A family? Children? A job, marriage, a lover, or a PhD.? Come young women, we must start picking and choosing now what we want, because we can’t have it all. We are told from a young age that if we put our sweat and blood into what we do, we can have it all. But, as we’ve grown older, we learn because of social privileges or lack of such privileges, we’ve slowly and gradually seen the ‘have it all’ become the ‘have some’ to ‘pick one.’ Choosing between children and a profession outside the home- this is a classic dilemma. For most women, the picking and choosing in their lives comes down to what do you want more: to be a mother or to be a professional? And, us young women will have to potentially face this in our upcoming years. Personally, I never want to pick and am terrified of the day when I might have to. I am still that naïve little girl where I hope and trust we could have it all if I tried my damndest. But, that is not reality, is it?
More women are seeking and obtaining higher education, and the effectiveness and accessibility to contraceptives as well as ‘more’ job opportunities, are all factors at play in the decrease of women with children. The number of women in the labor forces has risen from 18.4 million in 1950 (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics) to 66.2 million (Toossi, 2009). Furthermore, of employed men and women between ages 25 and 30, 36% of women hold bachelor’s degrees or higher compared to 28% that of men. Whereas of the entire US population, it is tied closely at 37% of employed women whom hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 35% that of men (US Census Bureau Educational Attainment, 2010).
Gretchen Livingston and D’Vera Cohn of Pew Research Center published ‘More Women Without Children,’ in 2010 stating that 1 in 5 American women end their childbearing years without having borne a child compared to 1 in 10 back in the 1970s. There has been a steady rise of childfree women since the 1970’s primarily due to women receiving more advanced degrees such as master’s, doctoral, or professional degrees. And, this phenomenon is occurring amongst women of all races and ethnicities, ‘Among all women ages 40-44, the proportion that has never given birth, 18% in 2008, has grown by 80% since 1976, when it was 10%. There were 1.9 million childless women ages 40-44 in 2008, compared with nearly 580,000 in 1976’ (Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey). The steady rise of childfree women has become a norm amongst the US population. To the average American, it is no longer a shock to hear of a middle-aged woman to be unmarried and without children. Furthermore, there has been a decline amongst Americans’ perception of a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ marriage, in that children engender such a relationship (Pew Research Center, 2007). And, these occurrences are not designated only to the US rather several of our Western Europe counterparts are seeing similar situations in their own countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).
Yet, the wage gap between men and women is still as high as ever, on average a woman earns $0.78 on dollar for every dollar compared to a man (Center for American Progress, 2007)…
It’d be nice to keep my dream of having it all, a husband, children, and a PhD., and maybe I could still have this. You’ve read the growing statistic rates of women earning higher education degrees and obtaining numerous types of professions, why can we not have higher statistics of professional women with children, too?
It’s funny when persons state, ‘Well, feminism is dead.’ But, I’d say, in what way? It looks to me that the Women’s Movement has done quite a lot, and is continuously moving and pushing for equality. The Women’s Movement has jumped over hurdle after hurdle, so I believe it can also engender a social environment which allows women to be mothers and to be apart of the labor force, simultaneously. Where we don’t have to choose between being a mother and being a professional. It will just take some time, as all social movements do…
ShoutOut! James Madison University 