- BY MEGHAN DAUM | Los Angeles Times, March 3, 2008
...by all means, if you're truly listening to yourself rather than buying society's relentless parenthood sales pitch, have a child, find a mate or both. But when it comes to Gottlieb's case for "settling" at all costs, I can't help but wonder if what's missing from the prototypical unhappy single woman's life isn't a man or a baby but an imagination.
There are infinite ways to define a fulfilling life. Why enshrine the one whose accompanying illustration shows a marriage certificate and a baby stroller? Talk about settling.
3 comments:
a tricky issue indeed...i agree no one should be pushed into anything. but when you simply know so many women in their late thirties and forties literally going to the ends of the earth to have a child.... well, i DO think it's good to get the scientific facts out there about fertility. i just read about indian women acting as surrogates for americans -- outsourcing pregnancy, not so savory, but a consequence of late marriage and childbirht. no easy answers, just want to confuse the picture painted in the article...
Thanks for the comment! To be clear, I didn't write the above article, just thought it was interesting for the same reasons you cite. I AM one of those women in her 30s, who is beginning to contemplate, for the first time, what if i DONT have a baby.
I have a niece I adore, good friends and family (of all ages) and a wonderful man in my life and I could see the points of both journalists here. But when I read them, Meghan's defense and encouragement of the "not settling" path rang quite true with me.
Thanks for reading! Please keep doing so!
Jennie! I'm digging into Twitter and found you there... and linked thru to your blog. I just got mine up & running and I"ll send you there.
I read Meghan Daum too - do you get her weekly email?
More soon, cu in cyberspace! --meg
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