Attention Women: You’d Best Get to Baby-Making
During the past few days, I’ve noticed this item floating around on Boston.com and being torn to bits on Universal Hub. Since I’ve been busy with my career (interviewing Irish brewers takes a girl’s time) I didn’t take the time to completely read the article until now.
And I’m so glad I did. Now I’m informed enough to know that my fellow career girls and I are way behind in our quest to find a man before our ovaries quit on us.
If this story came out on April 1, it could have easily been dismissed as a joke.
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.
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.
The good news is that psychology research shows you will gain more happiness anyway by finding a partner than by having a good job.
This must have picked up from The Onion, right? Right?
The thing is, there’s a difference between stating a biological fact (”There is plenty of evidence to show that the quality of your eggs takes a nose dive at age 35″) and putting your own twisted belief on what a woman should do with that fact (”Women who want to have children should make it a priority in their twenties to find a partner”).
My ovaries work for me. If they quit before I’m ready to give up on my career, I’ll find a wisecracking teenager who got knocked up by her geeky boyfriend and adopt her baby. Problem solved.
March 4th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
You might be regretting that attitude if you wait too long and then can’t have kids. Remember, there was a Juno and a Vanessa.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:10 am
You want me to count the number of sexist and insulting comments in every issue of Boston and Boston Home? The pretentiousness goes both ways.
March 5th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
“Women who want to have children should make it a priority in their twenties to find a partner.”
How is this different than stating “College students who wish to get into medical school should make it a priority to get good grades in biology and chemistry?”
Is it cosmologically unfair that women’s reproductive systems age twice as fast as men’s? Sure. Doesn’t make it untrue.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
If my ovaries were my employees, they’d be a couple of illiterate sluggards blazing up in the parking lot twice a day, thieving from the petty cash box and doing their damnedest to get fired so they can sue me for unlawful discrimination.
Enjoy spending $50K on adoption.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I am well out of my twenties, and wouldn’t mind my current single status so much if it didn’t affect my likelihood of being a mother. I actually heartily concur with “Women who want to have children should make it a priority in their twenties to find a partner.”
What I object to is the idea that one cannot find a partner while also building a career, as well as to the absurd notion that every single woman in her 30s is single because she’s been living a Carrie Bradshaw life or turning men down to focus on career issues, while for all the single women I know, it’s because the relationships they had in their 20s didn’t make it to the marriage-and-children stage for any of a multitude of reasons.