Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright once said, “There is no formula for being a woman,” and in 2008 when a woman may possibly become the next President of the United States it seems that everything that the women’s movement fought for is coming to fruition. Women born in the sixties and beyond were told that they could have it all. They were encouraged to go to college, get advanced degrees, have careers, but there was a catch—they still had to fulfill their traditional role as wife and mother.
Imagine June Cleaver with a successful law practice, and you’ve got the picture. But how could it be logistically possible for women to have a family while trying to get their education and careers on track? Men do it, but they don’t know the existence of time. Does anyone need to see another sixty-year-old dad at soccer practice for that point to drive home?
Women in their thirties and above are still today treated like pariahs if they don’t settle down by the eve of their thirtieth birthday. As long as I can remember people have asked me two questions: when are you getting married? When are you going to have kids? I looked at these people like they were from the Stone Age. I avoided my parents pleading to settle down at twenty-five, I remember telling them, “I’m twenty-five not thirty-five, don’t I have another ten years to get my career going?” I remember a desperate phone call from my brother when I was at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, telling me to hurry up and have a baby. “I just saw Sixty Minutes, they were talking about women and fertility and how it’s almost impossible to have a baby after thirty-four, and how if you do become pregnant later in life the incidences of down syndrome are greater.” He said this in an attempt to give me some brotherly advice, but at the time, I was still treading water in my career, I wasn’t married, and I didn’t even have a boyfriend.
Did I really need this to add to my stress level? What was I suppose to do, just have a kid with anyone and be a single mom at twenty-nine, go to a sperm bank, or settle down with Mr. Wrong just to get pregnant. I didn’t have many options, yet society was making me feel like it was entirely fault, and sadly, I wasn’t alone. Women everywhere feel this pressure. Biological clocks are constantly sounding off around the country. Pop culture even hopped on board and entertainment magazines routinely showcase photos of bloated celebrities and coin the pix as “Hollywood’s Baby Bump Watch.” Stars in their late thirties and early forties get plagued with the question that every other woman in America is asked “Are you ever going to have children? You don’t have forever you know.”
“They told us we could have it all, and we can’t!” That was the message, but it didn’t seem real to me. After all, I knew plenty of women who had their first child in their late thirties even in their early forties naturally including my own mother. Why were people panicking?
We are an information society, and young women, and women of a certain age, turn to Google to uncover everything they need to know about fertility. There are a number of preconception Web sites with fertility calculators to track a woman’s cycle. There are fertility monitors, ovulation wristwatches, and thermometers to check your temperature which rises when a woman is ovulating. There are tests that can predict your pregnant five days before a missed period. Fertility vitamins, fertility tea, acupuncture treatments to aid in fertility y muchos mas!
OBGYN’s generally recommend that patients seek a fertility doctor after twelve months of trying to conceive if you are thirty-four and under, and after six months if you are thirty-five and up.
