Why are women still blamed for society’s fertility problems? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

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Students at Cambridge Unisex College Murray Edwards must attend fertility seminars because they may not have children if they leave maternity too late. Her boring news, seminars is just the latest example of the myth that women need to remember that our ability to procreate won’t last forever, like a baby is something we just lost on the back of the couch.

This idea that women might forget to have a baby is carried on in modern culture. My generation spent much of their teenage years being told not to get pregnant lest it ruin your life. In our 20s this changed almost overnight and we were told not to leave him too late lest it (again) ruin your life. When women enter their 30s and 40s they face a maelstrom of misogynistic peer pressure, from when are you going to have a second child until isn’t it unfair to have a baby in? quarantine?, not to mention the classic imposed on the child – free: but who will take care of you when you are old?

College principal Murray Edwards said asking a woman about her intention to have children had become almost forbidden. We have gone too far in a way. We have rightly encouraged girls to get a good education and have great careers. But it came to be seen as old-fashioned and negative to tell girls the things an older generation used to say like Are you courting? or When are you going to have a baby?

It is true that asking a member of my generation about the inner workings of her uterus is considered bad form, because who knows what private pains she may have suffered: miscarriage, stillbirth, IVF, mental health issues, for n ‘to name a few. It is unfair and mean to embarrass women and their partners in this way, and it is nobody’s business. Keeping your own advice isn’t the same as being blissfully ignorant about it. We all know that fertility is not eternal and that a significant proportion of childless women have not chosen this situation.

Where does this condescending belief that women need to be taught or reminded about their fertility come from? There are a number of factors, one of which is overcorrection led by older women. My mother remembers that in the 1990s and early 2000s the newspapers were full of career women (as I always point out, there is no such thing as a career man), brought up in the belief that they could have it all, lamenting that they left too late to have a baby. One need only reread Bridget Jones to understand the post-feminist cultural context of women’s lives then: growing emancipation coupled with extreme social pressure to partner and start a family.

As a result of this overcorrection, women of my generation were bombarded with your fertility falling off a cliff at age 35, although this statistic is based in part on a study of French peasant women living there. 300 years ago, which has been largely debunked. I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t internalized this misinformation, which caused a fertility panic, and while we are well aware that fertility declines in our 30s and 40s, we apparently still need it. recall. It doesn’t help that the media narrative continues to be dominated by the voices of the baby boomer generation; as a result, the barriers to parenthood that exist for young adults, such as high house prices, zero-hour contracts and exorbitant childcare costs, are not fully appreciated or discussed.

Another reason women are regularly reminded of their fertility is a growing panic over the birth rate, which has been portrayed in the media as a shortage of babies with drastic economic consequences. Yet little effort is made to make the structural changes that might better support expectant parents. This fear is compounded by the growing number of women who choose not to have children and refuse to be stigmatized for this fact.

There are much more fruitful discussions we could have about why many young people feel unable to have children. Instead, the myth that women need to remember their fertility continues to be perpetuated. The issue here is not the concept of a fertility seminar; giving women more information about their health is not a bad thing. But no one ever seems to think that men might need to talk about this too. Some scientists are concerned about declining sperm count, while male infertility contributes 40-50% of all infertility cases and declining sperm quality as men age is implicated in a number of development issues. Many men, especially those with older mothers, seem to think women can continue to conceive into their 40s. What about the men? Where are their seminars?

As usual, it is up to women of childbearing age to address societal concerns about fertility. If only people would listen to us, they would hear that the question of whether or not to reproduce is an endless background buzz in women’s lives. The real conversation it takes to remedy the inhospitable society that has been created for young parents continues to elude us. If there is one thing that is left too late, this is it.

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