COMMITMENTS : For Every Choice, There Is a Price to Pay : Lifestyles: There is no road map to life, only delicately weighed trade-offs. Women must choose a role--single or married, work or don’t--and all that lies in between.

When women compare notes, it’s often about the life choices they’ve made or are thinking about making.

In the last month, I’ve shared such stories with a woman executive in her 50s who started her career working part-time doing publicity for the school system in the small town in which she and her husband lived.

She was still in the midst of raising three children, and she wanted to be close to home. The pay was low and the hours were long, but she insists that many of the skills that propelled her into a high-powered marketing career were developed or honed then.

“My kids are grown now, and they’re fine citizens. They have good relationships. The ones who have children are good parents. And they learned what I wanted them to--that family is the most important thing,” she said.

Another woman in her 50s was less philosophical. She was looking back on the road not taken, the point at which she could have gotten a law degree when she was in her middle 40s. She offered her story to encourage me to make time for an advanced degree.

“I worked a lot of years at jobs I didn’t particularly like, putting my husband through law school,” she said. “When I finally thought I could go myself, I just backed off. I would have been a 50-year-old woman with a law degree. Who would have hired me?

“But when I said this in the presence of a high-powered male executive, he raised his hand and said, ‘I would have.’ ”

This woman is encouraging her daughter to get an MBA. Her daughter is hesitant, a little afraid of the math she’ll have to master.

“I told her, ‘Get a tutor, you can do it,’ ” the woman told me.

Good advice.

Just the other day, I got a note from a friend who is balancing a high-powered career with marriage and raising a child. She described a “whirlwind courtship” in which she was recruited as vice president for a major company a continent away.

What strikes me as so interesting about these stories is that each choice had a price.

There are no road maps, only delicately weighed trade-offs. But one now can network with other women, looking for answers, or at least for some options.

As younger couples find their way through the maze, more men may be faced with some of the same trade-offs--high-powered careers that leave little time for family, or more moderate ones that may not pay as well.

And women will have to choose the role that fits--single woman or wife, at-home mother or working mother, and all that lies in between.