There's a strange notion going around in my social circle. Women are getting older, men are getting scarcer and the ladies are getting cluckier. They want babies, and they want them now. So what's a gal to do?
Have one without a boyfriend or husband, that's what.
"Madonna did it, why can't I?" one woman said the other night over dinner. (According to Madonna's brother Christopher Ciccone's book Life with My Sister Madonna, the singer called her quest for finding a man to father her child the "Daddy Chair". Personal trainer Carlos Leon ended up filling that role, and ended up being more than just a sperm donor.)
Another woman at the dinner table claimed she wasn't getting any younger and felt that she needed to speed things up and was going to start looking into options to do it alone. And a third complained her boyfriend never wants to have kids but she wasn't sure whether to dump him, or do it behind his back ...
These women aren't the only ones contemplating giving blokes a miss. With more women than ever before spending more time on their careers, achieving financial independence, travelling, studying and enjoying freedom that family life may compromise, they're spending less time thinking about starting a family. In fact, the median age of first-time mothers has increased from 24 years in 1975 to 29.8 in 2009. Almost a quarter of Australian women are giving birth aged 35 years or older, up from 15 per cent in 1997.
Apparently Prime Minister Kevin Rudd isn't impressed. University of NSW journalism researcher Nina Funnell wrote in the Herald in February of the time she was present when Rudd gave a speech about the "crisis" of Australia's ageing population and its potential repercussions. After the talk, Rudd came to speak to her and a few other under-30s.
She writes: "At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the 'excuse' that 'all' young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families."
Funnell rebutted Rudd's sentiment in her article with this: "Why do we assume it is the obligation of all women to reproduce? And why do we label them as selfish when they don't? We never label career-driven men as selfish."
Time magazine, too, noted the trend, penning a cover story a while back titled, "Babies vs Career - Which should come first for women who want both? The harsh facts about fertility."
The Time story claimed that "27 is the age at which a woman's chance of getting pregnant begins to decline". And that once a woman turns 42, "her chances of her having a baby using her own eggs, even with advanced medical help, are less than 10 per cent".
While members of gen Y are notorious for living in the moment, many of my friends in their 30s and 40s who did just that are regretting the fact that their eggs have almost dried up, that their chances of reproducing are dwindling at a rapid rate. And, if Hollywood is anything to by, it seems this is a universal conundrum that's getting clucky ladies in a sweat.
Both Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez are pregnant, fictionally speaking that is. And neither has a boyfriend or a husband to thank for knocking them up. Both actors have new films out with this very premise.
Lopez stars in The Backup Plan, a film about a woman who wants a baby, gets artificially inseminated and then meets "the one". Aniston stars in The Switch, a film about a woman who decides to have a baby, is about to get artificially inseminated with sperm of a donor, only to have the sperm switched to that of her best friend's without her knowledge.
The lone-baby zeitgeist is evident: more modern women are having babies single than ever before.
What if he doesn't want kids, but you do?
What if you indeed find the man (or woman) of your dreams, and you're ready to start procreating only to discover that they don't want children, ever? Then what? Do you compromise, or ditch 'em in the hope of going it alone?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if a woman meets a man at a bar and tells her straight up, "Babe, I'm looking for a bonk tonight. Nothing more. And don't expect a follow-up phone call either. Because I'll forget your name before I wake up tomorrow morning." Then she can reply, "Great. I won't waste my time with you. I'm looking for a man to father my future child. And the clock is ticking. So excuse me while I continue perusing the room for someone a little more suitable."
Of course no one would dare. Say anything about kids on the first few dates and you risk being given the quizzical stare in reply. But hold off and you could risk worse: a partner who doesn't share the same child-related goals as you. So when it comes to the touchy subject of kids, what's a singleton to do?
Ask around and the responses are mixed.
Patty says she always discloses her penchant for kids on the first date. "I'm 33 years old and I'm not getting any younger," she says. "Why should I hold back? I'm not wasting my time with a guy who doesn't want kids right away."
Luke says it's impossible for him to get a date if he dares to mention that he never wants to have kids. "Even in my online profile, I find that if I mention it, no women are interested. It's just not something that I can come out and say right away. The women think I'm no longer a potential candidate and they quickly move on."
Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz concurs. She told Cosmopolitan magazine that, as a woman, admitting you didn't want children is taboo, but she did it anyway. "I think women are afraid to say that they don't want children because they're going to get shunned," she told the magazine. "I have more girlfriends who don't have kids than those that do."
Thirty-seven-year-old British writer Polly Vernon claims that it was difficult for her to admit that, like Diaz, she doesn't want kids either. But the reaction to her declaration wasn't as well received.
"Women might think I'm in denial, but they let me get on with it now," she writes in The Guardian. "Men, meanwhile, are astounded. Flummoxed. They become aggressive, sneering. They psychoanalyse me, they try to work out what's wrong with me. Who knows why? Perhaps they feel rejected. Perhaps the idea that there are women at large who are not actively pursuing their sperm is an out-and-out affront to a certain kind of man. The same men who have spent years believing that all women secretly want to trap them into commitment and fatherhood, probably."
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