Time Mag: Making Time for a Baby

Time Magazine ^ | Nancy Gibb

[pettifogger]

Making Time for a Baby

For years, women have been told they could wait until 40 or later to have babies. But a new book argues thats way too late

By Nancy Gibbs

Listen to a successful woman discuss her failure to bear a child, and the grief comes in layers of bitterness and regret. This was supposed to be the easy part, right? Not like getting into Harvard. Not like making partner. The baby was to be Mother Nature's gift. Anyone can do it; high school dropouts stroll through the mall with their babies in a Snugli. What can be so hard, especially for a Mistress of the Universe, with modern medical science devoted to resetting the biological clock? "I remember sitting in the clinic waiting room," recalls a woman who ran the infertility marathon, "and a woman-she was in her mid-40s and had tried everything to get pregnant-told me that one of the doctors had glanced at her chart and said, 'What are you doing here? You are wasting your time.' It was so cruel. She was holding out for that one last glimpse of hope. How horrible was it to shoot that hope down?"

[pettifogger]

Click on link for rest of this informative article. Notice how NOW doesn't want women to know this critical information about their fertility. Related to Lesley Stahl's piece on 60 Minutes on April 7.

[mvpel]

How much more horrible to string her along, putting her through painful and extremely expen$ive procedures on the remote chance that she might someday be mistaken for her child's grandmother?

[r9etb]

It was so cruel. She was holding out for that one last glimpse of hope. How horrible was it to shoot that hope down?

What -- it's more gentle to take piles of her money first, and then tell her?

It's very instructive that it's presented as being somehow the doctor's fault that this woman is trying to reproduce so late in life. Nothing about the choices she's made, and how all the desires driving those choices ended up being nothing as compared to the fulfillment of that one, now forlorn, hope.

[pabianice]

Another Big Lie of the Left exposed as fraud: You Can Have it All, or, Accessorizing with Children. How fortunate for potential children of such selfish, egotistic Liberals.

[pettifogger]

"mistaken for her child's grandmother"

No kidding. I NEVER assume anymore. I ask adults at the park with a child, "how old's your little one?" these days, rather than assume sex of the child or the relationship of the so-called "caregiver." By the way, when you see that flabby 30-something chasing around a pre-schooler and 10-mo-old, I'm that kids' MOM!

[Norwell]

I am glad somebody is finally writing about this.

When folks ask why do want to marry a woman in her twenties and they get a reply that all things being equal, you are much much more likely to be able to have a family....boy do you get some disgusted looks. Particularly from women who are 35+.

[MissMillie]

Oh, I don't know that it's a lie. After all, men have "had it all" for years.

[Cicero]

There are a raft of problems. For one thing, fertility clinics are horribly unnatural. You can't have an in-vitro baby without killing off numerous other embryos in the process, for which reason the procedure is forbidden by the Catholic Church. And if you take fertility drugs you are liable to conceive five or six embryos and have the doctor tell you that half of them must be aborted. For another, many women, encouraged to be promiscuous when they are young, are infected by STDs that render them infertile. Finally, you have the age problem. Women who have had children earlier are better able to have children at an advanced age than women who wait around to have their first child because it would have been too inconvenient earlier.

No, you can't have it all. You have to choose, and with all the feminist drivel they are instilled with in school and through the media, many women are very poorly informed to make such choices. Until it's too late.

[olivia3boys]

This is SO important for women to know. Also, the chance of miscarriage rises to almost 50% per pregnancy by the late 30s! So even if women manage to get pregnant in their late 30s half the time they will have devastating losses. And those who think, "I'll just try fertility treatments" need to know that IUI only works about 15% of the time and IVF only works about 25-40% of the time (and the 40% figure is for women in their 20s with only tubal problems) *AND* IVF is $10K+ per attempt. It drives me nuts to see my friends cavalierly deciding to "start trying" in their mid to late 30s.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Could the dirty looks be because you're 65? :)

[VoiceOfBruck]

How fortunate for potential children of such selfish, egotistic Liberals.

...not to mention the rest of us who would have to deal with them!

[Beeline40@aol.com]

To imply that these women did not know
borders on the hard to belive. They chose
not to hear. I knew this stuff in my 20's.

They made their choice, live with it ladies.

[Paradox]

So even if women manage to get pregnant in their late 30s half the time they will have devastating losses

I can attest to this. My wife had two miscarriages before giving birth to our son. She is 36. Devastating miscarriages.

And on a side note, I know many women, liberals, who have had devastating miscarriages, who are STILL vehemently pro-choice, but, after their miscarriages, they will not debate the subject with me, because they know the question I would be asking.

[LibertyGirl77]

And yet when I, a twenty-something, express my desire to marry and have children SOONER, rather than later, I get mocked for being in 'such a hurry.' People say I should focus on myself and my career now, rather than finding a partner and starting a family. I'm glad the research points to what I've known all along--I wasn't MEANT to do the power-career thing until I'm 35 and then marry. I want the family first. After all, that's a career unto itself.

[PoisedWoman]

Related to Lesley Stahl's piece on 60 Minutes on April 7.

I rarely watch 60 minutes, but caught this last night. A good piece of work and I hope word continues to spread among women of child-bearing age. I'd never before seen Kim Gandy, NOW president, and was appalled. I blocked out the right half of her face, then the left. A raging, furious, hate-filled woman trying to look reasonable, not succeeding. The statistics on women under 35 who have never had children are staggering.....wasn't it 50%? We're going to disappear.

[PoisedWoman]

Accessorizing with Children. How fortunate for potential children of such selfish, egotistic Liberals

They make rotten parents. The fellow who runs our community swimming pool complained to me that he's angry and saddened by these lousy women who drop their kids off for lessons in everything but don't show them a grain of love. Their kids are miserable messes.

[thegreatbeast]

I can't speak to a woman's need to make her mark in the workplace but I do know that it is the high cost of government (taxes) that forces both men & women into the workforce. It used to be that one income could support a middle class existence. People were even able to save money, and buying on credit was rare. And it is well known that having someone at home during the day with the kids and for the kids is the best insurance that you can have against having the children get in trouble. The lack of a parent at home has also caused many parents to lose touch with what is going on in the schools with a consequence of the school systems devolving into little more than daytime meat lockers.

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

" By the way, when you see that flabby 30-something chasing around a pre-schooler and 10-mo-old, I'm that kids' MOM!"

Would it make a difference to you if she was thin?

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

A lot of it is not so for career reasons but for economic reasons. Many people have a hard time affording children before age 30.

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

She can always adopt. There are plenty of young children out there that need loving parents.