Celebrating One Hundred Years of Failure to Reproduce on Demand [NYT editorial: Way off for women]

April 14, 2002

EDITORIAL OBSERVER

Celebrating One Hundred Years of Failure to Reproduce on Demand

By GAIL COLLINS

A century ago, American women were experiencing a spectacular burst of energy and opportunity. For the first time, they were going to college in large numbers. For the first time, they could choose from an assortment of professional careers. The number of female doctors was higher at the beginning of the 20th century than it would be at any time until the 1980's. Most of those suddenly liberated, high-achieving women did not marry or have children. Almost instantly, the country started worrying about "race suicide."

"If Americans of the old stock lead lives of celibate selfishness . . . or if the married are afflicted by that base fear of living which . . . forbids them to have more than one or two children, disaster awaits the nation," thundered Theodore Roosevelt, father of six. G. Stanley Hall, a turn-of-the-century equivalent of a talking head, warned that "if women do not improve," men might have to undertake "a new rape of the Sabines."

It's always comforting in a time of crisis to note that we have been down this road before and are still around to worry about the state of the pavement. The author of the hour, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, is making the talk show rounds warning about "an epidemic of childlessness" among professional women, which she recounts in her book, "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children." In it, she worries that close to half of the women who get graduate degrees or pursue heavy-duty careers in business are failing to reproduce.

Ms. Hewlett is more worried about personal happiness than the protection of the gene pool. But she has definitely touched a nerve, or perhaps the entire spinal column. She argues that too many women count on being able to become pregnant in their 40's, then discover it's a long shot. Although we cannot have too many warnings about the danger of betting your happiness on the fertility industry, her hand-wringing is a little like the old greeting card in which an alarmed woman announces, "Oh darn, I forgot to have children!"

All this is weirdly resonant. Between 1890 and 1920, when the number of women entering professions like college teaching, social work and library studies was soaring, 75 percent stayed single. Three-quarters of the women who earned Ph.D.'s between 1877 and 1924 remained unmarried.

"Race suicide" — a shorthand way of saying that immigrant women were having lots of babies while Anglo-Saxons were failing to reproduce themselves — was the talk of the nation. The New York City Board of Education, already an institution with an inventive world view, claimed that it could not give female teachers the same salaries as men because it would lead to "the sacrifice of the race for the individual." (Women, the board worried, would blow the extra money on European tours and opera boxes while the poor men struggled to save enough to start their families.)

The women who were failing to marry seemed pretty sure that the problem was a shortage of men worth marrying.

As early as 1885, a young woman was explaining to Ladies' Home Journal readers that she and her friends had decided to pursue professional careers because a good job "could supply a woman with both interest and support, two roles in which husbands just now fail." Popular magazines routinely published first-person stories, with signatures like "A Spinster Who Has Learned to Say No" or "A Happy Old Maid," in which women reported that they had rejected two, three, five offers of marriage from unsatisfactory swains.

But society in 1900 was concerned that the women who appeared to be the smartest, the most energetic and the most competent were not reproducing. Society was, it turned out, wrong. Other women — less well educated but obviously equally smart and competent — were doing a fine job raising families. The spinsters, meanwhile, were doing a fine job teaching children, running settlement houses, building libraries and exposing sweatshop conditions.

A century ago, American women for the first time had the luxury of career crises, of worrying whether they wanted to choose work or home. But they did not believe that they could have both.

Having it all was not on the 1900 menu. Even presidents of universities and heads of unions retired to become homemakers once they married. Jane Addams, everybody's favorite turn-of-the-century woman, seemed philosophical about the state of affairs, perhaps because she was happily committed to a wealthy heiress, Mary Rozet Smith. Addams, at any rate, concluded that women who wanted careers and children would probably have to wait "until public opinion tolerated the dual role."

Public opinion has come around. In fact, women tend to feel guilty now for failing to acquire all the big three: husband, children and world-class career. One of Ms. Hewlett's least convincing theories is that most of the childless career women are feeling robbed. Her best evidence is that a vast majority had expected to have children when they were in college. They probably also expected to keep up with their French and stay in touch with their roommates, but life has a way of paring priorities.

Chances are many women instinctively realize that they don't have the energy to go for the trifecta, and they veer off in one direction or another. Many others manage children, a spouse and a demanding career very well indeed, deeply irritating everybody who believes that two is the appropriate quota. The secret may be a helpful husband or easygoing offspring, or just the ability to keep focused on the task at hand, even on a day when the baby sitter has decided she's moving to Tucson.

Of course, it's regrettable that having it all is easier for men. But frankly, the fact that women who choose hard-charging careers often do not have children is pretty far down on the list of American social problems. Anyway, things are bound to improve by the turn of the 22nd cent

This is an interesting concept. While I was busy shocking my friends by having three children in my 'prime career years', everyone just shook their heads and kept telling me about all the fun and fullfilment I was missing out on by not 'working'. Now, in our late thirties, many of those friends have reached the 'disillusionment with career' phase and think it would be fun to just start having babies. Just one problem, though- it's not as easy as many thought and they are battling infertility problems while I enjoy my family. Two of my close friends have been told outright that it is too late and they will probably not have any more children (after having one). I'm definitely glad I chose the path I did. While I want my own daughters to be educated and make fullfilling choices for themselves, I will not push them to have all-out careers (as I was) if that is not what their heart tells them to do.

>>I think that the reason for the delay in getting married is at least partially attributable to the fact that better educated males are not necessarily nicer people<<

Better educated women expect that the men they meet will strive to marry up, as they do.This is false, and the cause of much heartache.

God is forgiving, but nature isn't. Check out this week's Time magazine's article on fertility. The *peak* time of fertility for women is between about age 16 to 25. There is a little leeway at ages 25-30, but after that it's a rapid downhill decline. Most women who go to grad school (JD, PhD) are just barely starting their careers at 25 and are NOT going to "throw it all away," as they see it.

Unfortunately, after-25 is nowhere near as "cute" as before-25, and that's how you get a sour unmarried woman whose clock is ticking like the one inside the crocodile that was chasing Captain Hook.

I have no solution. How many men are willing to marry an 18-year old girl right out of high school, or a woman right out of college who plans to devote herself wholeheartedly to kinder und kuche? You guys out here - would you seriously? Because that's the only way it's going to turn around - marriage at 18, four kids by 26; the last one out of high school by 44, and then maybe a career.

Of course, if women who go to graduate school are only willing to marry "better educated males", while better educated males will marry anyone (almost), you will have a massive excess of unmarried better educated females.

Better educated women expect that the men they meet will strive to marry up, as they do.This is false, and the cause of much heartache.

This is exactly one of the many points Sylvia Hewlett makes in her book.

The pool of available female mates for a man continues to increase no matter what the man achieves in terms of success or education, because he is always willing to marry someone who will admire him -- and she need not necessarily match his level of income or education. And, younger women are always part of this pool.

Women, on the other hand, are trying to marry someone who is at least the same age or older -- and, these women are trying to marry someone who at least macthes them in education and income. But, this becomes harder to do as the woman becomes more educated and successful (and, older). Her pool of available mates is constantly decreasing.

Not a good situation for educated women.

From the NY Post - Health Section:

DON'T EXPECT PREGNANCY AT 40: STUDY

By MEGAN TURNER

April 8, 2002 -- Late motherhood among celebrities may make headlines but, for most women, waiting until 40 to have babies is too late, according to new research.

Actress Liz Hurley just gave birth to her first child at age 36, joining high-profile older moms like Madonna, Susan Sarandon, Jane Seymour and Iman, who all gave birth in their 40s.

But ambitious young women who hope to have kids are heading down a dangerous path if they think they can wait until 35 or beyond to start a family, says economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett in her new book, "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children."

Women have embraced a "male model" of career focus, resulting in an "epidemic of childlessness" among professional women, she told Time magazine.

Hewlett conducted a national survey of 1,647 "high achieving" American women and found that 42 percent were still childless after age 40. That figure rose to 49 percent for women who earn $100,000 or more.

The survey also found that nearly nine out of 10 women were confident of their ability to get pregnant into their 40s.

But research shows that such widespread optimism is false, according to Time.

A woman's fertility begins to decline at age 27. At 40, half of her eggs are chromosomally abnormal; by 42, that figure is 90 percent.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, once a woman celebrates her 42nd birthday, the chances of her having a baby using her own eggs are less than 10 percent.

More bad news: At 20, the risk of miscarriage is about 9 percent; it doubles by age 35, then doubles again by the time a woman reaches her early 40s.

From my observations, there is something badly wrong with these women [and I've dated scads of them through the years]. They seem to be driven by a visceral hatred of everything. They are, to a woman: Rude, mean, short-tempered, impatient, and venomous.

And maybe it's you who are finding the wrong ones (have you met them all in bars?) or are bringing out the worst in them. How many people (women or men) would get to be so successful if they had the nasty temperament you ascribe to all successful women?
I'm sure some are just as nasty as you have described, but there are a lot who aren't.

This is a good post. In the 50's and 60's marriage was expected. A girl went to college mainly to find a husband who was upwardly mobile. As the 70's and the hippie movement grew along with radical feminism women who wanted to marry and be housewives were denegrated. So they busied themselves with showing the male population that women were just like men...not!

They gained financial success, led fast lives, climbed the corporate ladder, but nature will out. Men seemed to still want a woman to have his children, take care of them and love him exclusively. Not a bad concept. Been around for awhile.

Now these 40ish women are financially set, but it is a bit hollow. They can probabaly still marry and be happy enough but the child rearing days are over.

As women became more selfish in what they wanted from life the thought of giving oneself to children and husband before self was terrifying. But it is nature's call and really the way it was intended to be. The pendulum will swing back and the white middle and upper class will again start to have children. We inately need to leave something here. We need to make our mark on the world, have great, great, great grandchildren.

The team work involved in making and careing for a family has nothing to do with college degrees. Women with active curious minds become educated by reading and being socially active. Women want strong husbands and husbands want strong family oriented women.

The 70's, 80's and 90's divorce rate scared off a lot of marriagable women and men. Abortion made no committment sex OK. Birth control gave women the freedom that heretofore men had had exclusively.

Sadly for the 40 something single woman who is now wanting a husband and family it is too late to join the 20 someting young families. Let's hope society and women learn for the past 3 or 4 decades.

Many women get their college educations, marry and have children, and start their careers after their children are older or grown. That makes sense to me.

Women with young children still have opportunities to get post-graduate degrees while they have young children. Nowadays you can set your own pace.

The biggest problem is that young women are getting the message that they must prove their "worth" by having a fast-track career and that homemaking is a waste of time. I felt it back in the 60's and 70's. Society looks at lots of homemakers as unable or unwilling to do much else.

Men used to take pride in being the breadwinner. Now they like their mates to bring in some more cash. Things have really changed since the sexual revolution.

I would say that a bachelor much past 30 would have trouble making the kind of lifestyle compromises that married life requires. And ladies might confirm my observation that fellows who stay single so long often have "issues" about relationships with women -- they are too embittered, or too selfish, or too "whatever" to make good husbands.

I agree with you here. I think men who have been single past 30 -- and, some men past 30 have never really been in a committed relationship at all -- have a much more difficult time seeing themselves make compromises that marriage requires. Thanks for writing. BTW, interesting age theory! :)

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