Happy Daddy Day

For the happy daddies everywhere, and their families, here's a link to my post on the Father's Day centennial, called "Morphing the Daditude."

That Girl, the Continuing Story

The other day I had my hair done and came home with a bit of a flip--not my usual style. My elder daughter noticed and remarked that "you look like Ann Marie." If that doesn't ring a bell for you, maybe you'd recognize Ann as That Girl, the working girl heroine of the 60s TV show that made Marlo Thomas famous. Anna, who's ten, knows Ann--and a raft of other characters from sitcoms past--courtesy of Netflix. At her age I watched it on primetime, Thursday nights.

So apropos! During the months when That Girl episodes were playing almost nonstop in our house two years ago it struck me that the show gives us the younger days of the first wave of new later moms. Ann wants a career before family, and the show is all about the confusion her ambition creates for her parents and even for her boyfriend Donald, though he supports her goal. But she's clear about what she wants, and perseveres. When the show ended, Ann and Donald were engaged but not married.

It's a story that's been part of the TV sitcom world from its start: I Love Lucy was all about the 50s disconnect between a woman with career dreams and the family-pressures of the post-WWII decades when Rosie the Riveter suddenly became persona non grata. [I explore the Lucy paradox--at the same time that we're told that Lucy's incompetent, we know she's making millions as the star of the show--in chapter one of Ready.]

Lucy (a pre-trend new later mom, whose second pregnancy at 41 was built into the plot of the show, though her age is not discussed) was the 50s response to the work/family balance question (maybe not so much an answer as another question), and That Girl moved the question along in the 60s and early 70s (Marlo was in her 30s for most of the show, but Ann seemed meant to be a bit younger). Their TV story continues through shows like Mary Tyler Moore and finally arrives at the motherhood moment in Murphy Brown in 1992. Murphy's son Avery arrived in the arms of his 44-year-old single mom character to much public notice. Candice Bergen (2 years older than her character) had herself started her family 7 years earlier at 39. Since then? Judging Amy? Story-lines to do with family and work don't jump to mind--what's up with that? But the issues are certainly all around us. Birth timing, as I've noted before, is practically the only story in the tabloids. Is everybody watching Netflix?

While Ready provides a new look at the new later mom trend, the basic storyline is one we've all been following for years. Whether or not it's been or might be your personal story, and whatever your hairstyle, the negotiation of birth timing, work and family issues means something to you--to all of us. At some level or another, all girls are that girl--persevering across the decades to figure it out together.

Happy Mother's Day #100

Though my friend Ignatzia (not her real name) has issues with Mother's Day ("they do a bad job of breakfast and then feel proud of themselves while doing nothing for the rest of the year!"), I like it pretty well. I like the cut-out cards and the effort put into whatever gift they decide on this time, even if the gift itself languishes in the days thereafter (last year it was my fault because I asked for a camellia bush when I meant gardenia, and then wasn't interested enough in the resulting red plant with no particular smell to take it out of the pot).

But it's not a big deal. There's too much going on with two kids and two jobs in the house for anything to be too big of a deal for long -- minutes after it happens, we're on to the next thing. Another baseball game, another music lesson, another camp-out, another standardized test, another ailment, another meal, another play date. The backfield is always in motion when they're small.

My own mom will be getting flowers -- as a small token of my esteem. I'm glad of the chance to tell her I appreciate her hard work and big love. It was the chance to re-create that bond and the good times I remember from my childhood that made me want to become a mom myself. Hoping to pass it on.

For a more political angle on the dynamics and history of Mother's Day (this year is the centenary), see my recent Huffington Post piece: Mother's Day Born Yesterday: A Quick Century of Big Change for Modern Moms

Cheers!

Movies and Stars

Later moms are taking to the big screen this month and drawing a big crowd: even my mama has seen Baby Mama already. Nice to see Philadelphia (my home town) in the background there. I expect she'll be off to see Then She Found Me shortly.

The Hollywood news continues to feature birth timing -- see this recent Huffington Post piece on Cate and Halle and company for my take.

The Fertility Effect (1)

Lately, fertility anxieties haunt the dreams--waking and sleeping--of every adult woman who hopes to someday be a mom. We hear from all directions that fertility wanes fast, especially for women over 35. The dystopian film The Children of Men picked up on the apprehensions bred by those stories to fuel visions of global apocalypse! Though we don't hear much else on the topic, fertility is the side of the later motherhood story that we've all heard about in the media.

Odd that against this background of unease, so many post-35 women who want kids end up having them (like the film's star Julianne Moore, at 37 and 42). In 2006, 611,000 babies were born to women 35 and over. That's one in seven babies. Only roughly 4.4% (some 27,000) of those births involved IVF. Among first time moms, one in twelve had that first baby at or after 35 (up from one in 100 in 1970). Add in the adoptive moms and you've got a substantial portion of the population starting families later.

Clearly, many people are fertile in their late 30s and early 40s--and egg donation makes it possible for some women to bear kids using another woman's eggs (and at some expense) much beyond the age at which their own eggs go past due. I go into what we know about the particulars at great length in chapter 6.

Through 39 chances with your own genetic material are good (very good if you don't already have a known endocrinal disorder that suggests you'll have fertility issues), then they go down quickly to roughly 50/50 at 41, and much lower at 43. I spoke with women who had no problem getting pregnant in their mid 40s, and with women who had problems in their early 30s but then had no problem later--and all over the in-between.

The complexity, as one woman I interviewed pointed out, is that the statistics don't talk about you personally. At whatever point you are, there are no guarantees. Everybody has to weigh the factors (are you with the right partner for the long haul? does that matter? what about finances? career? sense of maturity? desire to stay home for a while with a baby and to be there for a kid long term? etc.) and decide for herself what makes most sense for her and her family.

These are huge issues with lots of radiating effects, and there's no one right answer. Ready explores things from the perspective of women who waited and then started families--some intentionally, some by default. Some out-waited their fertility and went on to adopt or employ donor eggs. For these moms waiting for family made sense and worked out well. The good news is that there's more than one road to a happy family. But family isn't guaranteed--and some women do end up childless when that would not have been their choice.

The fertility scene is evolving. . . and as a group we get to work on spreading a balanced perspective on the topic; on sharing real information about new options as they emerge (I'll post on that soon); and on determining what kind of public policy we want to enact in order to give all families the support they need to raise happy, productive kids.

The Wage Effect

A few posts back (New Plots and Ripples) I promised to continue exploring the effects of starting family later in the wider world. But then I got side tracked by STUFF. Dear Reader, please pardon. Maybe you know how that goes.

But back to the list:
Effect # 5: Higher wages. This is a way big effect--and it puts the trend in a downright anthropological light: If delay of kids means you're better able to support those kids (given the shortsighted lack of social support for families in our current system), then the new later motherhood gives moms a means of better provisioning young for the long term. A form of species response to environment. Even if not planned in advance, it is something that women become aware of as they work their way up the employment ladders.

In my analysis of census data (see Ready chapter 3), comparing full-time working moms with equivalent degrees -- it turns out that moms who have their first child later end up making higher salaries long term than moms with the same kinds of degree who start earlier. That's because they're likely to have gotten their degrees earlier and spent more total time in the workforce, working up the ladders of experience and position, and establishing themselves as trusted and skilled before kids arrive.

Another study, by Kasey Buckles (forthcoming American Economic Review May 2008) looking at the effects of delay for women having their first kids up to age 36, finds a three percent annual return to delay (and that's compounded across those years of course). My findings echo those, and see a continuation through to first kids at 40 (and it may go further, but the data ends there).

While on the one hand these data suggest a that later moms are being canny in their delay, they also point to major failings in the current work system. More on that later!

Paean to a Ten Year Old

So witty, so snippy, so spiritual, so lovely, so brave, so hopeful, so helpful (sometimes), so grumpy (at daybreak), so kind, so concentrated, so fond, so tall!

What an arm!
What an eye!

What a kid!