother, Gladys Ryall, died earlier this week. She was 92 and was quite ready to go, but of course it is still sad to lose the last of my grandparents.
Here’s a story she told me one time: After she’d had fourteen children, she went to her priest to ask if it would be alright if she got her tubes tied. The priest, a Catholic priest, told her she had probably done her part for being fruitful and multiplying, so it would not be immoral. Then she went to her doctor and he told her that she was getting up in age and she probably shouldn’t bother because she was unlikely to have many more. She had four more children after that.
My robot character Gladys Blue, arguably the protagonist of Secret Government Robots, was of course named after her.