The Lady Finger has grappled with the competing demands made on women and the limitations women face when they try to achieve domestic and career success at once. There are expectations when it comes to healthy childbearing, and the uncertain struggle with navigating traditional career paths for women who also raise children. Then there's the relatively new attempt at sharing household tasks across gender lines, with a rising number of househusbands. It is in this context that a guest blogger considers her own personal plans and her future as a parent:
The Washington Post reported last week that a woman's fertility declines as she ages. This is not news: years of research have shown this to be true, and every woman I've ever spoken with about babies is all too aware of that "biological clock." Yet this story was particularly sobering: "Now it appears that the old biological clock may start ticking much earlier -- and faster -- than once thought."
Earlier and faster? I read this, and I think--it's not fair! I want children. I want a husband. And I want a career. I'm 28 now, I don't have even one of those three, and the new research says I will have only 12% of my eggs remaining in two years, when I turn 30. Eeeek!
These aren't questions I ever considered when I was growing up. I grew up in the 90s, and my friends and I were empowered: we dreamed of careers, we poured effort into our education. We went to college, studied hard, devoted ourselves to our extracurriculars--debate, model UN, lit mag. We graduated, celebrated, and dug in for more demanding years of graduate school, because this was the way to achieve success in our field, to pursue the careers we aspired to. We turned 24, 25, and 26. And 27. And 28.
In graduate school, I sat with female friends and worried about when to have children. It takes 5 or 6 years to complete the degree, a period of stress and pressure to produce an outstanding 300-page dissertation, and then, our professors told us, it gets even worse: assistant professorship, when another clock--the tenure clock--starts ticking. Teaching, committees, advising, research, and publishing would consume the next 6 years. Then maybe, just maybe, we'd have tenure, and we'd be (relatively) secure. At the age of 35.
But we wanted to start our families earlier. We didn't want to be "old" mothers. I thought of 35 as the age associated with a significant increase in risks to the baby's health, and it became my line in the sand: I wanted children before then.
The dilemma over when to have kids was just one piece of a larger puzzle, how to achieve that holy triumvirate: husband, kids, career. Looking around the academy, we noted that strikingly few women had all three. To have two of the three was common; two was doable. Had times changed significantly enough from when our professors were starting out, such that now we could have all three? Or were we likely to lose one along the way, as well? And if we thought we could have all three, did it simply mean that we would not get to choose the one we lost? It may be 2010, but it still feels like a mutually exclusive choice: family or career.
And now I find out the clock is ticking faster than I imagined. This has always seemed like a woman's issue, and of course, it is. When I read the WaPo article, I immediately wanted to share it with my female friends. But I realized, perhaps because I am now in a long-term relationship with a man in which I can envision children, that for men who want children, and who plan to have children with women their age or older, they must mind the ticking clock, as well. This frustrating biological reality was a frustration we shared.
And share I did, when I got home, telling my boyfriend about the article. We agreed that when we think of the challenges of having a child, it scares us silly. And when we think of the positives, well, what can you say?-- it's a child, it's a miracle, it's the greatest joy. Of course, we can't truly imagine what it's like to have a child, just as we can't know what it would be like to be 45 and childless. Some things can't be known. Many things, in fact. But we tentatively decided, in two or three years, we would try to have a child. -Anonymous
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
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5 comments:
A friend pointed out this article: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Academic-Motherhood/64073/
"Academic men shouldn't be penalized for lacking reproductive organs, but neither should academic women be penalized for having—and using—those organs."
While it is important to be realistic about childbearing and aging, an important thing to remember about this data is that the vast majority of eggs are lost by the time you are born. So some of these percentages are a little misleading.
In response to this study, TheBump.com conducted a survey to see how women feel about childbearing age. Most interesting to me is that "The top reasons that people chose these ages [the most popular ages- 25-34] was because it would allow enough time to establish career/financial security" but that "56% of working moms think motherhood negatively impacts a woman’s career." It's frustrating and sad to watch smart, empowered women who want it all struggle through the workplace, even if they developed a great resume prior to having kids.
I really enjoyed reading this. I feel like women want to be at the point where they answer the question, "Family or career" with "both." I know many women (my mother included) who managed to do both at the same time. I have a friend who just last month, returned to working after taking 7 years off for kids. She told me that making the transition was no problem. And it never seems like an ideal time to have kids, but two friends from college recently found out they were going to become fathers (separately, of course), and were both really happy that it happened. And in terms of the biological clock, the science is not exactly in. The Washington Post, which this month would like you to think that your eggs are disappearing, reported last year that you may be able to produce more eggs after you're born. So, while the obvious answer is "both" - it's challenging, but it can be done - we must still privately agonize over a question which is so ingrained in our culture.
I share the anonymous blogger's concerns - I ask myself the same questions. These are all really huge life choices which we all have to overthink and be somewhat freaked out by until they actually happen. But it sounds like she is pretty much on track to where she wants to be (although career prospects were not much mentioned). It's so fantastic that she was able to have such an honest and productive conversation with the possible father of her children. Just don't get freaked out by the science!
Don't forget when you read these stories that your store of eggs already declined significantly by the time you were 12. These stories can be really misleading when they talk about how few eggs we have left by the time we are 30, because we lose eggs throughout lives. In fact, I believe the all-time high of our egg supply occurs when we are still in the womb.
That said, it is certainly wise to recognize that we face declining fertility as we get older. But some of these stories are over-the-top scare tactics.
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