In addition to catching up at life at home, I’m also catching up with fun discussions that zoomed by in the blogosphere.
Megan of From the Archives wrote a sweet, honest post about being 35, desperately wanting kids, and worrying that her biological clock will turn off her dates. Crooked Timber picked up the post and some male commenters sneered. Luckily, BitchPhD and MCM stepped up to bat in the comment section and defended the breeders and breeder-wanna-bees. Jane Galt added, " The ticking of my biological clock is not the frantic spur that most women over thirty seem to feel; more like a pleasantly low hum."
This morning, I stroked the hair of a feverish five year old, while waiting for my mom to arrive. The calavry. I had to leave for school today. I kept him company on the sofa, and we watched Dora The Explorer together for half an hour. For a moment, I wished I had twelve more of those little guys. It’s still possible in theory, but … well… I’m 41. If we had started the family sooner, if we hadn’t had that long gap between number 1 and number 2, if we had finished graduate school sooner, if, if, if.
The funny thing about a biological clock is that it doesn’t stop after you have kids. In fact, I think you want them more after they hand your baby for the first time all damp and red.
I’m grateful for our two. I’m also grateful that I don’t have to worry about dating guys who don’t get it and, judging from the comment section at Crooked Timber, there are some guys who don’t get it.
Apt. 11d 
“I think you want them more after they hand your baby for the first time all damp and red.”
Heh, speak for yourself. I’m happy with my two. Every time I see a baby, I’m thankful I don’t have another. They’re cute and I enjoy them, but no more for me.
I’ve known a lot of people, though, who didn’t feel done with two and had a third, even if there was a significant gap.
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I wanted more than two when I started, and I still wish I’d been in a supportive relationship so that I could have had more than two, but I wasn’t: I chose divorce, and I’m glad I only had two for that.
If you wait long enough and you are very lucky, you get to hold babies again: your grandchildren! My older son, who is 20, and his wife just had a baby, my first grandchild.
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I have two, and can’t really imagine having more, but I do see the sweetness of babies (especially) in a way that I didn’t at all before I had children. I always liked children, but in a way that’s very different from the emotional pull I feel for my own two.
Our first was long planned in theory, and frankly, I was pushed by a husband, who I loved, and who knew he wanted to have a child. If not for his pushing, I might never have heard my clock going off until it was too late. Then, of course, I suspect I wouldn’t have known what I would have lost.
But, I look at my children now, and have to admit to my husband that they’ve altered my life for the better (regardless of the impact on any other part of my life), and that they might not be there without his pushing.
bj
PS: My husband has to give me credit for the second, though :-). The second was a spur of the moment, “why not”, initiated by me.
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Well, the bold, all-cap “FUCK THEM” in the middle of the post is surely honest. Sweet, not so much. (Followed as it is in the next paragraph by “fuck that whole idea,” “Fuck anyone,” “fuck uncompassionate people” and “fuck any man.”) Though perhaps people’s views on the compatibility of sweetness and Anglo-Saxon invective vary more than I had previously thought.
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Hmmm. I think it is possible to be sweet and have a potty mouth. But I have a high tolerance for that stuff. Well, maybe sweet wasn’t the right word. How about poignant?
I just re-read her post. I don’t think I craved kids when I was single in the same way that she does. Maybe it was because I met my husband when I turned 30 and had the whole sperm donor thng locked up pretty quicklly. Maybe some women crave babies more than others.
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Hee. I think I am both sweet and pottymouthed, but I suppose only the pottymouth is objectively verifiable.
Thanks for a sympathetic reading of my post.
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I’ve never felt the baby craving megan describes, either, and I imagine, that if the same man who is father to my children had not wanted to have children, I would have been happy without them. But, then I don’t know since my life took another path.
I wish, though, that childlessness wasn’t seen as such an odd option. It’s always made sense to me that people might want to devote most of their energy to something other than their own children. And, in a world where children are a choice (and not an inevitability), that option should be out there, for people to choose.
bj
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Megan – It’s too bad that your desire for babies is interfering with dating. My advice? The guys who are freaked out about the baby thing aren’t worth your time. Bringing up the biological clock might be a good filter for the jerks. Instead of the “museum test,” you could have “the aching womb test.”
bj – I totally agree. It should be easier for single people to scoop up one of the orphans abroad. It can be done. Single people can also utilize sperm banks. It takes some work and a lot of extra cash, but it can be done.
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Like BJ, I was also greatly encouraged to start a family by my husband. He really, really wanted a family, and he’s older than me and didn’t see the point of delay. So I never truly felt the craving like Megan does.
I have definitely had friends who went thru this change — in their 20s they just didn’t care, didn’t even notice babies. Then over time you could hear the change in the topics they chose to discuss, see them altering their criteria when it came to who they were dating. Sometimes you could even see them losing focus in restaurants when a baby entered the room. To me it always felt odd to witness such a dramatic change in a person, stemming completely from within. Part of me just does not want to believe we’re that influenced by our biology. It seems … not self-determined. And therefore not necessarily rational. And therefore scary to me. (I feel the same way whenever I experience PMS. As much as it must freak others out, it freaks me out twelve times as much. Luckily for me this is mostly controlled by birth control pills.)
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Do you think that we were trained that good feminists don’t have have biological clocks?
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Not too long after Lyra was born, I also kicked myself. Why didn’t I start sooner? I’ll never be able to have a brood, I thought. I’m too old for more than two, and man, I just *LOVE* being a mommy. Babies! I want lots of BABIES!
In my 20s, I emphatically did not want children, certainly not right then, and possibly not ever. Something changed around when I turned 30–though I was already married. The turning point was when Lee finished grad school and became gainfully employed. Suddenly it was a really possibility and I was eager for it (though we had started to become “careless” even before he was permanently employed–but that wasn’t really a decision).
The funny thing is that now that Lyra is nearly totally potty-trained and turning into a real *person*, I find the baby desire waning. When she was almost two, I was consumed with desire for another child, and jealous of friends who were having their second (we had decided to wait longer because of the medical complications associated with my first pregnancy). But now that it becomes more physically possible, I feel less desire for it. I find the idea of being pregnant again daunting, and the newborn stage even more so. Has my biological clock simply ground to a halt, satiated by the child I have? Can I be satisfied with just one? It was always my intent to have two, but now I’m not so sure…
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It was very clear between Melissa and I from the beginning that we weren’t going to wait too long to have children, because she wanted more than a couple of children and she wanted them to grow up and go on with their lives while she and I were still relatively fit and healthy (I’ll be 56 when our last one leaves the house, she’ll be 53). We ended up with four. Was the biological clock a factor, or was it religion (by the standards of which ours is just an ordinary family, and one that we actually started a little late), or something else entirely? Hard to say. I do know that the passion for “babies” was mostly dissipated for her after our third; the last child was motivated by a couple of things, but I don’t think a craving for children was part of it any longer. (This is in contrast to my mother, who generally loved and longed for newborn children well into her 40s). So, to whatever degree baby-longing on the part of at least some women is biologically grounded, it can also clearly wane with time and experience.
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Laura, I believe that feminists have been arguing for a very long time that women are more than their maternal role. An important part of that message is that women are complete people with or without kids. And so there’s a sense that a feminist’s biological clock may exist, but is not supposed to matter since she’s supposed to not care.
Kinda reminds me of the NY Times piece about overachieving high school women, where one young woman confesses that you’re supposed to be “effortlessly hot.” I think a feminist is supposed to be “effortlessly fertile”.
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Bloody hell Russell, I’ll be 61 when the last one turns 18, and who knows whether he’ll leave the home even then. Still, we had number 3 knowing that and, frankly, seeing it as a reason to have him (well, to have one, obviously we didn’t know it was going to be him at the time).
I think that jen nails it. Feminism has put a lot of work into saying that women can be complete people without marriage and children. And that is true, for some. But most are not complete without children, and that is what megan is responding to. If more cultural work could go into saying, what is also true, that most men are not complete without marriage and without *being nurturing parents to* their children, there’d be less of a problem (and my claim that most women are not complete without children would seem less offensive). Not that I have a clue how to do that.
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I should add that I did observe in my wife a distinct change in her attitude to babies fairly shortly before we had one, but I, who always yearned for kids, never cared much for actual babies until we had them, and (having had big gaps between kids) now really like other people’s babies when I don’t have one in the house. After current (7 months), I’ll be entirely happy not to look after another one on a long term basis until my kids start having them (not too soon, I hope, but not too long either).
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“Bloody hell Russell, I’ll be 61 when the last one turns 18, and who knows whether he’ll leave the home even then.”
You make them leave, Harry. You make them. (And actually, I think I got my math wrong; I’ll be 55.)
“Still, we had number 3 knowing that and, frankly, seeing it as a reason to have him.”
Yes, I think there’s a lot of value to that: the idea that one can remain connected to the growing and developing of another human being past one’s “prime.” I’ve known several people who have been motivated in that direction, or at least have taken that factor into consideration to support other, complementary desires for children into middle age.
“If more cultural work could go into saying, what is also true, that most men are not complete without marriage and without *being nurturing parents to* their children, there’d be less of a problem (and my claim that most women are not complete without children would seem less offensive).”
Truer words were never spoken!
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I think in my case, the urge to have kids has varied over time. I couldn’t even think about it for years after my first one. I had such a bad delivery that the old aunties shook their heads and told me that no one would blame me if I stopped at one.
I don’t know how anyone can deny that many (not all) men and women have a strong, even irrational, desire to spawn. Look at the lengths that infertile couples go to make babies. My poor neighbor has five young kids due to a fertilization process that worked a little too well.
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I think it is not just biological but also social. When I was in college, I didn’t want to have kids-I was sure I would have an abortion if I got pregnant. When I graduated and had a job and was happy I wasn’t trying to get pregnant, but that’s the first time I remember thinking that if I did, I would want to have the child. In grad school, I thought I was too screwed up to have kids (or a partner, so there was no opportunity for an unplanned pregnancy).
When I started my current job, I knew I wanted kids, considered adoption, but didn’t think I could handle single parenthood, so I didn’t pursue it. I was 35 when I met my husband, 37 when we married, 39 when we started ivf.
So, yes, part of my desire to breed was related to a sense of time running out, but it was also feeling like I had reached a point in my life where I could be a parent.
Even though I want kids, and am about to have one, I don’t think I would be somehow incomplete without them.
But I also think we should just acknowlege that “strong, even irrational desire”–sometimes I am bemused by all the logical reasons people come up with for having/not having kids, and how many, and when, because I think it really comes down to wanting or not wanting them. (Not that I’m against all pragmatism.)
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“The funny thing about a biological clock is that it doesn’t stop after you have kids.”
So true, so true. Even though I swore I’d never have another (I have two), lately I’ve been “seeing babies” everywhere. Little, newborn, mewling babies that I want to feed.
Dear lord, help me.
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Three’s a good number, Mary. Nothing wrong with three.
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Don’t get carried away, Russell. Twenty-three, 42 and 47 are all good numbers, as numbers. But. Um.
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Personally, I blame Atalanta. You all remember her? She was Marlo Thomas in “Free To Be, You And Me.” Those of us in our mid-30s or so with semi-liberal parents had the LP (and maybe saw the TV special).
The King wanted her to get married, and arranged a race where the winner would marry her. Atalanta agrees, but only if she can enter the race herself.
All of the potential suitors are jerks, except for Young John (Alan Alda), who turns out to be a great guy. They run the race, and in the end Atalanta and Young John tie. The King offers his daughter to Young John, who humbly replies something like, “I could not possibly marry your daughter unless she wished to marry me. I have run this race for the chance to talk with Atalanta.” Well, good for John.
Atalanta and John have a day-long date, find out they are perfectly compatible, and have a great time. The next day, they split up and go off to see the world separately. “Perhaps someday they’ll be married, and perhaps they will not. In any case, it is certain they are both living happily ever after.”
————–
I feel like a whole generation internalized that message, except that 30 years later, Young John found an equally compatable princess who was ten years younger, and Atalanta is hearing her biological clock ticking, and realizing that “Old John” is already married and not in the dating pool any more, leaving only those jerk suitors who lost the race in the first place.
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It’s true that one of the main lessons our generation of women has learned — the hard way — is that there is such a thing as opportunity cost.
You know, you make the decision at the moment. You say, I am not putting up with this guy. He’s a jerk. Only later do you realize, wow, evidently I was deciding to not be a parent when I dumped that guy. Ouch.
I find it very interesting that the young women at my office — many of them ardent if unconscious feminists — are marrying so much younger. (To me, young = anything under 26.) When I was that age I didn’t know a single feminist who got married before 26. Not one. So in that sense what our generation has done is a success — it’s leveled the playing field within marriage to the point where the institution is no longer scary to an independent woman. (Cold comfort for the older women who won’t get to have kids.)
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I think the people didn’t grasp the whole concept of the feminist rhetoric of the Ms. Mag/Steinem/Thomas era. Part of the argument was that it’s better to be alone (and childless) than to put up with the jerks. The feminists opened the world, so that it was possible for a woman to be childless and alone, and not starve. They also hoped that jerkiness would decrease, if women opted out, rather than putting up with it.
Forty years later, we’re adding the complexity that some women really really don’t want to be alone & childless, that men haven’t changed as much as the feminists would like (though they’ve changed a lot), that social freedom from partnership allowed some men to become jerkier (the social forces requiring pair bonding decreased), and that nothing can change the biology that women’s fertility ages far more rapidly than mens. And, feminism didn’t change the social cultural practices that have men marrying younger women, and women marrying older, higher status, richer men.
I’m a feminist, though, and I still think the solution is that the only way not be skewerd by all of this is to not need a man.
bj
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Good comments. Yeah, I agree about training women to not need a man. We can teach our daughters to choose professionals that pay well and to not weep over singleness. However, some women need companionship more than others. And it is very difficult to raise a child on one’s own. I’m not sure how we can overcome the desires for compansionship and children, which I think are desired equally by women and men. Sometimes there is a trade-off between putting up with (some) jerkiness and meeting those desires.
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I think the people didn’t grasp the whole concept of the feminist rhetoric of the Ms. Mag/Steinem/Thomas era.
We were four years old! We weren’t grasping a whole lot of subtext.
We were listening to cute songs called “William’s Doll” and “Ladies First.” The lesson of “Ladies First” was that if you tried to act like stereotypically feminine, you would be eaten by a lion.
And the message of Atalanta was “Don’t get married until you’ve gone out and seen the world.” Lots of women internalized that message. Now, maybe the message was really “Don’t get married until you’ve seen a lot more of the world than an average 18 year old girl had in 1972,” and your average 22 year old woman in 1992 had well cleared that hurdle, but that didn’t really come across.
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You know, I think this is the most thoughtful and generous conversation I’ve seen about my post. Thanks.
Laura’s comment was right on. Mom and Dad raised their daughters to never need a man; it is no coincidence we are both engineers. I don’t need a man to live comfortably and some kinds of happily. I don’t need a man to have a kid even. But I would love companionship and I would love for that companion to also be excited for our kids. I truly do understand the trade-offs, which I why I was so vehement in my post. If I weren’t aware of a looming deadline (in some indeterminate few years), I could wait until a romantic situation with low trade-offs came about. Instead I have to disrupt my pleasant life to encounter as many men/opportunities as I can while there is still room for us to decide to have kids together. I don’t feel like there is anyone to fault, but I do think it sucks.
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Actually, back in the “bad old days” it was possible for women to be alone, childless and not starve. To begin with, there used to be hordes of nuns in the US running hospitals and schools, but of course they weren’t alone, just unmarried. Aside from being a nun, it was possible to be a self-supporting old maid. Florence King (a proud spinster herself) has a jolly article entitled “Spinsterhood is Powerful” about the glorious days when spinsters roamed the earth, before working moms entered the professional workforce.
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