Being 30 and childless I don’t take this information lightly, but I’ve come to appreciate truth over feel-good rhetoric. The reality is, the previous generation of women, and our society at large, has failed us. They told us that we could be just like the boys, that our twenties were for going to school, making friends, traveling and creating new life experiences. They told us not to worry about getting married and having kids as they continuously broadcast women with successful careers who then went on to have babies in their late 30s, 40s, and 50s. And ultimately they promised us that science would indefinitely extend our fertility.
Were these purposeful lies? Probably not. But they were —are, false promises, to say the least. We’ve created a society were our female body is considered an afterthought and that is at the root of the problem. As I said on a recent panel, Simone de Beauvoir and her disciples, began the erasure of women’s bodies when they claimed, “women are not born, they are made”. That is, gender became primarily a social construct and not a biological reality. So we as women began to treat anyone who dare suggest we ought to consider our biological clock is ticking as agents of the evil Patriarchy.
And those sentiments haven’t really died, recently before she herself got married Priyanka Chopra guest hosted on The View and the issue of women, fertility and family planning came up. Her rhetoric repackaged some of the same lies that have been peddled since the early days of the Feminist movement.
“I think it’s great to live in a time were science is allowing us to be able to take charge of our own lives”
This statement is deceptive because it’s only true for women of a certain class. It is true, thought not advised, that upper middle class and wealthy women can have children whenever they want with the help of IVF and surrogate mothers. Both of which cost thousands of dollars and have zero guarantee. IVF can cost about $15,000 and the success rates start at about 50% and decline drastically with age, a women in her 40s has a success rate of less than 15% with her egg retrievals —because of this, some women use other women’s eggs. The cost of hiring a surrogate mother (which I can only imagine is extremely problematic by shari’ standards) is between $90,000-130,000. And many women go through multiple IVF treatments before ever successfully getting pregnant.
Thus science has not really made headways for women to ignore and “take charge of their own lives,” women —most of who don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars, need to consider their biological clock if they wan to have children.
“Women get this kind of pressure, men don’t”
Something being a double standard does not automatically mean it’s unfair, especially when you are comparing two dissimilar things. Priyanka does admit that women are the ones who carry the babies but it goes beyond that. Men and women’s sexual reproduction system are almost on completely opposite ends of spectrum. Women get all the eggs we’re ever going to get when we’re born and lose them over a lifetime, whereas men’s sperm increases daily. While the quality of male sperm does decrease with age men never stop completely being able to bear children as women do (once menopause hits). It’d be fair to say both men and women would be wise to focus on forming families in their 20s and early 30s, it’d also be fair to say that our differing biology would suggest women need to pay a little more attention to their clock than men.
“Women can have babies whenever they want”
Priyanka Chopra and women like her can probably have babies whenever they want, most women cannot. Gabriel Union, 47, went through two years of unsuccessful IVF treatments before hiring a surrogate mother to have her baby for her —a process that must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. For women who are not wealthy and even for women who hope to have their babies naturally, 20s is ideal and if you’re past your 20s marrying and having children as soon as possible is your second best bet.
Of course, life happens, and if we’re only given this information to even consider once we’re past the 30 year mark we can’t turn back time nor can we simply marry the first man who is willing and able. Getting married requires a lot of other considerations beyond mere biology, but biology should one consideration. Maybe most critical, we need to truly empower women with the whole truth, however uncomfortable it may be. Being able to create life comes with an annoying but very real expiration date, that shouldn’t make us panic but allow us to make more informed decisions.
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Further reading:
- Real Talk: Is There A ‘Right’ Age To Have A Baby? https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a21563046/best-age-to-have-a-baby/
- The Chances for IVF Pregnancy Success https://www.verywellfamily.com/what-are-the-chances-for-ivf-success-1960213
- Cost of a surrogate mother https://www.google.com/search?q=cost+of+a+surrogate&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS726US726&oq=cost+of+a+su&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.7660j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
- Gabrielle Union opens up to Oprah about IVF, miscarriage and surrogacy https://www.mother.ly/news/gabrielle-union-talks-to-oprah-about-her-journey-to-motherhood
- Why age matters for men and women who want to have a family. https://www.yourfertility.org.au/everyone/age
- Fertility and the Aging Male https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3253726/
- Janet Jackson, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Jackson#Personal_life
- Five facts about age and fertility, https://extendfertility.com/blog/five-facts-about-age-and-fertility
Art source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/496592296410452366/
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