Having some experience with such women, no guy can meet their ever-moving target.. they are destined to live out their lives alone with two cats.. or, God forbid, raising a mixed-up kid whose Dad is a turkey baster.
You don't seriously think these self-absorbed airheads quoted in the article are mature enough to hold down one end of a marriage, do you?
...They are terrifically smart, kind, and self-supporting. Now they are in their mid or late 30s and, being women, would still love to have a child.
Yes, and after pursuing the chimera of a career and putting marriage and children off for later, they discover the essential fact of biology: women have a "sell-by" date. Men don't.
They aren't bimbos, they don't party, many don't even drink, some are church-going. When guys their age want to get married, they can, and do, look for younger women with whom to have children.
It's cruel to your nice friends, but the biological dice are loaded against them. I am often vilified for pointing this out, as if I were the cause of the situation rather than an observer of it. Family members persisted in an expensive and frustrating IVF adventure than nearly destroyed their family... and the resulting child has issues. Don't get me wrong, he's a wonderful human being and an asset to the family, and everyone loves him every bit as much as if he were healthy and strong (except, perhaps, the insurance company, and whoever has to find money for special education programs. And well, adversity like this is why we have insurance and special ed).
I am a little unsure about the sperm donor thing,
Sure, that's a very, very personal decision. Reasonable people can reasonably have very different positions, and there's no harm in not having a position staked out... especially if this is not a factor in your own life or family.
...but would you have anything against these women adopting children, especially older kids?
I see that as a very different issue; in the one case, someone is making an altruistic decision to sacrifice some material wealth, convenience etc., for the sake of a kid with strange DNA, because otherwise the kid's just shafted. (By the way, that's what my brother and sister-in-law did for their next kid, adopt from the third world).
The IVF girls are creating a new kid, even "styling" it through donor selection, as a posession, or a pet. That to me is way different than adopting a kid that someone else couldn't or didn't take care of. The motivation counts
Isn't it better for a child to have 1 loving parent than none?
But that's not really the option here is it? These kids are only being created, in a mechanistic and unnatural way, for the self-actualization of the moms.
I empathize with my friends who would love to have kids but whose unmarried status puts them in a bind.
I too empathize with your friends, but unfortunately decisions do have consequences, and putting off a decision is actually a decision, even if it doesn't feel like one when you're immature.
Some fatherless kids turn out perfect. Many, most, turn out functional. Some wind up like a fellow I know, very high-functioning but completely self-serving; two short steps away from being a sociopath. Some wind up worse than him.
Do you think the two gals' daughters from the article will turn out OK? Think they'll be able to form healthy relationships with men? Who are they going to learn it from? Not their moms, that's for damn sure...
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
There, fixed it.
I pretty much agree with what you said except, I don't think my friends necessarily put their careers first. I used to practice law; I know that type of woman and these women are very different. Sometimes it just happens that you don't get asked. It's that simple. No one asks you to the prom, no one buys you a drink at the bar, no one looks across rows of cubicles and says 'you're the one.'
Meanwhile, they have to make a living. Personally, I'd rather have well educated women making a decent living then uneducated women who are a burden on society.
As has been pointed out on these threads ad nauseum, people can't live with their parents forever. Sometimes the parents are deceased or living in areas with no job opportunities. You've got to support yourself and it's much better to do it on a decent income than struggling on minimum wage. Every woman who's holding down a job isn't necessarily doing it because she put her career first.