Ladies, please: less greedy, more breedy
In the news today we are treated to the kindly ‘advice’ of one well-meaning (male) OB, in which he encourages women to become “better at resolving the conflict” between career and family and have their children when they are biologically meant to, between age 20 and 35. Instead of picking apart everything that’s wrong with this advice, let’s turn it around and say what should have been printed but was (as always) completely ignored. [Note: The article's text has been partially copied and pasted with wording changed for satire. Italics indicate text I have added. Copyright of the original article remains with the author].
“The message that ages 20 to 35 are the best for a woman to have a child should be taught to all genders in schools and governments alongside education about the realities of and societal need to support teenage pregnancies and contraception parenthood, the leader of the UK’s maternity doctors has said.
Dr Tony Falconer, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), warned against the pronounced trend towards older motherhood discouraging women from having children in their most fertile years by making it difficult for them to be mothers and work/go to school and said women and couples politicians and business leaders have to become “better at resolving the conflict” between their careers profits and family plans decency as human beings.
“It’s never our responsibility business[as doctors men] to tell people women when they should have their family, because there are all sorts of patriarchal constraints and societal pressures,” he told the Guardian in his first major interview since taking up the post in October.
But he added: “There’s no doubt that between 20 and 35 is the time to have your children. We are building up a difficulty for ourselves as a society by people’s expectations capitalism’s sexist limitations that they women will would be prudent to wait until they are older. That’s a very complex issue (and one few men in power care about), but it is a problem.”
His views on what he sees as the increasing problem of women waiting to have children society forcing women to choose between or compromise on matters of family and career could cause controversy.
But Falconer said there is strong evidence that women who leave starting a family until they are 35 industries that refuse to place any value on or make provisions for employees simultaneously undertaking pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and parenting will have reduced fertility credibility and so find it harder to conceive hire and keep employees, even more so once they hit 40 men are required to more fully participate in childrearing.”
Now that, my friends, would actually be a radical concept in a progressive newspaper. Telling us we should have our babies earlier isn’t news, it’s recycled sexism with a big dollop of duh.
I agree with you that his advice contradicts the realities that women face in the workplace but, speaking medically, he’s not wrong. Biologically, women should have their babies earlier rather than later.
What feminism need to focus on now is changing the basic structure of the workplace, from one that expects all employees to work in an early/mid 20th century male-based model (that is, all employees work in the same building, during set hours, leaving their families elsewhere) to one that acknowledges and accommodates the biological reality of the 21st century workforce: a much more even mix of women and men (that is, mothers and fathers). And when I say “acknowledge and accommodate”, I don’t mean enacting measure to make it easier for women to *work like men* — having to hide their children away in childcare, and take conflict-creating measures to ensure their family life/obligations don’t compromise their availability to the boss. I mean real changes to the way we structure work, real out of the box thinking, that would allow women and men to contribute their best to their jobs while still being who they biologically cannot help but being.
And part of that reality is that it is biologically best for women to have their babies just as they are starting off in their careers, creating a huge cliff in their career trajectory (or chopping it off altogether). It’s not wrong for the medical profession to point this out but, instead of deriding them for it, feminists should be encouraging this focus on the realities of female biology and using it as a groundswell to change society’s mindset and the structure of the workplace, so that women can fulfill both their professional *and* biological potentials.
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Fertile Fem Reply:
January 2nd, 2011 at 7:43 PM
@Strawberry, I totally agree. I wasn’t deriding the message itself because I do agree with it, but it just seems that we keep hearing this over and over, from very well-meaning (and essentially correct) ‘experts’ but it is always addressed to women and how *they* need to change (their behaviour, their fertility, their lives). It’s never addressed to the root of the problem, or at men. As one commenter on the original article rightly pointed out, no one would dare dream of berating men for not wanting to start having children in their 20s, when they should be going to university, carving out a career for themselves and having fun. Even women in their 20s and early 30s who *do* want children and are prepared to have them a bit younger than the norm often face the prospect of ‘convincing’ a male partner that it’s a good idea. Many men want to wait until their mid to late 30s because they know they can.
I am totally behind this OB’s comments, I just wish he (or the article’s author) had thought to even mention other factors and address some of the players other than women.
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we keep hearing this over and over, from very well-meaning (and essentially correct) ‘experts’ but it is always addressed to women and how *they* need to change (their behaviour, their fertility, their lives). It’s never addressed to the root of the problem, or at men.
Yes! Men, or employers, or those without kids, or those with or without kids (men and women) who believe the mass-institutionalization of children (through daycare and school) is just fine how it is & needs no meaningful reform/revolution.
I’m tired of seeing women get put through the wringer no matter their choices they make. And I’m tired of the mainstream culture pretending they are kid-supportive. Kids, who are our must vulnerable citizens across all race, creed, socioeconomic, etc. strata, lose out the most. But everyone else does too.
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we keep hearing this over and over, from very well-meaning (and essentially correct) ‘experts’ but it is always addressed to women and how *they* need to change (their behaviour, their fertility, their lives). It’s never addressed to the root of the problem, or at men.
Yes! Men, or employers, or those without kids, or those with or without kids (men and women) who believe the mass-institutionalization of children (through daycare and school) is just fine how it is & needs no meaningful reform/revolution.
I’m tired of seeing women get put through the wringer no matter their choices they make. And I’m tired of the mainstream culture pretending they are kid-supportive. Kids, who are our must vulnerable citizens across all race, creed, socioeconomic, etc. strata, lose out the most. But everyone else does too.
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Control, control, bloody control! Professionals can’t get over telling women what to do, can they? As if it were just that simple.
Can anyone even conceive of a woman in a professional parenting capacity being taken seriously by a newspaper, if she were to make a statement like this? To turn it round on the system that really controls how these ‘decisions’ are made? Yer, she’d get a fair hearing, wouldn’t she? Keep at it Fertile Fem, voices like yours are needed in times like these.
Liz´s last [type] ..Proud Mommy Moment- numbers
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It would be very interesting to see if age of childbearing correlates with the “family friendliness” of a countries maternity and child leave policies.
The message is sad but true, but I just don’t think a male can deliver such a message, given that he never has to face the same choices. Perhaps we should all just freeze our eggs when we are 25! Of my friends here in SF fully 50% had their babies by IVF after the age of 35, and all were surprised that it was hard to have kids at this age. I had mine at age 35 and 37, being a biologist I knew I was pushing it if I waited any longer, and as it was it took me over a year and two miscarriages to have my first. So the biological facts do need to be presented without the political overtones.
At least we are not as bad as Japan, where women simply choose not to have children at all, the career/child choice being so very stark.
geekymummy´s last [type] ..Snow- Sand and Bounce Houses- Reflections on a year
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Love it! Absolutely. This especially resonates to me, since I am in medical school. I recently participated in a conversation on the site Mothers in Medicine about whether female medical students should consider freezing their eggs. Ugh.
MomTFH´s last [type] ..Birth for sexual assault survivors
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Beautiful. He’s got a point, but you get to the heart of the issue. I totally agree. I’m a young women, and a mother. I want more children, but society(including my family of origin) is pressuring me to stop at my daughter. For my career. Personally I want to be a stay-at-home mother, because having a career, a job, means I don’t get to raise my children, someone else does it. We (Myself and my man) want lots of children. And we want me to stay at home, or at least to be able to. But society creates so many roadblocks. I hope we can break these down, and showing people what the REAL problem is, I think, is an important first step. Wonderful job.
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