I’m not sure even the happiest relationship can compensate for being stuck in a soul-sucking miserable job so you can make rent. Reality? Most families, especially with kids, can’t get by on a single income. And I suspect the families where both parents are happy with their jobs are happier overall.

I seriously don’t get the dichotomy, though–at least half of the people in my graduate program (which is mostly women, but some of the men are married, too) are married, with the likelihood being higher for the late 20s-early 30s than for the just-out-of-undergrads. A few have children; most of the rest don’t want children, period, and consequently found long-term partners who felt similarly. Heck, I’m not married, but I just hit the four-year mark (and we don’t want children), and during that time I managed to finish a BA, work, and start grad school. One of the people in my lab just had a baby, and it hasn’t reduced her enjoyment of work at all–she finds work intellectually satisfying in a way taking care of a baby isn’t, and she still enjoys socializing with friends as well as her husband.

I agree with my mom that educated people make better parents. I have many happy memories of my mom doing geeky things with me as when I was a child, and she’s one of the few people I know now who doesn’t instantly glaze over when I talk about my thesis. While my mom was glad to be able to stay home with me, I think we both wish she hadn’t waited until divorce to rejoin the workforce, since she’s currently stuck in a soul-sucking job that doesn’t suit her.

Men are allowed to have friends, family, AND satisfying work–why shouldn’t women?

During our respective pregnancies she suffered from too much amniotic fluid and very premature contractions. In fact, she was at the emergency room at least once every month of her pregnancy. Her son went to term and is fine, btw. I, in comparison, had an amazingly smooth ride, no morning sickness, no blips, no cause for concern. So there’s that. I was “high risk”, but she was the one with all the horror stories. My husband was able to take FMLA for a while to be home with us (I took a six-week maternity leave), her husband arranged with the restaurant he works at to get the weekend off.

And now that our kids are 15 and 16 months old, I’m an adult with a real job with real benefits, an adult for a husband, and enough income to pay for day care during the week. She, on the other hand, is back to waiting tables and thinking about maybe going to haircutting school or something when her son is old enough to be in kindergarten. She’s divorcing her slacker husband, who has yet to grow up himself. Her son gets Medicaid but she has no coverage at all. Her daycare consists of helpful relatives who sometimes flake out on her. I love and support her, but I fear that she will never get out of the awful cycle of not enough job to pay for daycare, not enough school to get a good job, not enough daycare to do anything to better herself.

And on a completely unrelated note, the commenter who complained about vision coverage that he/she thinks he/she doesn’t need should take him/her(can’t find the damn entry!) self to the eye doctor yearly anyway. Your eyes change as you get older and nearsightedness is not the only thing that can go wrong with your eyes.

I think that people who really, really want to have children and will be miserable without them usually figure out a way to do it. The issue comes up more with people who are ambivalent about having kids (like me) who decide at the 11th hour (like me) that they need to do it and feel enormously guilty that they haven’t done it before now, because it reveals that, unlike what society tells us we’re supposed to feel, we could have kids or not have them and be equally content.

I remember that the last book like this that told women they had to give up everything and breed immediately was written by a woman who already had three kids and decided in her mid-forties that she wanted one more. There really seemed to be a lot of guilt and shame for her, like she’d stolen something from her prospective child by having a job and raising her other three kids instead of immediately trying for a fourth, and that the fertility treatments were her punishment for being ambivalent about having that fourth one in the first place.

It’s like film criticism says about the fact that so many classic women’s films have a plot point where the heroine’s child dies — it’s both to work through that fear and to fulfill the fantasy that you’re suddenly freed from that responsibility. (Example with SPOILERS: Mildred Pierce, where the child she ignores dies while the child she prefers becomes a murderer.)

What are the advantages to a biological child exactly?

Jesus. Who cares what the ‘advantages’ are? If you don’t want one, don’t have one, but don’t make the dumbass mistake of assuming that the way you feel is the way everybody a) does feel b) should feel and or c) would feel if they weren’t brainwashed by society.

Finally I struck the magic 30. Single, good job, bio clock ticking. I decided to go for motherhood on my own. It seemed somehow preferable then just having to date to find a mate thing.

Ended up, that I had my own fertility issues.So I looked into adoption. I have no issues about biological vs. adoptive kids. But being single and adopting is hard. Also being an older mom (past 35) and adopting gets harder and harder. Many agencies/countries have age requirements now. If you develop any sort of health problems, adoption is harder still. Also hard is dealing with some of the ethical issues surrounding adoption. Sure, some woman want to give up their children without having been coerced or forced to. But there are by far more women/birth mothers who are coerced, shamed, or classed out of being able to raise a child that they want to raise. A ten grand tax break for adoptive parents when there is nothing for birth mothers? That ten grand might get that birth mother out of her abusive relationship, into her own apartment, and hooked up with a job with benefits. There is a lot of shitty crap happening in the adoption field. There are adoptions that are win/win for everyone, sure. But when anyone says, “just adopt” as if you can just go pick up an extra kid at the grocery store doesn’t know what they are talking about.

I ended up getting some medical treatment done and took fertility drugs. Went to a sperm bank and now have twins. Even that is not a “just go to a sperm bank” or “just go freeze your eggs” kind of thing. Yes, these are options. But they are certainly a lot tougher and more expensive than having a child the ‘natural’ way. I was lucky that I was able to use the relatively inexpensive “sperm bank” option. But IVFs can cost anywhere from 10K to 20k a cycle. Cryobank charges should you want to keep your embryos/eggs/sperm are not cheap. Many, many invasive medical procedures are needed to go the ART route. Still, certainly these are viable options…but again, anyone who thinks you can “just go freeze your eggs” or “use a surrogate” doesn’t really know what they are talking about.

I certainly don’t think it is necessary to give up your career to look for some man in your twenties to have babies with. But I also think women need to go into the idea of becoming a mother with their eyes wide open to all of the options and risks. If you never research and look into things like adoption, ART, or even dating if that is your preference, you could very easily get to be in your late 30s and 40s and see all of your options dwindle or get really, really challenging. So, make whatever decisions work for you, but actually KNOW about your choices. Don’t be all “I’ll just adopt” or “I’ll just freeze my eggs” unless you actually know what that means.

Thank you. I would also like to thank Oregon Hospice and Michigan Wellness for their assistance over the years, specifically in teaching us how to care for our own, when the time comes.

We’ve been generally lucky so far, as bodies deteriorate before mental faculties in our vast clan. But this generation…comprised of career women, make profound sacrifices to do what we did in caring for our loved ones. And goddammit… it is the women! Fuck those who whine about “the injustice” of public and private accomodation of folks with family issues. The alternative is infinitely more costly to the whiners…in both the short and long run!

(I take this personally, because absent dementia, our people die at home… )

By your reasoning, Tom, no employer anywhere should have to provide any benefits at all, if we’re to believe that market pressures will sort things out in the end.

I’m not sure how you got from what I said to this but… I don’t think that companies should be providing health care insurance. That should be the responsibility of the federal government, And yes, I’m a socialist.

Yep. Cats is jess plain weird, iffn you ask me. [ducks, runs away]

Not to mention that in most mammalian species, it is common — indeed, expected — for the mother to lose interest completely in their offspring once they no longer need to be nursed, and vice versa

This is not a valid generalization. Indeed, putting on my Actual Evolutionary Biologist™ hat, I would say that the default situation for social mammals is for there to be long-term bonds between female relations. This is true for baboons, lions, meerkats, deer, hyenas, prairie dogs, and elephants, just to name a few.

Although we do not know whether early humans lived in matrinlineal or patrilineal kin groups (there is evidence in both directions), we are certainly social animals that expect long-term bonds with our children.