“It’s time we start talking with some sensitivity and compassion about a growing type of women’s issue: ‘circumstantial infertility.’”
When the New York Times recently asked “Are You as Fertile as You Look?” the question was rhetorical. The reporter suggested womenfolk are ignorant about their declining fertility because they confuse youthful looks with having youthful ovaries. It’s easy to judge women like the ones trotted out for this piece; in their late 30s through mid 40s, they express surprise at having difficulty conceiving. After all, the fact that fertility declines with age—particularly after 35—isn’t exactly a revelation. But the conception woes of women past their fertility prime can’t be written off as a symptom of mass female stupidity. As Jessica Grosse cautioned, focusing on women who think shiny hair, white teeth, and clear complexions are sign of fertility “takes away from the messy reality that most women who wait to have children aren’t doing it because they believe they are endlessly fertile. They’re waiting because they haven’t found the right partner, or they don’t have enough money, or they don’t feel ready, or a million other reasons that have nothing to do with female ignorance.”
Grosse is right. The New York Times is ignoring a thornier predicament than naiveté: many women are increasingly out of synch with their biology. And no one knows quite what to do about it.
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According to the census, far fewer folks are marrying than just a few decades ago. Those who do marry are marrying later, and the number of women in the workforce continues to grow at the same time that working-class men’s prospects are floundering. Culturally, we’re cheerleaders for narcissism and delayed “adulthood,” encouraging a quarter-century-adolescence, especially for men. This all but assures that fewer women will find suitable partners and start families before their fertility declines precipitously. And for those who are willing to become mothers on their own, our government doesn’t provide any of the social welfare or safety nets that protect and support women with kids, like nationalized healthcare, daycare, or even a living wage for many. How could the confluence of these factors not dramatically impact how women think about the circumstances under which they have kids? Wouldn’t you expect to see more women “waiting” for children under these circumstances?
Newsflash: Most research points to a woman’s prime fertility years being from 22 to 26. How many women that age do you know who are married or in a committed partnership, financially stable, and ready for kids? How many men? (I recognize that my upbringing puts me far outside the median, but I literally have one friend who had a child in her 20s–and she was 29).
It’s time we start talking with some sensitivity and compassion about a growing type of women’s issue: “circumstantial infertility.” It’s a term Melanie Notkin coined recently in a touching biographical piece she wrote about coming to terms with the fact that at 42 she may never be a biological mother. “Circumstantial infertility” is the name Notkin gave to the situation faced by many women who want(ed) children but never had them for reasons other than biological infertility. It is something that impacts women who hoped to be mothers but ended up missing the window (whether that’s because they never found a partner, found a partner at too advanced an age, weren’t financially secure, or encountered a host of other impediments). Two simultaneous trends are worth noting here: Many more women over 35 are having babies than just two decades ago, while, at the same time, the number of childless women overall is increasing. A 2010 Pew Report notes that one in five women has made it to 40 without ever having a child. This is an increase from the 1970s when only one in 10 women between the ages of 40-44 was childless. As might be expected, women with the most education are the least likely to have children. While we don’t know what percentage of women are childless by choice—versus biological or circumstantial infertility—I think we can agree that childless women deserve our kindness, support, and understanding.
After all, it’s not hard to imagine how women find themselves in this situation. One day you’re busy living your life and the next you’re suddenly in a race against the clock. Just look at me. I’m 33 and have always wanted children. I’m also lucky to share my life and home with a lovely gentleman who would make a wonderful father. In fact, that’s what prompted me to inquire at a recent annual gynecologist appointment about my own fertility. My question was of a general nature, along the lines of, “If I decide to have kids in the next few years, what do I need to think about now?” Imagine my surprise when, instead of assurance that I still had plenty of time, I was told, “My best advice for you is to go home and start trying tonight.”
Reality check, anyone?
Here’s the double-whammy for many women who find themselves in this situation: The realization that you can’t slow down your biological clock often comes hand-in-hand with the acknowledgement that you can’t really speed up choosing the partner you’d like to raise children with—at least not in a particularly healthy way. My doctor may have thought she was talking about fertility, but what she was really suggesting was that I’d better figure out the future of my relationship, and fast. But can anyone really do that on command, especially in a relatively new relationship?
Making a lifetime commitment to a partner (and eventual co-parent) isn’t something that should be done hastily, and women in their 30s must often weigh difficult options: Put faith in your current sweetie and start procreating faster than you might otherwise? Head to the nearest sperm bank? Ditch your man and start auditioning a new potential life-mate? Of course, these kinds of tough choices are not new. But as the timing of landmark life events like marriage start taking place later and societal expectations around work and family change, the lives of many women are put on a collision course with biology. Of course single women can have babies alone, and many choose to do just that. But it seems uncontroversial to suggest that most women would probably prefer a co-parent and ideally a committed relationship before they have kids.
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The emotion stirred by Lori Gottlieb when she told women to settle for Mr. Good Enough exemplifies the discomfort many feel when encountering the realities of pregnancy and aging. Gottlieb’s advice to “settle,” after all, was informed by her personal experience as a single mother who conceived with a sperm donor after not meeting “Mr. Right” by the time she was nearing 40—along with the subsequent challenge of raising a child alone. There was some realistic tough-love buried in her advice to unmarried women in their 30s: “If you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.” But for anyone who has ever actually been in a nice-enough relationship with a nice-enough guy, it doesn’t feel like sound advice.
At a time when more women than ever are childless, more are having babies later, and a record four-in-ten births are to unmarried women (that’s up from 28% in 1990), we ought to think long and hard about the social, political, and emotional repercussions of our entrenched ideas about what makes—and when to make—a family. We need to understand that women who “wait” (often too long, biologically speaking) for kids are responding rationally to new paradigms that are still governed by old rules. We should talk more about options like nontraditional family units, adoption, and medical advances like IVF and do less judging and finger wagging. Our bodies aren’t changing, but the world is. Maybe it’s time our attitudes toward “circumstantially infertile” women do, too.
Nicole Rodgers is the president and founder of Role/Reboot. Follow Role/Reboot on Twitter @RoleReboot and like Role/Reboot on Facebook.
Originally published on rolereboot.org
—Photo kevin dooley/Flickr
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Excellent article. Thank you for addressing this issue … I feel less alone.
Thanks Taylor, I’m so glad to hear that! (oh, I just realized that I don’t have a byline on this piece – just one for the organization i run – but I’m the author),
As one of those 1 in 5 women who reached 40 without having children, this hits home. Most of the articles I read on this topic talk about women “choosing” their careers over children, “choosing” their personal life over children, or whatever, which really irritates me because it makes it sound like women without children are a bunch of selfish narcissists. Well, personally I would have loved to have met the right guy to father my kids in my 20′s or early 30′s, but it didn’t happen. It wasn’t through lack of trying, but it seemed like every man I dated was deeply ambivalent about marriage and children. I wasted a lot of time on relationships that didn’t go anywhere, and I wasted even more time after age 30 when I decided to just focus on my job because my romantic prospects seemed so dismal. It was an enormously frustrating situation for me, but the truth is, I dated the guys who expressed interest in me. I was always a “nerd girl” with quirky interests and I had nothing spectacular to offer in the looks department, so it’s not like I had a long line of guys to choose from. I never had more than a short list and the guys who were father types wanted to settle down did not ask me out, for whatever reason.
I’m in a great relationship now but we have both decided it is too late for kids. Oh well.
Hey Jill,
I understand your situation. One wrinkle I would add is this: why did you not ask men out?
If you’re posting on this board, I think it’s safe to presume that you’re for breaking down gender roles.
Why did you embrace the passive female role when it comes to dating?
If you didn’t get any interest from the guys you prefer, then that simply puts you into the same boat as many guys. There was nothing stopping you from asking the guys out you had a stronger interest in, except yourself.
I think it’s interesting that the concept of the fragile male ego is thrown around (considering they are burdened with the need to approach in the dating world).
Nearly all women, and a great deal of men are too shy or introspective to initiate an approach. This is why a small minority of men have much more sex than the other 80%, because they have very thick skins to handle the rejection and will initiate approaches dozens of times a week.
I was in the same boat: shy and nerdy until my early 30′s. I met a woman I really adore later in life. I got married for the first time at the age of 37. My wife is 6 years younger and has some health issues regarding conception. I will now be 45 in November, and my wife will be 40 next year.
It looks like we will have her conception problems solved within the next 15 months or so.
I have some reservations about having children at this age, but I really feel I can be a great father.
I could make excuses all day long, but at the end of the day I have to look at myself in the mirror and admit it was my own failings that brought me so late to a long term relationship. Something just seems wrong in society today. There are a lot of people without courage enough to leave their comfort zone. It seems a small minority of predatory men and women are preying on a lot of fragile people.
I have mentioned this before, but I really think that having a marriage-as-optional society is damaging a lot of people.
I think men raised in 2-parent families gain a lot by seeing mom and dad argue, solve problems and tease or mock each other in a respectful loving relationship.
It’s also been proven that the #1 most important factor to a girls self-esteem growing up is having a loving fit dad in her life.
Dads parent differently from mothers. Dads parenting centers around self-reliance, exploration, protecting those weaker, goal setting and achieving.
We are doing future generations a disservice with the way things are now.
I believe people interested in building strong families and future generations which will be less stacked towards prey & predatory dating should encourage a change in laws to support shared parenting (post divorce) in family law, and change welfare laws to become workfare laws (rather than direct subsidation maybe give employers tax breaks for hiring welfare mothers, and give welfare mothers vouchers for free child-care).
We are coming on 3rd and 4th generations of women that believe welfare is a free housing and cash. A check is NOT an adequate replacement for a dad.
Here is an interesting article:
ht tp://www.projo.com/education/juliasteiny/content/EDWATCH_21_02-21-10_LCHFEIR_v9.2937bd2.ht ml
She may have asked men out, but they weren’t interested in settling down and getting married.
I ask the question, because she specifically says in her post that the guys she was most interested in “didn’t ask her out”.
Her sentence leads to the belief that she did not initiate encounters.
Two sentences specifically she said lead me to believe this:
“I dated the guys who expressed interest in me”
“and the guys who were father types wanted to settle down did not ask me out, for whatever reason.”
And they say guys don’t listen! Pshaw!
The only finger wagging I know of may come from a mother who wants to be a grandmother. But, that’s got nothing to do with whether her adult child is a man or woman. She can get a grandchild from her son just as well as she can from a daughter. Of course, women do have a narrower window of opportunity.
Many kids are raised with no idea about how to make for a happy, stable, and successful permanent relationship; thus, it takes a lot longer to establish such, if it ever happens. Unfortunately, that will often have a negative effect on those who may wish to have children during their prime child-bearing years.
The acceptance, and even promotion of promiscuity, particularly female promiscuity has been a catastrophe for our culture and for women’s propects for commitment and childbearing.
Quite simply – as it has become easier for men to get access to sex – it has become harder for women to get men to commit to them in the types of long term relationships where it makes sense to have children.
It is now the norm for couples to have sex on the third date. Very often people hop into bed even earlier. Men have a natural urge to have multiple partners. The result is that the norm now if for people to end up in a long string of short relationships.
The situation gets especially difficult for women who would like to hold out for more commitment and longer more stable relationships. Women who hold out find themselves dateless. So the pressure increases for women to give it up sooner. It benefits a small number of men who sleep with large numbers of women. And many women find themselves in their early 40s, having been passed around among a dozen men, single and childless.
Men also face enormous risks when entering marriage or having children. When marriages end they commonly find themselves separated form their children and financially devastated. Other men learn from these experiences and become much more circumspect about marriage. With so much access to easy sex they don’t feel pressure to marry either.
Culturally married men are not respected either. It used to be that the married male head of household was a respected role (think back to old TV shows with strong father figures – now almost non-existent). Today the married man is almost exclusively the butt of jokes. Yet another reason so few men opt for that role.
I was married once, and I will not easily marry again. Most men I know are extremely cautious about marriage. Until this changes we will continue to see a rapidly declining marriage and birth rate.
Moreover, some of the the poor women who fall for the flawed concept that gender is just a social construct often approach life with such unrealistic expectations that, by the time they realize that there are natural reasons for gender differences (which benefit women), their years of non-high risk pregnancy / healthy fertility- and high desirability to men who want to marry and then have children are either quickly elapsing or have already ended.
Jill says it all when she says she wasted time on relationships that weren’t going anywhere. If marriage and children are goals in your life then be clear about what you want in a partner and hold prospects to that list. It doesn’t sound very romantic but it is a way to avoid the “settling” thing. Many women, like Jill, try to make a relationship work when there are clear signs it won’t.
Unfortunately, Linguist is right in many of his viewpoints. Most people don’t have a good understanding of what a real relationship looks like but, because they think relationships are natural, they don’t learn. Imagine applying for a job that you don’t have the skills for. Many think that wanting a relationship is all that’s necessary for having one. Like many things, reality doesn’t always fit what we want. Reality, however, always wins.
Lesli Doares says
“Jill says it all when she says she wasted time on relationships that weren’t going anywhere. If marriage and children are goals in your life then be clear about what you want in a partner and hold prospects to that list.”
I would add that it’s totally acceptable for women to ask the man out that they prefer who at first blush seems like more of a family man. This is 2011 after all.
A study I found very convincing suggests that sex ratios are a key issue in whether or not men will commit. At schools where the gender balance was more women than men, there’s more casual sex and fewer relationships. When there are fewer women than men, the dating scene is more about relationships. The difference doesn’t have to be huge. If there are only 5-10% more of one sex, the other one is going to feel the pressure to compete to get dates.
I would think this might apply to other situations, too. If you’re in a city or workplace where there are more single women then single men, the dating scene might then be less committed.
For decades, feminists have systematically driven fathers out of the family. They have demonised men. Now women are finding they can’t get a good man. Those men have been chased away.
The institution of marriage is dying…not just in the West, but also in east Asia:
http://www.yummymummyclub.ca/marriage-dying-east-asia?=mgid#63546543545