My new post is up on the Atlantic.com, in response to recent stories on the rise of childlessness in America: here. Though there are substantial numbers of women 40-44 without kids, reported high rates of childlessness are premature. They fail
if you’re a later mom you’ll also likely be a later grandma and maybe not see your grandkids if your kids have kids later too. This is not my worry, but hey, to each her own.
Up until recently, women’s work has been largely limited to bearing and rearing the workforce for free, because they had no other option. But when sex and babies cease to be directly linked, business and government risk losing their major underwriter—the moms, if they don’t offer of family-supportive policies for women who want to combine work and childrearing.
Lots of news stories lately on the later motherhood trend, including this new report from the Pew Research Center that documents that in fact there are lots more older moms than twenty years ago, and fewer teen moms.
Ladies, and gentlemen, you heard it all here first — or maybe you heard it in your own circle of friends and relations — since all these stories are, after all, reporting on us, not on the pronatalist fantasies of screen writers and journalists.