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I am the exact target demographic for the new book A Few Good Eggs: Two Chicks Dish on Overcoming the Insanity of Infertility, by Julie Vargo and Maureen Regan, who themselves have conquered fertility problems. And yet, soon after I started reading, it was all I could do not to march over to my fertility clinic and toss the book in the bin marked Hazardous Medical Waste.
First of all, who in God's name puts a baby on the cover of a book about infertility? A baby? It's like putting a brioche on the cover of The Atkins Diet.
Second, can we please stop calling ourselves "chicks"? Please? The whole "take 'queer' back from the bigots" thing really just hasn't worked here. Deserved or not, "chick" still refers to something giggly and trivial, fun for the beach, good with General Foods International Coffee. All of which and I promise you I haven't entirely lost my sense of humor infertility is not. Do we "dish" about the "nuttiness" of depression, "gab" about how "kooky" it felt to have that abortion? The longer we try to make women's issues sound like good lite fun, the longer it'll take for them and us to be taken seriously.
Other word choice problems: infertility is not "insane." (Nor, as on page five, is it "wild," or "wacky.") Parties are insane. Prices are insane. Infertility is deeply painful, deeply shitty. Okay?
They also refer to a certain life change as "meanie-pause," but I'll let that go for now.
To be fair, this book does have good and yes, serious moments. It does nail how fertility-challenged women sometimes feel, to wit: "like big losers." The too-few paragraphs written by the authors' husbands are pretty awesome. And there's some okay medical information here and there, along with advice ("try finding a support group") with which one really can't argue.
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With friends like these, who needs Sylvia Ann Hewlett?
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But on page twenty-six the authors write, "Don't wallow in needless guilt. There's time for that later."
Specifically, on page thirty-six.
That's where Vargo and Regan start to wonder if "perhaps, just perhaps, we women aren't responsible for some of our own problems." They write:
"We get what we deserve when it comes to our fertility quotient . . . We fill our prime procreation years with career-climbing, job-juggling, thrill-seeking, and serial dating. We tone our body fat away, eat crappy food, and get as few hours of sleep as possible. Some of us smoke, do illicit drugs occasionally, and/or drink more than we should. We're not really sure we want to change our lifestyles, but we do want kids . . . eventually. Then we wonder why we can't conceive on command when we finally settle down at thirty-six or thirty-seven years old."
They blame women for sleeping around, partying hard, screwing up their hormones with birth control, getting STDs, having abortions, dating squirrelly guys, and being "selfish" (page forty-three) assuming all the while that "if Brooke Shields and Courteney Cox can do it in their forties, so can I" until, sure enough, they wake up and find their eggs' freshness date has come and gone.
If you're not feeling crappy or defensive enough by page 102, they say that the longer you wait, the more likely it is that your kid will have birth defects.
They also slam their own friends. They tsk-tsk about clueless Maura, who keeps putting off pregnancy in favor of vacations and home improvements. Another pal is forty-three and "desperately seeking a man" after years of "living in the moment" and choosing guys who weren't ready. "She is really suffering the consequences of this choice now," they write. "She is alone, totally regretting it, and obsessed with finding a man."
Jesus. With friends like these, who needs Sylvia Ann Hewlett?
Hewlett, if you recall, was author of Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children , which warned women that focusing on their careers in their twenties and thirties would leave them bereft and barren in their forties. Which is perfectly appropriate material for a headline-grabbing screed that no one actually read.
But call me "insane" I thought A Few Good Eggs was supposed to be helpful. (Not to mention designed to be read after the alleged excesses of my twenties.) You know, supportive. Girlfriends dishing, saying things that dishing girlfriends say, such as: "I know it's hard" and "Here's what my experience taught me" and "How about another gimlet?" I'm not saying the factors they describe don't affect fertility; I'm saying I wasn't expecting a scolding. This is more like girlfriends saying mean shit behind my back. "There's Lynn. She takes her job very seriously. No wonder she can't get
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It's super that women can have "careers" to "focus" on but hey, up to a point!
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knocked up!" Thanks a freaking lot.
Could the authors actually believe that legions of twentysomethings will happen to pick up this book a book with a BABY ON THE COVER between Jell-O shots and say, "Sheesh! I gotta get cracking!" Seems like they certainly hope so. They insist that women in their twenties should "talk about family early on" in a relationship.
Worst. Dating advice. Ever.
I wouldn't be so enraged if these women were lone, insane voices.
But they're not. I'll never forget the USA Today editorial that blamed "picky" women for rising numbers of birth defects. "All of the thirtysomething women I know," wrote the author a medical resident named Scott Gottlieb "still are waiting patiently for their knight in shining armor to ride down Madison Avenue in a Porsche and whisk them off to his summer mansion in the Hamptons." Fuck you. Madison Avenue goes uptown.
And sure enough, when the Good Eggs authors were featured on Today and written about in New York magazine, what do you think was the hook? Do you think the interviews explored the enormous proportion of fertility problems that are traceable to the male partner, or the harmful effects of environmental toxins both of which are indeed addressed in the book? Of course not. The central theme of both features: how women are screwing this up all by themselves.
What we have here and elsewhere is a deep ambivalence about women's rights and advances. Sure, it's super that women can enjoy sex outside marriage and have "careers" to "focus" on . . . but hey, up to a point! Here's what our culture is still saying: See? We gave 'em an inch, and they took a yard.
And it's a special kind of bummer when women are complicit. But it doesn't have to be this way. The nice people over at Chicken Soup for the Soul recently published a lovely little book called The Conception Chronicles that succeeds in being funny, substantive, totally helpful and girlfriendy. See, people, it can be done. And so I cling to the hope that I can raise a child, girl or boy, in a world that does not blame women for its ills. But in the meantime, yes, thanks, I'll have another gimlet.
©2005 Lynn Harris and hooksexup.com
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Comments ( 26 )
i like how pissed off this piece is. the book sounds repulsive, but i'll take a look to understand why the coeds with two kids are now looking at me like i deserve, at 38, to be barren. i don't think i'm being paranoid when i notice their attitude. if the book is this up front and silly, i now know it's even more common than i thought.
Anyone interested in sharing your views of his article with Dr. Gottlieb should feel free to contact him at . Thanks Google.
This book may be vapid and "lite" in style, but people only get angry when something is true. Guess what? Women are most fertile between the ages of 15-30 --- let's assume that the average woman won't get married until at least the end of college. So basically, women have between the ages of 22 and 30 for optimum fertility . . . that ain't a hell of a lot of time. If young women are given the idea they can screw around being "liberated" during their twenties, many of them WILL end up barren and bereft. At age 30 your fertility takes a big dive, and at 35 it's even worse.
Oh yeah, and it isn't a bad idea to make it clear early on in a relationship that marriage and family are important to you as a woman. Otherwise, you waste precious child-bearing years with some liberal twerp who is still "finding himself" and is too much a kid himself to consider having any. Any guy scared away by a woman saying she wants kids is an immature wimp whose genes shouldn't be spread anyway. A real man, even at a young age, actually looks forward to taking on masculine responsibilities and achieving success in the form of being able to provide for his own family.
If you start trying to have kids at 38 and you can't, well then that DOES have something to do with you and your decisions, because you sacrificed your fertility in the pursuit of [insert what you've been doing with your life instead right here]. That isn't a value judgement on someone's character, but it certainly speaks to your priorities.
It's so hilarious to see liberals "un-naturally selecting" themselves out of existence. They abort them before they're born or never have kids at all, and that means the big bad conservatives and evangelicals are reproducing at astronomical rates in comparison. If young liberal women are upset, they should vote with their fallopian tubes instead of whining about how it makes them feel bad to hear the truth.
EM, wow. What are you so angry about? What's true in this for you? I guess some of us finish "college" later than others which pushes your schedule a bit. We don't finish at 21. We don't sign up and reserve a chapel for the ceremony at 22. Who does that? Sure, some women do. But do you remember what it was like to be 22? And I don't know that education is a "priority" and it surely can't be the same as just hanging out in bars and screwing around (though, truth be known, sometimes these things coincide), but it is what it is. And not all women - I'm guessing you are one and I'm hoping you are not - are looking for masculine men (god only knows what that means) who will gladly "pretend" they're capable of bearing the burden of providing for a family and like the idea of having a family, but they are actually looking for one who WILL do those things. And this has nothing to do with screwing around in your twenties. This is simply to say that falling in love is a piece of cake. But for a smart women who see the writing on the wall (supporting the family, being a single mother, bearing all the burden) finding someone with whom to raise a family is outrageously difficult.
Pretty interesting that persuing a career is considered optional; a thing that should be put off until after successful childrearing. Horrifying that it is women who are espousing this point of view. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. What happens when the woman concerned is left in her forties or fifties, who becomes 'boring' to her husband, and left careerless and raising children? We are all aware of how fast one becomes obsolete in the marketplace . . . What are her chances of living above the poverty line if she hasn't developed a separate identity and paycheck as a working person?
Not to mention that the years she took off to raise the children (the hardest unpaid career that exists)are not considered wage earning years from a social security perspective. So divorced women end up the big losers yet again . . .
It is imperitive for people to have at least some connection to the wage earning world. Even if the marriage works out, men typically die sooner than women. If there is no pension,(a rapidly disappearing occurance) social security hardly will keep one able to pay a modest rent and other living expenses.
Life offers many hard knocks. We can't always get what we want . . . but we can try to be mindful (without losing hope) that the future is precarious, and it is our responsibility to care for ourselves. Truly, there is no one else who can be handed this gift, this responsibility.
I don
I sympathize with the frustration of there being yet another book/article/etc. scolding women about this issue, but as a man, I have to say, well, only to a point. It is unfair, but women's fertility has a well defined shelf life. And, from what all these books/articles/etc. seem to suggest, it seems many professional twentysomething women do not fully realize that women who successfully have children at 40 and beyond are rare, and that birth defects are much more common at that age.
And while I cannot comment directly on the doctor's article you cite, it seems inappropriate to basically imply that he's some sort of sexist. From what I've read, it seems the connection between having children near or beyond 40 and having children with birth defects is pretty solid.
Life is indeed unfair.
I would just like to state that, for the record, my mother gave birth to me when she was 36 years old. I was - and still am- a perfectly healthy individual, with no birth defects of any kind. On a side note, my best friend's mother had her at 40, and she, too, was born without any health problems. I'm not saying that that's typical, but I would like to point out that not all children born to women over 30 are unhealthy--and although eggs have a "shelf life", neither my mother nor my best friend's had had fertility treatments.
I am 25 and, according to this book, I should be discussing having a baby with my boyfirned...after all we are well educated, wealthy and I am adorable with children. However, there is one problem, I can't get my boyfirend to stop playing fantasy football, or with his star wars figurines (dead serious) or to stop loking at other women's breast long enough to have the "talk" with him....when are we gonna start blaming men's immaturity on women not having kids early enough. Seriously, I can barely get him to calm down long enough to hang out with my parents let alone have a kid...who are these women? Do they remember dating? Honestly I have the creepy feeling that they want me to date "mature" 30 and 40 year old men who are ready to settle down. Unfortunately I don't enjoy sex with geriatrics so I guess I will have to settle for being single and babyless. Which is way better than having to take care of a kid and my boyfriend, who can't put the toilet seat down but they expect to change a diaper...not bloody likely!
Perhaps E.M. is right that liberals are unfortunately taking themselves out of the world's gene pool--if you're not counting all those baby carriages in Park Slope and Cambridge.
As a twenty-something who doesn't think I'll ever have kids, this issue isn't close to me. But if a ladyfriend of mine told me she knew she wanted kids, but later, I might suggest that she spend some of her hooch money on vitamins and maybe a place to store some of her twenty-something eggs for the next fifteen years or so.
All of this talk about liberals taking themselves out of the gene pool is absurd. Politics are NOT genetic, neither are plitical beliefs necessarily the result of the beliefs with which you are raised. Does everybody here agree with their parents about all things political??? Talk to my ultra-conservative parents who threaten daily to disown me for not being Catholic and Republican! Geez. Do we not have enough to worry about, we have to invent ridiculous worries??!!
Right on. This review rocks and so do you.
Love,
Vanessa McGrady, Producer
The bodyBODY Project
and someone who, at 37, is recently out of a "last chance" relationship with hope and faith that I'll meet the right person soon so I can have a baby. Or a nice gay couple.
This is clearly a life choice based on a specific window (the best indicator of when your fertility begins rapidly declining is 20 years before your nearest female relative hit menopause (age 51-20=31 At 31 years you may be facing fertility issues)). What intrigues me is how evolution may be playing a factor. At 25, my biological clock was ringing off the hook. I was obsessed with babies, being "impregnanted", breast feeding, being pregnant. I would dream about these things nightly and during the day had to chase these thoughts out of my head so I could get some work done. I only managed to put this off for two years before my husband and I started trying. I'm just curious what happens with 30 and 40 somethings that they can "deny" that biological urge?
dw, Not everybody has that biological urge. I'm 34,
married, and have yet to experience anything that
feels like a biological clock. I occasionally think
about children, but in the same way I think about moving
to Paris or starting a charity- might do it,
not sure. If something hits me about parenthood and my
body is incapable, I'll adopt. I feel like desire for
parenthood is cultural, and in experience. I feel nothing
inside me, unless I am very disconncted from primal urges.
No one deserves to be barren. Just like no one deserves to grow old. But guess what? No one deserves to have kids either. While books like this are obnoxious in how they infantilize women (meanie-pause?) and criticize women who choose careers over families, they aren't incorrect in pointing out that it is a choice. I am sick of seeing women who have high powered careers who claim they never knew their fertility would decline as they grew older. So while you are educated enough to get through B-school, you never paid attention to high school biology? It is frustrating to hear women and men prattle on about how they deserve to have children. Sorry, but I checked in the constitution and the right to have offspring is not in there. Circumstances, career choices, biology prevent you from getting knocked up? Well, do what people have been doing for centuries: ADOPT. Or be happy with the choices you made.
I chose to have a child later (32) but not so late that it meant I could have a fabulous career and a child. Life is about choices. The women's movement was about expanding the choices for all women, not making sure everyone could have everything all the time.
Thank you!!!! thank you!!!! thank you!!!!
This is "EM" from below, and just to set the record straight I am 19 years old and engaged to an Air Force officer --- he's 20, and we're getting married as soon as I graduate from college. I plan on having all my kids (three or four) before age 30, and my extended family will be helping me with childcare so that I can pursue a career (my career choice can very easily be done from a home office). I'm not going to delude myself and wait until later because being an older parent is a drag --- your body doesn't recover from the rigors of childbearing as quickly or as well, you have less energy and you're a doddering old loser at your child's high school graduation. And yeah, most people vote like their parents, and you silly naive people ARE losing the evolutionary race to pass on your genes.
EM, thanks for the response; it's interesting to hear. I'm 38 and with multiple graduate degrees. I'm married and have no children. My body is in much better shape than most young women your age so, despite the truth that we are much more prone to the exhaustion that comes with having kids later, I've never been worried about what having kids has to do with my body. And I find that a bizarre concern. What's most worrisome to me about what you say is not really what you have to say about women, but the fact that you're an ageist. Still, it's admirable that you've got the whole thing planned out: the marriage, the career from home, and kids, and the support of your extended family.
Lynn, you kick ass. There are few things more satisfying than reading a well-written rant about what ladies are up against. I'll toast my next gimlet to you.
I have always wondered why so many conservatives are so hateful. EM can you fill us in on why you are so hate-filled?
EM, I hope for your sake that your perfect little plan for life works out. Stuff happens when you actually get married and have kids (extended family isn't always as available as you'd like, that work from home plan doesn't run as smoothly as you hoped---and as a mother I can tell you it is really hard to raise a child and work from home. You will encounter a lot of us doddering losers when your kids are in school and WE LOVE having younger ladies tell us how the world is and how their bodies are so much better than ours (no offense, but unless you are a professional model or athlete, I wouldn't start making assumptions about your physical superiority.) Oh yeah, I forgot, your kids won't need school, they have you around to teach them all you have learned.
Right on! I can't begin to tell you how sick to death I am of hearing how I better hurry up and get on with the program. I was married at 21 but did not feel the "urge" to get pregnant while married to my husband for 12 years. It just never felt like the right time. Nor did I feel like chasing two children (one over 30) around the house. I worked and pursued my "career" to make both our lives better so when the time came, we would be financial able to care for our child and ourselves.
In very short order, I was making more than my husband (10 years older than me) and his drinking increased while pushing me to have a child. I wasn't ready and eventually left him after 12 years.
11 years later and I'm 43, getting married in a few weeks to a man 10 years my junior (who doesn't care that I earn way more than him and is in fact grateful). We have discussed children and, in fact, for the first time in my life, I have wanted to have a family. For us, it is simply a matter of Plan A (conceive naturally) or if that fails, go to Plan B (adopt).
When I get the "reaction" about conceive at "MY AGE", I typically point out that both my grandmothers had their first children at 38 and 44 respectively. Not to mention the fact that I am in the best shape physically ever in my life. By creating balance in my life (wise career and relationship choices) and truly feel like I have it all. AND I can afford to work from home and pay for a nanny to be here with me.
At 43, I am by far a more well adjusted and whole person than I was 20 years ago. I have the ability to teach my children so many more things about life, regardless of where they come from. And for that, I regret nothing.
Give 'em hell!
EM, what planet are you from??? You couldn't be a bigger nitwit! This issue is not about liberal vs. conservative. It's about living with the choices that you make. How about we all throw you a parade for having your entire life figured out at 19? You are the exception to the rule, NOT the norm. All women deserve to be happy, fulfilled, to explore their sexuality and to have the satisfaction of contributing to society through work. All of our contributions do not have to come through a baby and a husband. Stop criticizing women for not being exactly like you.
Girlfriend, I'm with you on the idea that they might provide "nicer advise" on how to do it.
BUT you need to get off of your Women are Men mentality. What you keep reading into as BLAME toward women by these authors is the cold hard fact that womenm not men are the ones who actually carry the babies and therefore the age that a women gets pregnant is actually helpful to plan by THE WOMAN. Only ego-centric women think that it is a "problem" that they can't have kids, work, and be a man. Get over it.
First of all, I'm 44, and had my first child when I was 35. The reason I waited that long was that I knew that I simply wasn't ready to handle the immense responsibility of having a child. Second, when I asked the woman at my OB/GYN what determined the necessity for women at 35 to have tests for birth defects, I was told that the age was rather arbitrary. You hit the nail on the head. There is still all sorts of pressure to be the supermom, to be the baby-maker that fits into a male world from those who don't live it. The attitude in the book is flippant and sexist, and I thank you for telling the truth about the reality of what goes down.
What makes these authors think that a woman in her 20's is mature enough to have a child? Some are, but only the woman knows that part of the equation. We are fed so much crap termed as information from "medical experts". The key is to get the info you need from a reliable source, and have your girlfriends and your gimlets help you with the emotional fall-out. Feminism, which I know is a dirty word these days, has certainly taken a step back. We just want to be able to make choices about our lives without someone else judging us for those choices. So keep it up with the discerning eye; hopefully people will hear you just as much as the other drivel, and maybe a balance can be struck.
Frankly, I'm glad to see so much disagreement. That we've come so far as to argue about the "perfect" timing to have children when taking into account our lives outside the home. First and Second wavers could only have dreamt to have these sorts of feminist issues to wrangle over...
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