Women can’t have it all, but then we knew that already
Ihave a friend who is
37. She has a fulfilling, well-paid career. She is also single, and childless, but currently contemplating having a baby by herself. “I’m not getting any younger,” she says. “Even if I met someone tomorrow, it might be two years before we had a child. I don’t have the luxury of time.”
Victim of circumstance or foolish to have thought she could put off having children this long? Neither, she says. “I’m very glad I waited. I’m much richer now.” But, she admits, “it’s a gamble because you might run out of time”.
This is the spectre that haunts any woman in her twenties or thirties who doesn’t have children and thinks that someday, maybe, she might want them. We all know that our biological clocks tick inexorably towards 35, when natural fertility falls off a cliff. As another childless 37-year-old friend says: “I don’t know any woman who hasn’t got that mental countdown in her head.” Brigitte Nielsen (who recently gave birth to her fifth child, at the age of 54) notwithstanding, women are far less likely to conceive without problems before the age of 35 than after it.
The trouble is, we are increasingly putting off having children until we’re older. The average age for first-time mothers is now 28.8; 54 per cent of live births are to women aged 30 or over. Younger mothers – between 21 and 30 – tend to be less well-qualified: put bluntly, the better your job, the older you are likely to be when you have a baby.
There is no doubt that many women are choosing to wait until they earn more before embarking on motherhood. Plans have just been announced for the Census to include women’s earnings after they give birth, in an effort to tackle the gender pay gap; a pilot carried out last year found that women who delayed having their first child past 30 were, unsurprisingly, more likely to be earning more than those aged 16-29. In a world where women increasingly both want and have to work, even after having children, it makes sense to wait until a career is at least semi-established before doing so.
So what to do? Wind back the clock, send women back to the kitchen, forget female education and return to marrying off teenagers while they’re still young enough to be fertile?
Of course not. The world needs educated working women as much as it needs them to have babies. Denying us the freedom to pursue a career over prioritising children is not the answer. Neither is it always a choice – for every woman chasing a high-flying career, there may be another wanting marriage and motherhood, but the former is arguably easier to achieve.
What we need to do is stop patronising women in all of this. We’re not stupid. We know that, in an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to choose between having a great career and children. We know that the changes that mean we won’t have to choose will take time – the one thing we don’t have on our side.
Encouragingly, recent research from America showed that some women’s earnings stand a better chance of bouncing back after having babies: those who have them when they’re younger than 25, or older than 35. As my friend points out, her current more senior job is much easier to juggle with a baby than the 80-hour week she worked when she was 30. It’s a gamble, but one she’s willing to take.
So let us own our decisions. Having a baby at 27, 37 or not at all; each presents its own challenges. Allow us to rise to them.