Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[perspectives]

Hi,

Are the following sentences correct?

1. If I didn't have a kid, I would have had a professional career.
2. If I had't had a kid, I would have had a professional career.

A) Do these two sentences mean the same? If so, that's quite different from the grammar rules we've learned at school.

B) If they mean differently, what's the minute difference?

Thank you for your help!

[redset]

Basically 2 is correct, when we're talking about unreal situations we use:
if past perfect... would have past participle

But in informal spoken English it's not unusual to use the past simple instead of the past perfect - didn't have in this case. This is most common in American English I think (but like most things it's creeping into British English too).