The news has been full of stories about women and babies this week. A report from the Pew Research Center, “Childlessness Up Among All Women; Down Among Women with Advanced Degrees” states “Nearly one-in-five American women ends her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-ten in the 1970s.” The research is based on the Current Population Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau and looks at women between the ages of 40 and 44.
Other findings from the report:
- The more education a woman has, the less likely she is to have children.
- White women are more likely to be childless, or childfree, but the racial gap is closing.
- The gap is also narrowing between the married and unmarried although the unmarried are more likely to be childless
The report offers several possible explanations for the data:
- There is less social pressure to have children today than in past years
- Women have more options to pursue child free lives due to better career opportunities and improved contraceptive methods
- More women are marrying and trying to conceive later in life
- And finally, the report doesn’t take adoption into consideration.
While the report has generated significant media coverage, it doesn’t seem to contain any great revelations. Perhaps the most interesting information it contains is the research on Americans attitudes toward childlessness. From the report,
” About half the public—46% in a 2009 Pew Research Center poll—say it makes no difference one way or the other that a growing share of women do not ever have children. Still, a notable share of Americans—38% in that 2009 survey—say this trend is bad for society, an increase from 29% in a 2007 Pew Research survey.”
I’d like to know why 38 percent of respondents think women not having children is bad for society.
I am reminded of a conversation I once had with my hairdresser. I was at her salon the Monday after Mother’s Day and she asked me how I had celebrated the day. I told her my cousin, who is single and childfree, has a group of us over to for brunch. She lives in the city and after our meal we usually walk around Beacon Hill and enjoy the dogwood trees and the daffodils blooming.
“Don’t you feel sorry for your cousin?” my hairdresser asked.
“Why?” I responded.
“Don’t you just want everyone to be married and have children?” she said. “I want everyone to have what I have.”
This is not an uncommon conversation. So many of the married mothers I know tell me they have the perfect lives and wish everyone else did too. I say bullshit. I’m sure some of them do. But I also suspect that when we look at others who choose a different path in life, it makes us feel just a little uncomfortable because it reminds us there were other options we left unexamined. And unexamined options can lead to what-ifs. And let’s face it, what-ifs can be scary especially when your kids are fighting, your house is a mess and your husband is lying on the couch in his boxers watching football. (This is, of course, a completely hypothetical scenario.)
So no. I don’t feel sorry for my cousin. She has an exciting career, a gorgeous condo, a killer shoe collection and the freedom to lie in bed all day and watch bad TV marathons on Bravo if she so chooses.
And in other motherhood news, a report out of Europe is generating all kinds of sensational headlines like this one from Fox News, “Young British Women to Put Eggs on Ice for Career” and this one from BBC news, “Women freeze eggs for ‘Mr. Right.” In reality, a study of 15 Belgian women, (that’s right less than 20) found half of the women (seven or eight) wanted (not did but wanted) to freeze their eggs to give them time to find the right partner and a third of the women ( a whopping five) were freezing their eggs to protect themselves against possible fertility problems. A separate UK study of 200 women found female students would consider freezing their eggs in order to focus on their careers before starting a family.
Once again the mainstream media makes much ado about nothing.
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