The Aniston Syndrome
What happens to women who wait too long to have a baby?
A few months before my 37th birthday, I told the man that I was in love with that I hoped we could decide whether or not marriage and children were in our future after we had been together for a year. When our year anniversary arrived, we had one of the most difficult conversations of my life.
“I love you, but I’m not sure I can spend the rest of my life with you,” he told me one cold January evening, sitting on the couch in his new apartment. Those words pushed me to tears through which I admitted my intense desire to have a child, something I’ve always wanted under the right circumstances, and my worries about my waning fertility.
“I’ve had all this freedom to come this far in my career, and I’ve finally found myself, and as a result I found you,” I said. “Now I have no control over my biology.”
Source: Management of the Infertile Woman by Helen A. Carcio and The Fertility Sourcebook by M. Sara Rosenthal
“It’s nature’s cruel joke on women,” he responded.
I cried harder. He told me I was “desperate” and “hysterical,” and I wasn’t “letting our relationship take its organic course.” I argued that at our age, making an active decision was the organic course. But he could not commit to me so a few weeks later, I gave him back the keys to his apartment, told him that I had to move on, and that he could call me if he changed his mind. He never did.
I decided to get proactive and level the playing field by freezing my eggs a few months later. The choice, I figured, would take the pressure off my biological clock and buy me some time to find a better love with whom I might start a family. Even though the technology is still considered experimental by The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the idea of it made good sense. I also began seriously considering single motherhood by forming a group of other women who were also thinking about the choice. Yet even with these so-called empowered steps, and even though I was ultimately saved from a man who called me desperate, and sometimes crazy, who was a selfish lover and who blamed me for all our conflict, I still felt like this break-up was a biological tragedy. Because I was thirty-seven, I felt like a massive failure because I had not yet married, and like I was losing the procreation race because I had not yet had a child. I wondered whether somewhere along the way I had taken a wrong turn and mistimed motherhood.
In my memoir, In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment and Motherhood (Basic Books, 2009), I write about the reasons that so many women in my generation have started their families later, often over the age of 35 when fertility is in decline. It is the result of a combination of increased economic power, later marriage, the two-income family, the high cost of childcare, longevity, and a culture that rewards female independence, individualism and a strong career identity. I also explain that advanced reproductive technology, feminism, and looser social norms have made it possible for women – and men – to make choices they couldn’t have made a generation ago. We can get pregnant before we get engaged or walk down the aisle. We can have children as ‘”single mothers by choice” through artificial insemination before finding husbands. We can buy donor eggs from younger women or freeze our own to donate to ourselves further down the road.
There is, however, a darker, extremely painful side to these new choices that isn’t talked about as much at cocktail parties or over lunches with girlfriends. You could call it “The Aniston Syndrome” – the grim reality that it’s possible to wait too long. Because we don’t want to sound anti-feminist, anti-career or all together un-empowered, instead we smile, and say, “Oh don’t worry, I have a friend who got pregnant at 42,” and avoid the talk of miscarriages, failed IVF cycles, and the pressures on our relationships. These are the more painful and economically stressful consequences of starting later.
We all know someone who is suffering from one of them. She is your Brown roommate from 1990 who convinced you to scrawl your rapist’s name on the bathroom wall, who is now feeling defeated and ashamed because she can’t get pregnant with her second child and it’s ruining her marriage. She is your beautiful and career-driven single friend who has traveled the world, and whose life you sometimes envy, who admits that the pressure of finding love at 40 when she wants to have a child is killing her dating life. She is now trying to get pregnant on her own and spends her evenings shopping on-line for sperm instead of dates. She is a 39-year old Harvard MBA who makes six figures, runs triathlons, and recently got married after spending years looking for Mr. Right. Now she has had two miscarriage and wonders why her body won’t cooperate. “I’m ok. I’m ok,” she says stoically over coffee. But then she looks down and questions it all more quietly. “I’ve worked so hard to find the right guy and it’s so good now that I’m older and I know who I am and what I want. I’m so ready to do the job of being a mother. Why won’t mother nature cooperate?”
It is these more secret stories of our urban sisters’ struggles that make me wonder whether the choice to wait really is the most empowered one. It is the fact that whenever I hear the news of a pregnancy at a party, I now ask, “Was it her own eggs or IVF?” as if natural sex is as old-fashioned as the question of whether it’s okay to want to have an orgasm. That advanced reproductive technology has become so common, and that the more silent pains of older women struggling with dating and conception are very real, I wonder whether we should really rely so much on advanced reproductive technology as a crutch? When I decided to get my eggs frozen, I flew to Italy to interview Dr Eleanora Porcu, the technology’s inventor. She told me that she believes that freezing your eggs to postpone childbearing with an experimental technology is harmful to feminism. “It means that we’re accepting a mentality of efficiency in which pregnancy and motherhood are marginalized,” she said. “We’ve demonstrated that we are able to do everything like men. Now we have to do the second revolution, which is not to become dependent on a technology that involves surgical intervention. We have to be free to be pregnant when we are fertile and young.”
If I could go back ten years, I might tell my younger self that she should deeply consider her future family.I’ve always argued that it’s better to have more choices, but when I hear these sadder stories, or suffer dark moments myself, I do wonder whether in fact my generation collectively screwed up. Did we in fact buy a false message from our feminist mothers, and focus too much control on ourselves and our bodies in terms of birth control and sexual freedom in our 20s and actually wait too long to have children? I’m not alone in asking these questions. My friend Allison Warner, a 37-year-old advertising executive who is trying to get pregnant with a sperm donor recently told me that she made that choice exactly because she didn’t want to wait any longer and lose the chance to have a biological child. She felt like she had her whole life to meet Mr. Right and only a finite amount of time to get pregnant. She has now gone through three inseminations and had one miscarriage. I spoke to her on the morning she got her period after her third insemination. “I’m devastated,” she says. “The whole miscarriage has really affected me, especially because I had an abortion when I was 30. It wasn’t the right time then for me to have a baby, but I now feel worse about giving up that pregnancy because I’m not getting pregnant now. This morning was the first time I cried because I really thought I was pregnant. Since I’m 37, the more time that goes by, the more I get worried that I’m running out of time.”
It’s exactly these kinds of choices that have caused so many women to run into problems with their fertility, but it also would not be fair to blame us. Choices and focusing on ourselves is the main cultural message that we’ve received, not the one that Dr. Porcu suggested to me in Italy. When I graduated from college my mother said to me: “Find your passion! Become yourself!” I had always interpreted that statement as an injunction to find and fine tune my personal interests and career rather than burdening myself too early with the kinds of compromises necessary to form an enduring relationship and a family. So instead of hunting for a husband, I spent my twenties exploring my eclectic interests and surfing through different kinds of relationships with men. Birth control and not getting pregnant was a strong part of my social DNA. Fertility consciousness and a strong consideration of the route to my future family was not. I very much lived for the moment, probably an inheritance of the “Me Generation” motto “If it feels good, do it!” And then came Internet dating, which I think bred a kind of pickiness that has lead me to believe that the “Me Generation” feel good motto has now morphed into a new motto for my generation: “If it doesn’t feel perfect, I’m outta here!”
Pages: 1 2
the one thing that really bothers me with this is the whole thought process that you have to find out exactly who you are before you have a kid. Who you are and what you want changes so dramatically once you have kids that it almost seems ridiculous to me that you would go through years of searching and frustration to become this person that you think is so amazing so that you can have a child and have your entire world view and all of your priorities change.
“Was it her own eggs or IVF?” I’d like to point out that IVF is also done with “her own eggs, ” not only donor eggs as this implies.
I agree with MaryAnn. Who you are as a person changes regardless of whether you are young or old..that’s just part of being human. Your life experiences mold you in different ways and the idea that you have to wait until you find this perfect self before embarking on the biggest life experience – parenthood – is just odd. It’s the same with finding a partner…you will (hopefully) grow together and share experiences and part of the challenge is to stay connected as you do so. If you’ve done everything already before settling down, then what’s left to do afterwards?
IVF is so expensive; the vast majority of people dont have the option without amounting huge debts. I think theres a big class issue here thats not been touched upon. Yes, you can argue that those women who want to focus on a career or finding themselves, travelling etc are more likely to be those privileged enough to have an expensive education and to be financially better off due to an ambitious career mindset but compare this issue to higher rates of teenage pregnancy from women from more deprived backgrounds.
That said, this article makes me feel happy with the decisions Ive made in my life. I had my son with my boyfriend when we were 25 out of choice. Im 27 now and we were married earlier this year. Im still the only one out of my school friends, uni friends, work colleagues etc who has a child and sometimes it gets me down or I get jealous of them going to Ibiza, Glastonbury, having jobs that I just couldnt do part time, living wherever they like but on Friday I met up with one of my friends and she said that Id be laughing when Im in my late 40s, early 50s and I can have more independence than those friends whove held off motherhood. Also, Ive got a creative, challenging job in a sector I love but work only 3 days a week so I can have quality time with my son. Our flats not big but it is ours, most of my peers are still renting and will have a hard time getting a mortgage in the current climate. We dont have a lot of money or fancy holidays, I dont have the money or time or childcare to go to music festivals, or foreign holidays but weve got a happy, comfortable, loving life and weve done it in our 20s. Ive got my degree and post grad, Ive got freelancing opportunities opening to me, Im doing regular long distance races and its all good.
Mary Ann makes a really, really important point that isn’t touched on in this article. You change dramatically when you go through parenthood, and find parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed. If this weren’t true there would be nothing to talk about on Babble.com!
bread a kind of pickiness – should be “bred.”
I think among the (urban) set of young adults I grew up with there was the general attitude that getting married and having children young meant that you were one of “those” women who only went to college to get an “Mrs degree” and has no intellectual or career aspirations whatsoever. Therefore, we simply took the family question off the table entirely, considering marriage and children post-college, in your twenties, “throwing your life away.” I think that a lot of us see the error in this logic now that we’re in our 40s. You have to take life as it comes when it comes, always keeping sight of your personal bigger picture. I think we thought having it all meant that there was a logical order to things, but maybe there isn’t. Maybe the logic is simply in keeping an eye on your bigger picture at whatever age you happen to be. For me, things happened to fall together pretty well. I was single through my twenties, got married at thirty and had kids at thirty-three and thirty-five. Now, at 40, my kids are in school full time and I’m moving forward with the things I want for me (although my family is still a big priority). But to say that everyone should do it this way is just mean. It’s stupid luck that things fell together this way. You take opportunities when they come and they don’t always show up just at the moment you’re ready for them.
This article is timely and makes some good points, I just wish it had been edited a little better. The misspellings are unprofessional. Also, I think it’s a little hard on Jennifer Aniston to use her name to define a syndrome like this. She’s never seemed regretful about her choices.
I’m one of the lucky ones. I got married at 35 and had my first child at 39, my second at 41, with one miscarriage in between. I am about to turn 42 and I am EXHAUSTED. I wish sometimes I had started earlier when I got married simply for my energy level. But frankly, the 4 years my husband and I had together before we had kids is the only glue keeping us together sometimes, so I don’t regret it. But I haven’t slept in 3 years.
Here’s what I think the problem is. If previous generations were told/instructed to be a good wife and mother, we were told the opposite during our formative years. Most of us this age grew up in the 1970′s, and the message was ‘unshackle your chains and be free!’ Also, many of our parents went through painful divorces when we were young, and so consequently Gen X is very leery of getting boxed into bad relationships. Too many of us were those kids on the stairs listening to the screaming. These factors have contributed to our mind set. Last but not least, some women tried to have relationships in their 20′s, and the men we were dealing with were not emotionally ready, dare I say it immature. And no one seems to penalize men in their 40′s who are still single.
I think it’s really important for women to think about what they’re really looking for when they feel the importance of having a baby in their lives. For me, I realized it wasn’t so much about getting pregnant and having my own biological child as it was being a mother. After getting married for the second time at age 41 and having a miscarriage a year later, my husband and I decided to skip the time and financial commitment of infertility treatments and instead focused on starting our family through adoption. We brought our daughter home two years ago, and we thoroughly feel like adoption was right for us. So much so that we’re thinking about doing it again, even though I’m a little nervous to start that process at the age of 45. Being a mother is awesome, and I don’t feel like I ever missed out on having my “own” child. My daughter is my own child.
This is ridiculous. Its not as though if you “decided” to do it differently, then everything would work out. I always thought I would be married and have kids young. I was briefly engaged at 24. I then spent the remainder of my 20′s dating for marriage, and taking jobs, not building a career so I could be the flexible one when it came to raising kids. Guess what? I didn’t meet the right guy. Finally at 30 I said nuts to that and went to law school. I finally met the right guy and got married at 36, and now I’m pregnant at 37. (For the record I “used my own eggs” and not IVF, as though most women who do IVF use donor eggs – far from true). Jennifer Aniston, since she’s your title girl, got married in her early 30′s, plenty of time to have kids, and then her husband ditched her for a younger woman. What was she supposed to do about that? Delaying having kids isn’t the most “empowering choice” having choice is what’s most empowering. And sometimes the choice is out of your control, which isn’t empowering at all, but its just life.
I’m on the opposite side of the coin and sometimes panic thinking that my career won’t ever be “on track” after taking time off to be with my kids in my early 30′s….But at least my brain is easier to control than my ovaries.
I always wanted to have kids young and married right before I was 26 and got pregnant a year later. To me this wasn’t even young! I am now 29 and about to have #2 and couldn’t imagine my life any other way. I guess I just always viewed a career as not what would make me happy in life and have felt very self-aware and well traveled at a young age; it didn’t ever feel like “settling” but choosing what I knew would be the most lasting thing in my life-a committed relationship and family. I have many friends that have had miscarriages in their 30s before getting pregnant, but I’ve also had friends that got married at 20 and had multiple miscarriages too. I definitely think that fighting mother nature is not the best idea and women should realize that finding yourself doesn’t have to happen alone, or before you have kids. You have your whole life, and growing up with your partner is a choice, one that will be a lasting reward in old age.
We cannot have it all and men seemingly can. It’s the curse and the blessing of being a woman. I stepped back on my career to have my kids. Sure there are some regrets, but I highly encourage women to think twice about taking that job offer or promotion without fully thinking through the consequences.
Is it fair? No. But it’s life. And for many (not all) a childless life is one half full.
I think too many women of the previous generation over analyze things, expect too much perfection, and have unrealistic views on life. We all know what happens as a woman ages: Her fertility goes down. It’s not fair, but that’s the way our bodies work. There’s no such thing as ‘Mr. Right’. There’s only the person you love enough to work hard with so you can go through life together. There’s no such thing as the perfect relationship. It’s work every day. And you’re never going to stop growing and changing as person, so waiting until you’re done going through that is ridiculous.
So I don’t have much sympathy for women who wait until they’re late 30s to get pregnant, and then have issues doing so. You ladies made your beds. You decided to stick your heads in the sand about the realities of biology, and then get so upset when you can’t control your fertility, despite knowing the truth this whole time. You waste a lot of time on pointless relationships instead of standing up and saying, ‘This is what I want, and if you want it too, great, if not, what’s the point?’ You also decided to make your career the focus of your life, and that’s fine, but don’t later bitch about your fertility not waiting for you to have the perfect set of material things.
Life is messy, unfair, and imperfect. Waiting for perfection is a waste and what many of the late-in-life-wanting-kids set seem to be doing. They are also pretty short-sighted in terms of what one can accomplish while having kids. It’s not easy doing what one wants while having kids, but if you work hard enough at it, anything is possible.
(Oh, and about the commenter who mentioned Jenifer Aniston being left for a younger woman: Ever stop to consider that for years Brad Pitt was talking all the time about wanting kids, but his wife always said she was waiting, so he got tired of waiting? Why should he have to wait years to have children he already wanted simply because his wife wanted to keep waiting and waiting? Doesn’t he have as much of a right to having kids when he wants to as a woman does? Don’t you think a major difference in the desire to have kids would break up a marriage on it’s own without saying he simply went after a younger woman? Perhaps he went to Angelina Jolie because she wanted the same things he did: Children.)
So what does Jennifer Aniston have to do with this? You people are just using her name to get we hits. This is just dumb.
Just wanted to add something:
There are possible serious health risks that can occur during the egg-freezing (extraction and pre-extraction) process(es). I’d read about them and consult several experts before having the procedure.
This is a joke right? Please, please, please tell me y’all aren’t that high up on yourselves to be serious about “The Aniston Syndrome.”
Can we later discuss the “I Had A Kid And Now Think I’m Better Than Everyone Else, Including Most Other Moms Because They’re Not As Great As Being A Mom As I Am Because I Blog About Myself Every Day” syndrome?
Alicia, you are so right. After all, we all know that women who put off having a career to have children (particularly with Mr. Not Right) are never ever ever left by their husbands. And they are never disadvantaged for making those decisions. We also know, that if we are only judgmental enough, unsympathetic enough, and condescending enough, we can make sure that nothing bad will ever happen to us or our relationships. So kudos! You are doing everything right! You are not at all sticking your head in the sand about the realities of economics and life, and then risking getting so upset when you can’t control your finances, despite knowing the truth this whole time. I’ll still have sympathy, even though you did “make your bed.” But what do I know, I’m just one of those selfish career women who was too stupid to get married and have kids and give up my economic autonomy at an early age.
“It is the fact that whenever I hear the news of a pregnancy at a party, I now ask, “Was it her own eggs or IVF?” ”
It’s appropriate to ask people that????
“Not every womans fertility falls off a cliff at 30, or even 35 to forty…”
I’m 26 and I actually can’t wait for my fertility to fall off a cliff! My point is everyone is different. Not every woman wants kids. Many women care a lot about their career and their life outside of family. Worry about your own family. Not others.
I can’t even wrap my head around all this crazy. Why, in 2010, is it still considered “okay” for women to be ridiculed for actively choosing not to have children?
I applaud the Jennifer Anistons of the world who actively CHOOSE to wait until they’re good and ready, to reproduce. Shame on you, Babble, for your mockery and shaming of women over the age of 25 for not having children and being married.
I think, if anything, a woman’s right to choose to wait until she is financially/emotionally/physically/mentally stable and ready to have children is something to be celebrated! How often are there children who are left abandoned, pawned off on others, or put into orphanages simply because women thought they were ready to have them, and weren’t? I’m quite positive that if Jennifer Aniston (or any of the women in your distasteful companion piece) wanted to have children, she would have had them by now.
News flash, Babble: There is no such thing as a spinster, and a woman’s right to choose is just that – a right to choose. Stop ridiculing and mocking these people for not living the way you think they should. Keep your opinions and words away from other womenfolk’s uteri.
There’s no such thing as waiting too long. You wait until the time is right for you — and ONLY you, not the court of media and public opinion.
This is such a pointless, insane exercise in projecting your own desires onto other people. Not all women want to have babies. The end.
I am “the friend who got pregnant at almost 42.” Does that give me some credibility on this topic?
These cautionary tales of “don’t wait too long or you’ll be single/childless and alone” serve no purpose except to make women second guess their lives. How many 20-something women are married with kids and utterly miserable and unfulfilled? Too many young women are scared into believing that they have to marry the first guy who comes along and pop out a couple of kids by the time they’re 30. But getting married young doesn’t mean you won’t get divorced young, nor does it mean you’ll actually be able to conceive. Young women struggle with infertility, too. Young women have problems finding good partners, too. Being young does not equal limitless choices. Having babies doesn’t mean you’ll be happy.
I’m 43 years old and just had my first child in December at the age of 42. I’ve been married for almost 20 years. I got pregnant at 23, 30 and 41 and had miscarriages. I got pregnant a fourth time two months before I turned 42 and that pregnancy took. (The only difference was I took progesterone this time, which may or may not have helped.) No, we weren’t trying to get pregnant for all those years. Between 23 and 30, we didn’t try at all. Between 30 and 40, we tried for a total of maybe 8 months. In those in-between years, I did not obsess about whether I would become a mother and I did my best to ignore the well-meaning advice of people who told me I was getting old and running out of time. In fact, there were years when I was pretty sure I didn’t want children at all. I focused on making the best life I could for myself– and I did.
I was lucky to meet my husband when I was young, but youth didn’t guarantee me healthy babies. I was at peace with the life I had whether I had children or not. That’s me. If you know you want children and your life won’t be complete without them, do what you have to do to have them at whatever age you’re ready. IVF, donor eggs, adoption, surrogacy– they are all viable options to becoming a mother. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But no one should rush to have children before they’re emotionally (and financially) ready just because we live in a youth-obsessed culture that treats women over 35 like they have one foot in the grave. And no one should pursue parenthood with the notion that “If only I had a child, I would be happy!” That ain’t the way it works, folks.
I love being a new mom in my 40s. Having a child has not made me a happier person– it has simply added a new facet to my already happy life.
Dear Wow – what article did you read? Because it’s clearly not the one you’re commenting on. If you read that article as ridiculing women who choose to not have children you have serious reading comprehension issues.
The central point is a valid one. That in women’s newfound ability to excersize choice, some women have been blinded to the fact that just because you can choose to wait doesn’t mean that that choice doesn’t have costs. Nowhere does the author for a moment imply that a woman doesn’t have a right to choose. The reality of the words on the page and what you perceived are so far apart that I have to echo your own words… wow.
Although I will agree on one count. Pulling Jennifer Aniston into this and making up some dumb name like “Aniston Syndrome” was just silly and undermines the totally valid discussion.
And also, I will say that this topic has been debated since the 70′s when the popularity of the pill reality took off and women had more control over their reproduction. So to write an article like this now is a little cliche.
AdvMatAge said it all: ” Its not as though if you “decided” to do it differently, then everything would work out.” Just because you’re in your 20s doesn’t mean getting pregnant is easy, either. If the writer had done some research, she might have found that women in their 20s have infertility problems too. And anyway, having children isn’t the be-and end-all of life for women.
From page 2, Sarah Arthur: “Im sure I would have had an easier time getting pregnant ten years ago, but I would not have been ready to do this when I was 30. I had no idea who I was. What is wrong with the idea of a part of “who we are” is simply being a mother? Women are determined that they be defined in some other way than motherhood — typically, their work is their definition, which frankly I think is a little depressing. This is such a shift in human thinking. I don’t think that it’s all bad, but I do think that it’s sad that motherhood is so — what? Uncool? Bland and boring? Only for the stupid who have no other interests? This attitude is so, so sad. For feminism, being “empowered” has come to mean “doing it like men do it,” which I think is ultimately demeaning to women.
And what’s with “The ANISTON Syndrome”? Has poor Jennifer Aniston ever publicly said that she waited too long and really wants to have babies? I feel bad for her, being the poster woman for this group when it’s something that she (to my knowledge) has never talked about publicly.
I am so, so tired of all of the hysteria around women’s fertility. This kind of stuff had me convinced I would never have a child. Then I got pregnant unexpectedly (though it was a very welcome occurrence) when I was almost 36 and 6 weeks away from my (2nd) wedding. This idea that whether to have children in your 20s, or your 30s, or your 40s or at all comes entirely down to what you “choose” is just not connected to the reality of how life works. Many factors affect whether or not any one person will become a parent. The fertility of the woman is just one of them. The woman-blaming of this article and the peddling of this myth that anyone, regardless of age or sex has total control over her life is really unproductive. Life happens on its own terms. The happiest people I know are the ones who accept that.
Just want to say that we should remember that men also develop fertility problems as they age. I was married at 34, my husband was almost 50. Turns out he had the issue and we ended up in fertility treatments. (The irony is that he was a sperm donor in his twenties and fathered two children!) We now have one healthy boy but have not been able to get pregnant again.
I think some things are indeed beyond our control, even though that can be hard to accept.
I don’t now what feminists other people were hanging out with, but in high school and college the card carrying members of NOW and OWL, my mother and grandmothers who had professional careers and families because there were no other options, never gave me the impression that career must come first, or babies, or anything else. If anything the lessons I learned from their lives was that you decide what is important to you and you do it. Life isn’t some check list, and you might not be were you expected further down the road. There are trade offs for everything. If an individual woman’s choices don’t make her happy, don’t blame feminism. There are real issues like student debt, the decline of real wages, childcare costs, a society that still pays only lip service to the value of actually raising children, and the health care mess. These are some of the real issues that affect when women have children. Most women who want families form them, in the end, one way or another. Is it always easy or what we expect? No, but that is life. Give up feminism as a whipping post, and let’s place more scrutiny on how we as a society and how workplaces actually treat women, those who want children and those who (gasp) chose not to have them.
I definitely get where this author is coming from even though I met my now-husband at 19 years of age in college. There was a culture for many of us coming of age in the early-to-mid 1990s that was almost anti-courtship, marriage, and motherhood. Even my friends in long-term relationships did not get married until after they had lived together for almost a decade. I will leave to it the sociologists and historians to say why this was so, but it seems to be less so today. Maybe those of us in the college classes from 1990 to 1995 will turn out to be some statistical anomaly, but I think maybe it is all part of the evolution of the modern family. I realized at 34, after an advanced degree, a great career and five years of marriage under my belt that I (finally) better think about kids. It was not that I didnt have a loving and willing partner but, lets face it, we were having a heck of time living life. Other generations were expected to settle down and start a family at a certain age. We had no such pressure, but with that kind of freedom we also had less direction. Rachel, and my many friends like her, will find her way to happiness and, if she wants, motherhood too. She does not need your pity and she certainly does not deserve your criticism.
As a 30-something who has firmly decided to not have childen, I read articles like this and shake my head. I’m sure the author did want to sound alarmist, but she comes off as whiny and downright rude to young women. I loathe this “have them when you’re young” mantra that everyone and their dog keeps spewing out. People will have kids when they have them, no sooner, no later. Maybe not at all. Does that make anyone better than the rest? No. It just means we made different choices.
And why does no one ever mention adoption? Why are biological children the be all and end all?
Why none of the women in the article consider adoption? They’d become moms much faster that way. Yeah, I understand the yearning for a real pregnancy, but this is just 10 months of your life compared to a lifetime of parenthood, which is what matters.
There is an enormous amount of defensiveness in the comments below, and in our society more broadly, about this procreation timing thing. Of course there are women who don’t want to have kids, no one is saying otherwise. And of course there are women who don’t want to have a first child until they are older — everyone respects that decision. But the fact remains that there are quite a few women out there of our generation who do want to have kids but, to be totally candid, they — and all of us, our entire generation — were unrealistically optimistic about the timing. It’s a very painful thing to say, and no one wants to say it, but for at least some portion of people out there, it’s the reality. I know quite a few people in this position, i have to think most people in their early forties do, and I know a number of married couples who would love to have two kids but could only have one because of the timing. No one wants to talk about it because it is perceived to be a slight on the power of women, which is ridiculous. This isn’t about ego or freedom or the right to chose not to have kids. It took courage to write this piece precisely because we all know that people are going to pile on anyone who says this, just as people have below.
Women have unrealistic expectations and have only themselves to blame. I know lots of guys who were overlooked by women when they were in their 20s because they weren’t “confident” enough even though they were smart, good-looking, and professionally and financially successful. Now that these guys are in their 30s they don’t want to settle for women their own age, and why should they settle? More women should be willing to give guys a chance when they are in their 20s and still building “confidence.” The women who wait too long are going to be out of luck and will miss their chance to have children.
Decent article, and I agree that it’s the “me generation” issues affecting the willingness of individuals to make a committment and make a family. I was dating around in my 20′s and finished an MBA program at 28 without much of an active thought towards children, though knowing I wanted them eventually. However, the atitude of most men of my acquaintance including my eventual spouse was that children were out of the question or to be put off for as long as humanly possible. If you even mentioned you wanted kids eventually, most men would run away screaming. What kid of healthy culture is that? The dating culture prohibits much honestly in relationships towards the endless pursuit of instant gratification and excess materialism, especially for the lastest tech or sports gadgets.
I had my kids at 33 and 35 and my achy body is now wishing I had them earlier, though that wasn’t possible. I just hope something changes culturely to make it easier for individuals to find a decent partner a little earlier, so that age related infertility is less of an issue.
This article was satisfying to read. I just wrote about something similar on my blog….www.redblossommedicine.com. I absolutely believe that the gift we give to the next generation of childbearing women, is the vision of honouring the blessing of fertility.
Wow, I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what article some of the more recent commenters actually read. I saw ZERO judgment on this article. It was a very pragmatic, poignant AND personal exploration of the reality of choices that modern women face. Biology doesn’t judge. It simply IS. And statistically speaking women ARE more likely to have problems conceiving or conceiving HEALTHILY after a certain age. No judgment, just simple statistics. Nobody is saying you WILL have problems at age 40, just that statistically speaking, you’re MORE LIKELY to have problems. And so yes, choices you made in your 20′s could very likely have impact on choices you want to make in your 40′s. Does that mean you should rush to get married and pregnant with the wrong person just in case? Of course not, and at no point did the author insinuate this. But there IS a broader ME-ness going on in this generation. Which is great for women. They have more choices now than at any time in history. If you don’t want to have kids or a husband, if you want to have an awesome career and live all over the world and have meaningful short and longterm relationships with multiple partners, you absolutely can and SHOULD if that’s what you want. More power to you… and honestly a lot of your peers WILL probably envy you. But the reality (void of any judgment whatsoever) is that if you suddenly decide at the age of 38 that you DO want a family, you’re suddenly going to be faced with a potentially more difficult choice and reality than somebody who decided they wanted a family at 25. Nobody, least of all the author is looking down on you for it. but it IS part of your reality. And if you’re cool with that, so are we. So chill the eff out.
I am disappointing that it seems so many women would trust the course of their life to societal pressure, whether feminist or otherwise. I would hope that in this age of choice for women, all women could be respected as long as those choices were truly their own. Unfortunately it seems a battle has ensued that makes career women independent and strong and women who choose stay-at home motherhood weak and backward. I dont think men are to blame for this, or society. I believe women need to stop listening only to mothers and movements and media. We have access to a huge variety of trustworthy factual information about almost every aspect of our lives. We can see the experiences of others and if we dont choose to learn from them, that is our fault. We can choose to spend our time with men who are open to having children, rather than waste precious time in relationships that dont have our best interests at heart. I think women will truly embody the best goals for our sex when we can accept that a well-informed decision trumps a modern one. We can acknowledge that informed women who choose young motherhood can be just as strong and independent as those who choose to run corporations, and also that these desires do not have to be mutually exclusive.
This is a good story, but I think it bears mentioning that the only person stopping Jennifer Aniston from having a baby at this point is Jennifer Aniston. She could easily have undergone IVF, found a surrogate or adopted as a single mother, plenty of others in Hollywood have just fine. She wants to be married before she has a child, which is perfectly fine, but it’s a bit ironic since everyone has turned her into the poster child for single women’s fertility issues.
I wish that I would not have waited so long to have a child. At 40 being a mother is alot harder, I am set in my ways and although I am happily married, a child has changed our life alot. My husband and I were married 10 years before we had a child and there is no way that I could be a parent alone. There is no right time to have a child, and there is no amount of money that will make it any easier.It is by far the hardest thing I have ever done. I would give up my career in a heartbeat now to spend more time with my child instead of leaving him at daycare all day. Children grow up fast and I don’t want to look back and say “I missed it”
“She is your Brown roommate from 1990 who convinced you to scrawl your rapists name on the bathroom wall”
This line was really a bit over the top. I had to stop reading after that. Why would you add such a harsh line when trying to illustrate how we all know someone that is having trouble getting pregnant? I am thankful not to know anyone in this way and I am thankful not to have been raped. The way the writer casually throws this in as an afterthought of something that happened in someones life is really sad.
Unmarried women in their late 30s who wait too long to have a baby have themselves to blame for their infertility. There are so many women with entitlement complexes who think that they can have their own “me” time during their 20s and up into their mid-30s and then assume they will find a great guy to marry them when they hit their late 30s. Most of these women reject suitable men the entire time holding out for the textbook “perfect” man who never arrives. By the time they hit their late 30s they are less attractive than they were 5-10 years earlier and cannot even get the same type of men whom they would have rejected years earlier. By this point they are desperate and the men they meet can sense the desperation – no man wants to marry a desperate woman. Moreover, why should an attractive man in his late 30s settle for a woman in her late 30s when there are younger women available who are often nicer, better looking, and more fertile.
Well, I was brought up by feminists, and that didn’t stop me from feeling like having a family would be a priority. I was brought up to believe that feminism gave more choices, not less. My plan was to have a kid in my late 20′s. However, the man I was involved with wasn’t ready for the kind of commitment (seems like so few 28 year old men are). So, I think it might be less about women choosing to wait, and more the problem of find men who are ready. It wasn’t until my mid thirties that I met the father of my children. We spent a few years getting to know each other, and then I had my first kid at 38 and my second at 41. I was lucky, getting pregnant was easy for me. And, I should also add that I had no idea that I was at a hard-to-get pregnant age. I would have freaked out a lot more if I had been more aware of how hard it should be!
A woman who makes a choice to kill her unborn baby because the timing of its arrival is not convenient for her doesn’t DESERVE to ever be pregnant again. In reality, what she deserves is prison… if she killed the same baby just a few months later, she’d be convicted of murder.
I was completely turned off by the title of this essay. Does the author know Jennifer Aniston? Do she know her life, her choices? If not she is pushing the gossip magazine’s efforts to make her seem jilted, barren, and less than the fertility goddess otherwise known as Angelina Jolie. You do Jennifer Aniston a disservice and should be ashamed..
I love the comment by Suzy – so true! I was in college in the late 90s, but felt the same way. For those of you who think that this is all anti-feminist BS, all I can say is that do not underestimate the desire to have biological children until you have experienced it. You may never have that desire, and that’s great for you. But if you do, I only hope that you have no issues conceiving. Like one of the other readers, I started trying to conceive at age 29. My husband and I were not serious about it because we felt like we were not settled enough, didn’t have enough security, money, stability, stuff, etc. Before that, we would go to restaurants after working all night and point to those couples with the noisy brats and congratulate ourselves on how smart we were. After many years of infertility, late miscarriages and horrible IUIs (thank goodness no IVF), I had kids at 33 and 34. After that hell of getting #1, I just went ahead and bit the bullet to get #2. I had already seen the horrors of secondary infertility also and had been an only child, so it was never a question for 2.
I have had a very full life. I would trade my year abroad in Europe, all of my travels around the world, my graduate degree, my career, a whole lot to go back in time and avoid experiencing those heartbreaking losses and that lurching fear that I wouldn’t have my own children. And adoption? Well, my husband has a fairly common chronic illness and we were turned down by every adoption agency that we spoke to. Domestic adoptions were an option, but then I found out about how common it was to lose a child to the biological parent who has changed their mind, etc. I couldn’t bear any more losses.
My husband and I treasure our children. Every day they are just an amazing source of joy for us. They have brought us closer together. We love to spend Saturday mornings all curled up together reading books and singing songs. I also see the joy of my mother and grandmother and realize that having children sooner could have given them more time with my children.
It makes me very sad that I will have less time on this earth with my kids. As I said, there is not much on this earth that I wouldn’t trade to have more time and less of that horrible pain.
I’m 35 and always struggled money wise, did not go to college etc., so I don’t relate to a lot of this article. (I am a feminist regardless though and I think it is lazy to blame feminists.) I think surrogates and sperm banks are morally questionable so There are certain things I am happy I am too low income to even be tempted with. I think one thing the author does not take into consideration is that many MEN don’t WANT kids! At elast that has been my experience. Or, they waited til they are 40, too. And they aren’t looking to women in their age range. Our fellow late 30s menfolks don’t take pity on us, they are going for the late 20-somethings (one commenter, “Kurt” on here already said as much).
I am now with the best man of my life — who is in his 50s, already has kids and doesn’t want more. Do I dump him only to go back to the slim pickins avaliable in my age bracket? Most of them either already have kids or if they WANT kids ….are looking for someone younger than their peers. IF you have a good man, try to have a kid with him whenever the chance comes, ladies, 22, 32, 42, whatever just do it. Screw people who will look at you bad just because you may be poor. Just do it. It’s hard out there for a baby-wanting bitc*.
What’s up with the woman haters commenting here? Women only have themselves to blame? Um, excuse me, Kurt, men don’t ever have to spend a second thinking about their fertility– they can have kids until they’re 80, fer chrissakes. I think it’s a little insensitive to suggest women are dumb and guilty because they didn’t spend their 20′s reproducing. Meanwhile, I don’t know if it’s that women have standards that are too high or if it’s that whether a guy is 25, 35 or 45, he wants to be dating a 25 year old. Women don’t have that luxury.
That being said, I agree with the Italian fertility doctor mentioned in the piece who said that feminism should progress so that it’s not necessary for women to give up hope of a career if they have their children young. The reality is that the way work is structured in the United States (not enough paid maternity leave, not enough support for breast feeding (for corporate moms yes, but not for the mom working at Wal-Mart), not enough part-time opportunities, expensive childcare, etc.) means that having a child young can damage your chance to get ahead at work. Of course, bosses don’t say this out loud, but the basic message is “It’s fine for you to have a kid, as long as you can pretend it doesn’t exist and keep working the same long hours and never take sick days.” Again, men are not asked to make this choice– having children doesn’t damage men’s opportunities at work (in fact, some research shows male professors are *more* likely to get tenure when they’ve had a child, while female professors are less likely to get tenure after having a kid). Imagine a world where there were more balance for working moms and maybe young women wouldn’t shy away from having kids.
Do these women want to be pregnant or to be mothers? Adoption is a completely viable option for older women whose fertility is on the wane. It gets very tiresome to see these “poor me” laments. If someone truly wants to be a parent it is possible — and far less expensive and without the possible health consequences of 13 IUIs and 3 in-vitros as quoted.
Index2.. OMG!
Jess, I don’t “hate women” – talk about projecting your own insecurities! Lots of women in their 20s really do spend quite a bit of time playing the field and living the “Sex and the City” lifestyle and only focus on finding a husband when they are in their late 30s. If you have ever lived in a big city, you should know exactly what I am referring to. A lot of men really don’t want to wait until their mid-30s or later to get married – they are pushed into that position by women who refuse to settle for a man at their own level of attractiveness when they are younger and waste their time dating players and bartenders. I know women like this who are bitter but really only have themselves to blame for wasting their 20s dating players. Women really do need to make finding a husband a priority by their late 20s at the latest.
Mr Right, that is what is killing you. This Hollywood idea that some perfect man is going to come along and fix all your problems. If you wait for Mr Right you will wait forever.
That is even if you’re really looking for him. Frankly I can tell in a matter of minutes if one of my female friends has got a decent boyfriend or not. I spotted the bad guys, the ones who were going to cheat on them , treat them badly, long before they did any of those things. Men are idiots when it comes to love, we are blinded by looks, but we are aware of that fact.
Women like to believe that they are deeper, that they have some sort of intuition that men lack, that allows them to know what a guy is like almost instantly. Load of non-sense, you are just as shallow as we are. Would you date a guy shorter than you? Is that because all short guys are arseholes? You are also attracted to excitement, drama, the guy who turns you on. Great, but that guy isn’t going to raise kids with you or marry you. The guy who will do that is the one who you dismiss are too boring, well until it is too late.
Holy concise data btmaan. Lol!
My husband and I are 28. I have a 3 year old son, a 5 year old step daughter and am 11 weeks pregnant. I am so happy with our decision to have a family in our 20s. My husbands daughter was conceived while he was at Uni and not in a relationship with the mother. We got together before she was born and shes always been a part of our lives. We found ourselves living together and doing baby then toddler things in our spare time so we chose to have a sibling for her before she would be old enough to know the difference. Yes, his daughter meant wed never live abroad and that we paid more rent on a place big enough for a childs bedroom so a lot of those find yourself experiences were already non-options and do you know what? Id rather be in my situation now that not be with him and Id rather have a brood in our 20s than be bitterly disappointed in my 40s with aging grandparents. We both work (Im part time but in a sector I love) and have good educations, were sensible with money and have a lovely home. Of course I get jealous of my old uni mates who are all over the world and experimenting with careers, men, countries etc but Im looking forward to a life where I can enjoy spending time with my children as adults and I love that my parents (who were 25 & 27 when I was born) are young and spritely and fit enough in their 50s to spend time with my children. For me, although Ive always wanted to work in a certain field Im fairly flexible with career goals and ambition Ive always known that my dream life would be a home with a family and thats what Ive got and all before Ive hit 30. Ive not settled for my husband hes always been the one for me despite the failed short lived and casual relationships I tried while at uni. Weve been incredibly blessed to have got pregnant very quickly with both of my pregnancies and the process has been very natural, free and fun. Its not for everyone and I would never tell a friend that they should choose to do what Ive done as everyone should make theyre own decisions in life but I hope that by seeing how balanced our life is, how I can still progress at work and be a mum that my way isnt necessary the worse of the two evils. There isnt a perfect time for children but so what.
Poor Jennifer Aniston – to create a label/name for her situation? Horrible.
I’m much older than Ms. Aniston, well by six years, anyway the 20s were never a good time and I had three abortions. Now I found my Mr. Right and we are going to do donor. It’s weird that the womb is fine but the eggs are old. If what I’m hearing is to be believed, women in their 20s need to settle down with much older, established and mature men who are ready to commit. Try and find a guy who is 25 and wants a family and all that entails. I defy you! Doesn’t happen. The choices are stark. We no longer have a society that supports early marriage and childbearing. It isn’t just that women aren’t focusing and finding husbands. A lot of men, especially the younger ones, want to sleep around and be free (even some up to and beyond 40)and young women don’t want 30 and 40 year old men. But as I say, unless a woman wants to go it alone and possible resign herself to a life of hardship and poverty (as my mother did marrying young, having kids young and getting divorced due to my philandering father) she will have to accept an older man to marry and have kids with.
The truth is though, the reason most women wait is simply to try and minimise the impact a child will have on their life. When they say “economic stability” what they really mean is “I dont want to have to
go without for a few years”. When they say “career progression” they mean “I don’t want a child to impact on my promotion”. It is a sad fact though that women in their late 30s now didn’t know that their fertility would halve in their early thirties and I have seen first hand the devastation and shock and helpless regret this knowledge brings. But, as a woman with severe endo, it irritates me no end to hear women in their late twenties spout this “waiting” rubbish.