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.
