In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

What do you mean my law degree won’t buy me some new ovaries?

Jill

Apparently I should be having babies right now.

Women who want to have children should make it a priority in their twenties to find a partner. That’s because one of the most dramatic issues facing Generation X is infertility. No generation of women has had more trouble with fertility than this generation, who received the terrible baby boomer advice, “Wait. You have time. Focus on your career first.”

But in fact, you have your whole life to get a career. Obviously, that’s not true of having a baby. If you are past your early twenties, and you’re single and want to have children, you need to find a partner now. Take that career drive and direct it toward mating – your ovaries will not last longer than your career.

In case you’re waiting for “the right time,” there is no evidence to show when is best to interrupt a career to have a child. No matter when it happens, a women’s career is thrown off track. Phyllis Moen, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, says, “Don’t wait until the right time in your career to have a child or it will never come.”

I’m getting really, really tired of hearing these messages. Men have never had to worry about balancing career with family. Women are inundated with “helpful information” about how we simply cannot possibly “have it all,” and then we’re berated when we internalize the message and work part-time, or stay home, or worry about how we’re going to do it all, or set our sights lower than men do. Then the same nay-sayers who had been telling women we can’t do it use women’s insecurities and lower achievements to “prove” their self-fulfilling prophecy.

I call bullshit. Yes, everyone has to make choices, but plenty of women are able to balance their professional goals with their personal ones. Some of them have babies in their 20s. Some of them don’t. And the author of this article is out of her damn mind if she thinks that fear of not having babies in the future is a good reason to get married and/or pregnant right now.

62 thoughts on What do you mean my law degree won’t buy me some new ovaries?

  1. Yes, everyone has to make choices, but of women are able to balance their professional goals with their personal ones. Some of them have babies in their 20s. Some of them don’t. And the author of this article is out of her damn mind if she thinks that fear of not having babies in the future is a good reason to get married and/or pregnant right now.

    Amen.

  2. So, I didn’t read past “That’s because one of the most dramatic issues facing Generation X is infertility.” The article is about how important it is to always use condoms, be tested for STD/STIs regularly, and insist on prompt and thorough care for what’s too often dismissed as “female problems,” right?

  3. I’m so so so so so so tired of this biological imperative crap. I’m 34, and have zero desire to have children. Several of my friends, who did want children, managed to wait until their 30s to do so! After they had established themselves in careers. CRAZY!. Some of them are even the financial breadwinners in their families! And yes, at least one of them has decided to drop out of the rat race and take a year off of work, and more power to her.

    The only friend of mine who actually did what the above-author is suggesting and got married straight out of college and had a baby (my first friend to do either)? She’s now also my first friend to get divorced. Needless to say, while she was busy fulfilling her biological destiny, she also managed to get a masters’, establish her career (and actually owns her own company), so that when she needed to divorce her (alcoholic) husband, she had the wherewithal to do so.

  4. You nailed it totally. It kills me that women are just supposed to want to be mothers. And that men aren’t expected to have their career interrupted by becoming a parent. And that everyone has this wholly irrational idea that they need to pass on their genes.

    Past your fertility prime? Still want to be a parent? Fucking adopt, or even better, become a foster parent. Christ. If you don’t want them because they aren’t cute little babies then you’re too selfish for kids anyway.

    [/rant]

  6. Early 20s?? I know tons of people who are having kids in their late 20s and throughout their 30s. Early 20s is when you’re just out of college!! Is that really good for kids, unless you’re marrying some older established guy? Come on.

  7. “And the author of this article is out of her damn mind if she thinks that fear of not having babies in the future is a good reason to get married and/or pregnant right now.”

    I sounds like truth more than fear. If the shoe fits, deal with it. No one us putting a gun to your head Jill, she is simply pointing out a fact.

    Maybe you could adopt, there are plenty of “babies” out there.

  9. Jesus. I forgot about this bit:

    “And about 20 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, which means you have almost a 50 percent chance of having to go through three pregnancies to have two children. And it’s recommended that you breast feed, which decreases your ability to get pregnant, at least while you’re breast feeding. So be realistic: You can’t count on getting pregnant three times in three years.”

    1) A lot of those 20% of pregnancies that end in miscarriage are on account of RPL. A lot of the ones that aren’t happen so early that the women who have them aren’t completely sure they were actually pregnant. I’m reasonably sure that an average woman, even if past the ripe old age of 25, with an average sperm donor/male partner does not have even odds having to go through 3 pregnancies to get 2 live births.

    2) It’s recommended that you breast feed, not required. If you really want to get pregnant again immediately, you can go with formula without poisoning your baby. As fun as it might be for certain people to act like women who can’t produce enough milk or can’t afford the time off from work or finangle their schedules to allow for pumping are dooming their infants by using formula, it’s not actually true. It’s also a birth control method that can’t be counted on unless you breast feed regularly, and even then usually not past 6 months.

    3) You can’t count on getting pregnant 3 times in 3 years, but if she’s throwing that out there because of the 1-in-3 thing, miscarriages tend to cluster early in the pregnancy. If you’re emotionally up to it and it was not a particularly physically traumatic miscarriage, there’s no terribly good reason to assume that the lost pregnancy will throw you a full 9 months off your “schedule.” And if you start at 35, it’s not as if getting pregnant at 39 or 40 is a death sentence. It’s not great, but if you’re working closely with a doctor to manage your risks and overall health, it’s not like your ovaries explode upon forty, obliterating your womb and all chances at future happiness.

  10. Me: 35, partner 33. Conceived on the second try. Younger brother number 1: 33, his wife 33. Conceived on the first try. Younger brother number 3: 28, his wife 28. Took six months to conceive. My friend: 35, his wife 35. Conceived on the third try. Another friend: 41, his wife 37. Conceived on second try, (now have two children).

    Methinks that fertility problems might have less to do with age and more to do with other lifestyle and environmental factors.

  11. If you don’t want them because they aren’t cute little babies then you’re too selfish for kids anyway.

    Darn tootin’. How dare any of those selfish bitches feel an ounce of sadness if they find they’re infertile. Clearly all they wanted was a cute little baby. And all those women who were sterilized against their will? Too selfish for kids, the lot of them.

  12. I sounds like truth more than fear. If the shoe fits, deal with it.

    Here’s a shoe: people running around panicking and trying to have babies as soon as possible, before they’re emotionally and financially ready to (which some younger people are, of course) are a much bigger problem than folks who wanted to have kids someday but end up not having any, due to whatever twist of fate.

  13. I sounds like truth more than fear. If the shoe fits, deal with it. No one us putting a gun to your head Jill, she is simply pointing out a fact.

    Maybe you could adopt, there are plenty of “babies” out there.

    Actually, I do plan on adopting kids, if I decide I want to be a parent. I like kids a lot, but I have zero desire to have biological children, and I’m not sure I want children at all. So nope, no fear, just irritation.

    And Tricia asks a good question — where are you guys all coming from? How’d you find us?

  14. So, I didn’t read past “That’s because one of the most dramatic issues facing Generation X is infertility.” The article is about how important it is to always use condoms, be tested for STD/STIs regularly, and insist on prompt and thorough care for what’s too often dismissed as “female problems,” right?

    Of course not, because then it would imply that the problem is poor screening of STIs in women and not women’s selfish desire to have a steady job and a solid relationship before they have children.

    (So to all you younger ladies out there, use a condom every time until your partner gets fully screened and insist your doctor screen you for chlamydia and other “silent” STIs at your annual exam. You will thank us later.)

  15. I would be nice if our society valued childrearing enough to help out people who were doing it. If some doctor or pop psychologist or radio talk show host thinks its bad that women aren’t popping out babies young enough, maybe they should work to make it possible for that to happen. Funny, the same people also whine about teen pregnancy.

  16. I just feel like these articles always ignore one very important fact: babies cost money. I am 25 and married yet my husband and I definitely do not want children yet. I have a friend who’s been married for around 2 years and her and her husband still get money from their granparents to pay their mortgage yet they want to have a kid. We’ve tried to explain to her that the college tuition doesn’t just come out with the baby.

  17. It could just be me, but I’m ready to swear I read this argument advanced in exactly these words a couple of years back. Or maybe, like you say, it’s just a tired and far too familiar argument.

  18. I’m still in my twenties and I just had my second child. I also have a career. Is it hard to do both? Yep, but it was my decision and I’ll stand by it. Just like I’ll support any of my friends’ decisions to remain child-free, to wait until their careers are firmly established to have kids, or to get pregnant right out of college. It’s a life decision that can’t be made for every woman by some silly columnist.

    What I really love is the fact that Penelope Trunk’s weblog is called “The Brazen Careerist.” ‘Nuff said.

  19. Too selfish for kids, the lot of them.

    Yes, actually. You’re over-simplifying. Infertility is devastating.

    But people place far too much importance on passing on their own genes.

  20. Tina said

    You had your second child.

    You have a career.

    Interesting choice of words.

    Explain how you do both.

  21. Some women have partners who act like they are responsible for their children, too. Other women foolishly take on all of the child-rearing responsibility themselves, when they don’t have to. I’m not talking about women whose partners left them. I’m talking about women who live with the person who knocked them up, but don’t insist that their (usually male) partner take an equal part in raising their children. If more men took real parenting seriously and saw it as a requirement, not as “baby-sitting”, more women could actually have it all, too.

  22. Um, I don’t think the article was targeted at women who don’t want to have children. I think it is directed at women coming out of college who have had a desire to have children and quite frankly the advice is not bad advice. I believe being a parent is a full-time job particularly in the early formative years. I suppose you could delegate the job to a nanny or au pair, but what then is the point of being a parent. Do work your ass off going to a top flight law school only to delegate your duties as an associate once hired by a firm? Of course not. I don’t think the article suggests you rush into parenthood, but rather, if it is something you aspire to be, you need to focus your atteniton on it as you would your career. It is not something you can simply expect to happen successfully without the proper focus and attention. And aspiring to be a good parent should be lauded and valued as having a successful career outside the home.

  24. My mother had her first child at 27 and the last (and fifth) a few years after she turned 40. I don’t remember how old she was, because she still insists she’s 29 every year. This year alone, two of my teachers in their mid-thirties had kids–one actually had twins!

    It’s not IMPOSSIBLE to have children after you turn 30. Infertility sucks, yes. But it shouldn’t be used as a scare tactic to get people to reproduce. Have children when you feel ready to have children, whether before or after you establish a career, go to college, get married…

    Besides, there are lots of other options for people who want children. IVF, fertility treatments, surrogate mothers. And I really wish more people were open to adopting, because there are a lot of kids out there who need homes. It’s not less your child because it was birthed by someone else. If I ever have kids, I want them to be adopted (I’m just not into pregnancy)!

  25. Penelope Trunk was born in 1966. According to this, her children were 5 and 2 as of last June. Yet another regressive snotburger who doesn’t walk her fucking talk. Carry on with that law career, Jill, and don’t give this crap another thought.

  26. Did anyone here actually read the article?

    The article doesn’t focus on having kids in your early twenties. Everyone here (sam, holly, sickle etc) is talking about having kids in their late twenties or early thirties. That’s in line with this article.

    There is plenty of evidence to show that the quality of your eggs takes a nose dive at age 35. And about 20 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, which means you have almost a 50 percent chance of having to go through three pregnancies to have two children. And it’s recommended that you breast feed, which decreases your ability to get pregnant, at least while you’re breast feeding. So be realistic: You can’t count on getting pregnant three times in three years. You can’t control fertility. Waiting until your midthirties to start a family, if you want to carry the babies yourself, is a risky endeavor. Which means, of course, you probably want to find a partner by the time you’re 30.

    So the author is simply saying if you want to have several kids it is a good idea to start in your late twenties or early thirties. If you wanted just one then early thirties is entirely in line with the author’s point.

    Moreover, she lists helpful alternatives as well.

    Do you guys just enjoy attacking something even when there’s nothing to attack?

    What is up with the troll invasion? My head is going *asplodey*

    GNOC, not sure I agree (if I even understand) what you are saying, but just understand this site is designed as an echo chamber where people only want to sarcastically attack views they don’t agree with by discussing matters with as many people as possible that they agree with on at least 95% of issues.

  27. Which would be the more perfectly feminist solution?

    To engineer women’s bodies so that fertility does not decline with age?

    Or to change the cultural and financial structure of higher education to make earlier motherhood easier?

    OR should it be an ‘and’ question?

  28. Uh huh. And if you haven’t had kids not because of your career but because you think you’re not ready for parenting, you should go ahead and have them anyway, right? You’d make a total hash of parenting and raise an unhappy kid, but that’s better than being childless and infertile, right?

  29. GNOC:

    I had my second child because each child is only born once. I still have both children, just like I still have my career. Kids aren’t a career killer, but they do make some aspects of maintaining a career difficult because of the way work is structured in Western society.

  30. Uh huh. And if you haven’t had kids not because of your career but because you think you’re not ready for parenting, you should go ahead and have them anyway, right? You’d make a total hash of parenting and raise an unhappy kid, but that’s better than being childless and infertile, right?

    Damn straight! Whatever happend to the notion of wanting children someday, but waiting until you were emotionally, financially and in some cases spiritually ready to have them?????

    Yah – I knew I wanted kids in my 20’s someday, but I also happened to know I wasn’t ready for them UNTIL I was ready for them. And I wasn’t ready to take that leap until I was a geriatric 29….

    I hate friggin “articles” like this.

  31. I believe being a parent is a full-time job particularly in the early formative years. I suppose you could delegate the job to a nanny or au pair, but what then is the point of being a parent.

    Indeed.

    So, you quit your job immediately as soon as your wife became pregnant, yes? After all, what’s the point of being a parent if you just shift the work onto someone else?

  32. Kids aren’t a career killer, but they do make some aspects of maintaining a career difficult because of the way work is structured in Western society.

    Having children does make having a career difficult, but when you’re in a position whereby both parents have to work or the family will flounder in a sea of debt and/or poverty you have no choice but to make the career work.

    On the flipside, from personal experience, hubby has also experienced a backlash at work for having children. It seems as if I am a very rare breed of woman who didn’t stay home after her first child was born. He has been given slack at work when he has needed to leave early or take a day off to be with our son. People have asked him directly why I do not stay at home – why I work, and he in turn has been made to feel ashamed that he “has to have his wife work”

    Apparantly I am supposed to be a stay at home mother in the views of his co-workers (superior & subordinate) or HE is a failure of a man. Never mind that *I* LIKE to work and find it rewarding. In between my previous job and this one I stayed at home with our son, and I know for myself I stink as a SAHM.

    I know this is a bit OT for the thread but felt it was necessary to add because while the article focuses on women having babies ASAP and how they can affect the career of women – they also can/do affect a man’s career….just in a very different way.

  33. Pingback: Feministe » Embracing the gray

  34. Wow. In my early twenties, I was too broke, selfish, and stupid to even think about having kids. I was married, though, so I guess I did something right. /snark Many of my friends, including me, were on the fence about ever having kids at that point, anyway. In the years since (I’m now 36), some of my friends have had careers, some have had children, and some have had both. One has even opted to have neither, and she’s happy as can be. Amazing how different choices work for different people, isn’t it? I have remained childless by choice, not because of career but because while my husband and I love being an aunt and uncle, we don’t want to be parents, something that can still be hard to admit in this society. I’m glad I didn’t follow the oh-so creepy advice to direct my career drive toward mating back in my early twenties.

  35. *shrug* Unassisted fertility is not the only option for women.

    Any young woman who is torn about maintaining her fertility while she pursues her career should freeze some eggs. There are some new technologies coming on line that will allow women to freeze unfertilized eggs. (It’s been possible for a long time to freeze fertilized eggs.) It’s a bit spendy, but it will allow you to work on that career as long as you like before having a baby.

    You can also adopt children or use an egg donor if you lose your fertility and don’t have eggs of your own to use.

    Being a mother is more about caring for your children and providing for them, than it is the biological process of birth.

  36. this is hilarious. you all keep talking as if the article is trying to rush people into getting married by their early, or even, mid twenties.

    It’s thesis is simply, if you want to have kids (multiple) then the science indicates you’re playing it safer by finding a partner (note the term, hardly the term pushing marriage) by your early thirties, rather than beginning that search at 35.

    Then, it says if this is not for you, but you still have a strong desire to have kids, here are some alternatives to consider.

    You guys create disagreement where there is none.

    It’s as if you want to be angry and need a place to direct the frustration.

  38. But people place far too much importance on passing on their own genes.

    So, again, infertility is not as big a deal as the people experiencing it think, and if only they stopped putting ‘too much importance’ on the fact that they can’t make babies….

    Dawn, how much is “a bit spendy”? Seriously, you’re advising women to undergo an expensive medical procedure that may or may not avoid later problems with infertility, and dismissing any trouble it puts them to.

  39. “Which would be the more perfectly feminist solution?

    To engineer women’s bodies so that fertility does not decline with age?

    Or to change the cultural and financial structure of higher education to make earlier motherhood easier?

    OR should it be an ‘and’ question?”

    …higher education? You do know that menopause doesn’t kick in at 25, right? And that the choice isn’t between “have babies while of college age” and “need fertility treatments to have babies at all”?

    Should we encourage educational institutions to be more accommodating of parents? Of course. Nobody is helped when young parents are unable to get their high school diplomas, vocational certificates, or college degrees due to institutional inflexibility or outright hostility.

    Should we encourage employers to be more accommodating of parents? Of course. Who besides employers benefit when they treat their workers like traitors for daring to have lives outside of work? Who winds up picking up the tab when these policies come at the cost of a society’s long-term productivity and health?

    Should we set health policies that help people maintain their fertility? Of course. That one doesn’t have much to do with any weird bioengineering programs or creepy-ass “pre-pregnant” policies, though. No society benefits from its members–any of them–suffering from preventable ill-health, untreated STIs, exposure to toxic environmental pollutants, etc. Considering it’s often far from just a woman’s age that’s responsible for inability to conceive or carry to term–and that in many cases it has nothing to do with the woman at all–it seems ridiculous to address a complex problem in such a reductive manner.

  40. Word, preying mantis. It’s not as though a woman’s ovaries fall off when she hits 30 or 35 or whatever the current panicky news article says.

  41. I’m getting really, really tired of hearing these messages. Men have never had to worry about balancing career with family. Women are inundated with “helpful information” about how we simply cannot possibly “have it all,” and then we’re berated when we internalize the message and work part-time, or stay home, or worry about how we’re going to do it all, or set our sights lower than men do.

    It’s no secret that the reason men have never had to worry about “having it all” or about balancing the demands placed on them by their jobs as opposed to the demands placed upon them by their families is that traditionally women have been there to take up the slack, fill in the gaps and plug up all the holes. Ever since the Industrial Revolution the recipe has been: 1) The man deals with that effectual side of his life which takes place in the “public realm”. He sallies forth, competes, makes money, and partakes of the freedom which results from a certain dissociation from human ties. Yet he does not turn into a lone floating atom or become an unassimilable rogue, because 2) The woman deals with the man’s affectual life, the part of his existence which takes place in the “private realm”. She smoothes his ruffled feathers, smooths such feathers as he ruffles in his outer-world progress, broods over his kin-ties, remembers the addresses of the friends/relations/associates whom he’s forgotten and sends letters to the people who live at those addresses so that her fella won’t fall out of touch. 3) The man’s efforts on his own behalf in the public arena combined with the woman’s efforts on the man’s behalf in the private domain are what make for the possibility of masculine success. 4) Here’s the kicker: no-one deals with the woman’s effectual life or her affectual life. Officially she has no life. Her life is subsumed into the life of her partner. 5) And here’s the rider to the kicker: to the extent that what the woman does in the context of a traditional life-partnership with a man does get recognized, it garners little respect. It may be the woman’s job to remember the date of Aunt Mildred’s birthday, the date of Tommy’s dentist appointment, and the fact that Sally just had a baby, but you’ll still find that there are people who claim that, since women are preoccupied with trivia and obsessed with babies, none of us can be granted credit for a single cogent thought.

    I admit that the foregoing paragraph is not strictly accurate as applied to individuals or even groups, but I think that (simplistic as it is) it works as a crude description of the way these things are supposed work in the minds of many people. I imagine it’s a prescription all of us recognize, and I’m not optomistic enough to assume that it isn’t at work in articles like the one which appeared in the Boston Globe. It isn’t the article’s text (“if you want to have children you’ll have to plan for that the way you’d plan for any other major event in your life”) which makes my head as-plode. It’s the subtext (“your job is to mop up crap men wouldn’t touch and which they’ll despise you for handling”).

    Ka-boom. And I can’t have been the only woman to read this article who’s been affected the same way.

  43. Doesn’t the ‘quality’, for lack of a better word, of men’s sperm also decline as they age as well?

    Why no corresponding article for them?

  44. “Doesn’t the ‘quality’, for lack of a better word, of men’s sperm also decline as they age as well?”

    Yes.

    “Why no corresponding article for them?”

    Because that would be putting forth the idea that women aren’t 100% responsible, forever-and-ever-amen, for everything that might go wrong in their lives?

  46. I believe being a parent is a full-time job particularly in the early formative years. I suppose you could delegate the job to a nanny or au pair, but what then is the point of being a parent.

    A full-time job is 40 hours a week. The fact is, employing a nanny full-time still leaves 128 hours in that week when you, the parent, will be taking care of that kid. If you all sleep 8 hours a night (ha ha), you’ll still have 72 hours of awake time–and that’s not counting getting up in the night to get water, walk the infant back to sleep, soothe her when she’s sick, etc. What’s the problem? In no society outside of 1950s suburbia was a parent supposed to live in constant isolation with her progeny. Throughout history children have been fostered, extended family members have taken on part of the child-raising burden, etc. Why is it suddenly so awful when it is a nanny, rather than a grandmother, who pitches in on a regular basis? Does money taint the care, somehow?

    Can I tell you have sick I am of people wagging their fingers at women who want biological children about how it’s all about the genes? Talk about an anti-feminist dismissal of women’s experiences. For men, it’s all about the genes. Women actually have a little something called pregnancy and childbirth, which are far more central to the female mammalian experience of biological reproduction than ovulation, which many (most?) of us can’t even feel . Some of us very much want to go through those powerful experiences, and acting as though they don’t exist, or that being denied that experience despite your desires isn’t a serious blow is quite a feat of insensitivity.

  47. “There is plenty of evidence to show that the quality of your eggs takes a nose dive at age 35. “

    Actually, there isn’t. All the magic age of 35 means is that the risk of miscarrying after an amniocentesis procedure and the risk of having a child with a genetic defect are equal so that’s the age at which doctors start routinely doing amnios if you’re pregnant. Women under 35 have children with genetic defects like Down’s Syndrome all the time — it’s that the risk of the procedure to detect it is considered to be greater than the need to know.

    I also can’t help snickering at the class bias inherent in the whole “Women stay home with the children!” My grandmother worked until after her fourth child (of six) because they were not rich people and couldn’t afford for her to stay home until my grandfather’s business was doing better.

    Rich and upper-middle-class people can afford to have stay at home wives. It’s a status symbol.

  48. I also can’t help snickering at the class bias inherent in the whole “Women stay home with the children!” My grandmother worked until after her fourth child (of six) because they were not rich people and couldn’t afford for her to stay home until my grandfather’s business was doing better.

    Rich and upper-middle-class people can afford to have stay at home wives. It’s a status symbol./blockquote>

    Ditto to that. Growing up…I knew no classmate whose mother was a SAHM…including my own mother. In every case, both parents were working at least one…in some cases two or three jobs to make ends meet.

    It was only in high school that I met a handful of classmates who had SAHM. The vast majority of those were upper/upper-middle class….many of whom lived on the pricy upper east side of Manhattan and had summer homes in exclusive locales like the East Hamptons,

  49. IMO the other silent part of the assumption is “you have your whole life to have a career.”

    Actually, in the face of a recession coupled with the ongoing phenomenon of age discrimination in American business, you DON’T, necessarily, have your whole life — at least not to develop certain skill sets, or to be “perceived” as having “developed” to a certain “point in your career” at a certain age.

    I’m wondering if a more direct statement of some unstated assumptions might help to shape some new solutions for the debate.

    Because I bet that if a lot of women could choose to have their children first and then actively begin their careers later in life, without the assumptions hanging over their heads that they’d be penalized for it over time in their career trajectories, I bet some actually might.

  50. So, you quit your job immediately as soon as your wife became pregnant, yes? After all, what’s the point of being a parent if you just shift the work onto someone else?

    Ah, actually zuzu, i did cut back my work after my wife gave birth, took parternity (unpaid) leave to stay home with my son (and subsequent children) for a period of time after my wife took paid maternity leave. I have since assumed a majority of the childcare responsibilities at the cost of career advancement which has caused some tension in our relationship now. So no, I don’t believe in shifting the work to someone else. It is a parental responsibility. Mother or Father, but a parent nonetheless! And EG, nanny’s don’t stay for the long run. Extended family, (grandparents, aunts, uncles) are the next best thing to parents, but in some cases that is not an option. So may be you buy a smaller house or don’t go on vacations to the Carribean or you do things on a smaller scale so that you can afford to have a parent home with a child. You will not convince me or many others that a nanny is better than a parent. And 40 hours, does that include your commute and what kind of lucrative paying work allows you to work only 40 hours these days. Babies generally start sleeping through the night within their first year, but the formative years are generally 0-5. So when they are sleeping through the night there is no more getting up to feed them or change their diaper. So from ages 1-5 parents are spending less time with their children if both parents are working full time and commuting to work. You can try to convince yourself that the zealous pursuit of career success and advancement is ok even in the presence of children, but children need stability and consistency. Parents are best suited to provide that.

  51. Nannies don’t stay? That’s funny. That’s not the experience of most people I know who’ve employed nannies.

    You know, you can natter on all you like, but there is no evidence whatsoever that kids who go to daycare or have nannies are less happy or worse off than kids who have a parent who stays home all time. The studies I’ve read indicate no difference at all, except perhaps for a slightly more outgoing and less timid personality among children who have had nannies or been to daycare.

    But OK. Add a commute. That’s, say, seven and half extra hours. It doesn’t actually shift the figures very much, which, as I pointed out, would lead to 65 hours of waking parent-child time. Aunts and uncles move away; grandparents die; there’s no guarantee of permanence there at all. Certainly no more than with a nanny.

    Extended family, (grandparents, aunts, uncles) are the next best thing to parents, but in some cases that is not an option.

    First off, you recognize that extended family care isn’t a viable option for many families…but you can’t recognize that a stay-at-home parent and a reduced work schedule isn’t. How very…self-righteous of you. The way you do things works for you…so it’s best for everybody else? Do you have any evidence of this?

    So may be you buy a smaller house or don’t go on vacations to the Carribean or you do things on a smaller scale so that you can afford to have a parent home with a child.

    Heh. Heh heh heh. That’s right, most dual-income couples are just blowing all their money on gigantic houses and trips to the Caribbean. Now, what was that Mnemosyne said about class privilege?

    Now then. You claim that 0-5 are the most formative years (and I’ll allow it for the sake of this argument, but quite frankly, I think such claims are balderdash). You know that most preschools start at 3? Why is daycare or the one-on-one care of a nanny at, say two-and-a-half, so very detrimental, but preschool and nursery school from 3-5 is A-OK?

    By the way, I was a nanny. I nannied for a little girl from 3 to 18 months. The little girl is now 5, and though she no longer needs me as a nanny, I am still very much in her life. She seems to be developing just fine, I must say, despite the awful emotional trauma of my care for her.

  52. Mnemosyne is 100% correct regarding the “magical” 35 year old cut-off. My wife is currently pregnant with our second child and turns 35 about 3 months before she will be born. My 2 year old son is in for a big surprise when sister comes later this summer.

    Unlike our first pregnancy, this time around all the fear and paranoia came out from our OB, who was very laid back the first time around. Talking to another physician friend, he said that all OB’s are taught to go into freak out mode if the mother will be 35 or older. Although I have never done any medical malpractice work, I would assume that has something to do with it.

    Doing a little homework, Mnemosyne is correct, 35 is simply the age where the danger from the test for genetic abnormalities is as risky as the abnormality itself. We decided not to have the amnio, but I surely can understand the opposite choice.

    I found the article very interesting but completely the opposite of our experience. My wife experienced multiple miscarriages from about the age of 25 to 30. We even went to a fertility expert who told us that she would not be able to carry to term ever. Since she turned 32, we’ve had no problems whatsoever.

    I can’t comment entirely as to childcare, as we are both professionals with strong incomes, but my wife is in the medical field and has 3 days with 12 hour shifts. We keep my son in daycare those days (I’m responsible for pick-up, delivery, dinner etc.), and my wife stays home Thursdays and Fridays. I am in the retail real estate development business, so the only issues seem to arise when I have to travel.

    The only thing I ever say regarding pregnancy, childbirth etc., is that I never want any woman to have to be a mother unless they are ready and willing. In essence, isn’t that what being pro-choice is about. I hear a lot about how either having children/not having children is a selfish choice. Actually, I want either choice to be a selfish choice. Each person should decide if it is in their lifeplan to have children, and that should be a selfish choice. Nobody should have or not have children because they believe it is expected of them, or for some other altruistic reason. It is a selfish choice and should be.

    I would say that if anyone intends to have a long-term career (as opposed to just a job), I would wait until you have established a client base or career path. Graduate school and 100 hour billable weeks are for the young, and getting a lot of the dirty career work out of the way is probably best. I mean, even if one doesn’t have children, the 30’s are about enjoying some of your hard work during your 20’s.

  53. enlightened, as someone who was a stay-at-home parent for many years, may I kindly invite you to have your recto-cranial inversion treated by a professional? There’s not much else to say to somebody whose lifestyle, if not for his noble, noble sacrifice of cutting back on his work a little bit, could afford a paid nanny and vacations to the Caribbean.

    EG, people who say that the ‘formative years’ are 0-5 are making excuses for why they send their children to daycare (called “school”) where they will then spend all day with a paid caretaker (called a “teacher”). But that’s OK because they’re past the formative years, and as any man who has ever dumped the majority of childrearing on his wife while crowing about his Devoted Fatherhood will tell you, it’s not like they need you around if you’ve got better things to do at that point.

  54. First, you cannot freeze eggs. You can freeze fertilized eggs, but that means choosign the sperm contribution at that point in time.

    Second, I have seen lots of data on fertility rates with age, and yes, they trend down – and quite steeply after 35. I’m not sure where the “its all a myth” data are coming from, but since the chance of conception per month, the time from starting to try to conception, and the miscarriage rate both climb (see http://yourtotalhealth.ivillage.com/odds-conception.html).
    All the I/my wife/my grandmother/my cousin/my friend had four babies after 35 stories are anecdotes, much like all the “I rode in the back of pickup trucks and never wore a seatbelt and I’m fine” stories.

    All that is not to say that women need to rush out and BREEDBREEDBREED! I’m all in favor of people being ready in whatever way they feel necessary before taking on responsibility for a tiny helpless human being. And if you never feel ready, I don’t think children are a necessary accoutrement for anyone.

    But on the other hand, I’ve also heard a lot of women saying things like “I have the body of a 25 year old” or “I’m healthy as women 15 years younger.” There is a misconception that looking young preserves fertility, and that just ain’t so.

    It’s something that women need to go into with their eyes open. If you want as much of “it all” as you can get your hands on, you do have to consider these things in advance, and hiding the information about fertility rates in the name of not pressuring women isn’t doing them any services – it is removing information needed to make an informed decision about how to proceed with balancing career and home life.

  55. EG chill! I never said nannies are bad. They just are not as good as a parent and no amount of screaming or yelling will change that fact. You mention all the families you know . . . and that is a scientific sampling? Look, when you have no other choice you do what you can, but nothing substitues for a parent, bottom line.

  56. Mythago: I cut back more than a little bit. My income dropped by 30%. If I hadn’t we might have been able to afford a nanny, but not a nanny and a Caribbean vacation. Look, as I said to EG you do what you can, but nothing substitutes for a parent. If both parents “NEED” to work then you avail yourself of whatever appropriate resources are there are to care for your children. When work becomes optional the choice should be to stay home with your children. And I don’t necessarily put that on the mother exclusively.

  58. Why the scare quotes?

    Well obviously women don’t need to work, they “need” to work. You know, to pay for their mani/pedis and kate Spade bags.

  59. You don’t necessarily put that on the mother exclusively, Enlightened? Why how generous of you!

  60. no amount of screaming or yelling will change that fact.

    So…disagreeing with you is screaming and yelling? That’s funny, because what you sound like is any garden-variety man trying to dismiss a woman’s argument by denigrating her tone and telling her to relax, honey. I note that you have yet to produce any counter-argument to my point that not one shred evidence exists to show that SAHM/P’ed kids are better off in any way. So how’s about this: kids with nannies do just fine, and no amount of smug self-righteousness will change that fact.

    You mention all the families you know . . . and that is a scientific sampling?

    As opposed to your scientific sweeping generalizations with no basis in fact whatsoever?

    Also. ladies, remember that if you have a calling and being a SAHM would lead you to tear your hair out in rage and drink yourself into a stupor in frustration, your child will still be better off engulfed by the mother-love of a frustrated embittered drunk than growing up being taken care of by a loving nanny and a fulfilled, happy, loving mother. Because “NEED” only refers to whether or not you can feed yourself.

  61. I don’t have kids, but if I do, I definitely would love to have another caregiver, whether that’s a nanny/friend of the family/family/etc. Unlike others, I DON’T think a parent always makes the best caregiver, ESPECIALLY if that primary caregiver assumes most or all of the responsibility. Looks like a tired-out parent who’s not taking care of herself to me. And it’s awfully hard to take care of someone else when your own needs are lacking.

    So yes, it’s selfish to look out for yourself, but if that means that the time you DO spend with your child is loving, playful, educational, and instructional, (that you appreciate time spent with your child more), then why not spend another part of your day working at your career or taking care of other needs?

  62. Another really good reason for women to consider marriage and family while they are young is because that is when they are the most attractive to men, and thus they will have better opportunities to find a decent man to help produce and raise children.

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