The real reason why women like me are having children later, if at all
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today. Join today Already a member? Log in It’s not enough for women to become mothers; they must do it in the right way (with a husband), and at the right time (late twenties, early thirties at a push). Otherwise, they risk disrupting the “natural” order and becoming general menaces to society that must be probed and prodded into eventual submission. That’s the takeaway, anyway, from the conversations I’ve been having with my single thirtysomething female friends, many of whom, like me, are ambivalent about having children, and even if we weren’t, we lack the necessary infrastructure to even have one if we wanted to. In our current positions, we don’t fit the mould of mother: no houses, no partners, and no financial security. Even admitting to wanting children in such circumstances feels strangely taboo. Like it’s not something women like us are supposed to even be allowed to even think about. And this societal subversion just becomes …
