Reflections on Reproduction
I have one high-tech baby and one homemade baby. I’ve been public about my infertility issues because I think it’s important to talk about it. My second husband, Andy, and I were married in 1993, when I was 35 years old. I might well have wanted to have children before that, but I was divorced when I was 32. I was old-fashioned enough in those days to think I had to have a husband to have a baby, so it did not occur to me to think about children until I re-married.
I would not have had time anyway. I began my career as a law professor as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School in 1990. Chicago had a three-year tenure track — shorter than any university I know — and I essentially worked around the clock until I got tenure in the spring of 1993. By the fall, with both a husband and a secure job, it was definitely baby time!
That is not a path most people can follow. Normal academics don’t get tenure for seven years, so women who start teaching in their thirties have to have children while they are still on the tenure track. But we were lucky and started trying. After a year or so, with no results, I was 36 and the clock was ticking. We consulted a fertility specialist, as everyone else I knew in Cambridge seemed to be doing. We tried a few things, but nothing happened.
It was the worst period of my life. I kept thinking that I had made a terrible mistake. Of course I wanted a career; those ambitions had defined me all my life. But it never occurred to me that I might be sacrificing my ability to have biological children to my career. Another year passed; I was 37. I was a tenured professor at Harvard Law School, teaching and writing, but having a baby was all I could think about.
Finally, we visited a new doctor. He said we could spend more years trying various things, but he told us, “You are old enough that we should go to in vitro right away.” IVF is expensive, invasive, and not the way anyone thinks about having a child growing up. You get pumped full of hormones; your husband is very involved in giving you the shots; it is emotionally, and physically, tough. But we got pregnant on the first go. We were incredibly lucky.
Of course, there was a little bit of unnecessary drama. The doctor’s office called me on a Friday, and said, “It didn’t work.” I was absolutely devastated, just thinking about having to go through another round of IVF. The doctor told me to come in Tuesday, and they’d confirm my blood levels. I came in Tuesday, they took blood, and later that day they called and said, “You’re pregnant!” Our son was a fighter from the beginning. And he was born in October of 1996, when I was 38.
We were just thrilled. Six months later, I realized that if we were going to have a second child, we should start trying again. My husband was not so sure we should have another. He pointed out that with only one child, there were two of us and only one of him. We were going to conferences together; we would hand the baby off to one another; it was quite manageable. My husband said that if we were going to keep living this way, as busy academics — at this point, he was the one trying to get tenure — it would be a whole lot easier to do it with one than with two. I have talked to many professional women since who made this choice.
But I grew up in a family of three and I loved babies. Honestly, if I had started earlier, I would’ve definitely wanted at least three. But certainly two. As I put it at the time, Andy and I had two incredibly strong personalities. To saddle one child with the two of us just didn’t seem fair. I have very close siblings, and I wanted my son to have that too.
Again, we started trying, expecting it to take forever, but we got pregnant in a month! All those stories you hear about couples who try forever and ever, then adopt, and boom they get pregnant — well, there’s a mind-body connection there, no question. In any case, nine months later our second son showed up, healthy and happy. That was 1999, and I was 40 by that time.
We were truly lucky; we also had the money and the time to devote several years to doing everything possible to have a biological family. But it was wrenching and uncertain, which is why I now tell women that if at all possible, don’t wait till you’re after 35 to try and have your first child. I’ve heard about all the studies that say, actually, it’s not so bad to wait to get pregnant. And of course many women have gotten pregnant after 35. But many others have not. You don’t want to put yourself in that position if you can avoid it, unless you’re fine trying biologically and then adopting.
If we hadn’t been able to conceive, who knows what we would’ve done? I would’ve liked to have a daughter , and we did think about adopting a little girl from China, once we had the two boys. In my son’s daycare class in Cambridge, only about a quarter of the kids had been conceived the traditional way. There was every conceivable permutation — adoption, surrogate mothers, egg transfers, you name it. But Andy said we simply could not manage three children; I knew he was right.
I now tell people who haven’t met the right partner but who want children, or who definitely want children but not right away: if you can afford it, I would consider freezing your eggs. I was in a position where I could’ve done that in my early 30s, and knowing what I know now, I think I should have. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s an insurance policy. It depends a great deal though on the kind of person you are. I’m someone who generally thinks that things are going to work out. But if you’re someone who gets very anxious, and the possibility of missing out on having children is already tearing you up inside, you’ll feel better about things if you freeze your eggs. In any case, desperation is not a good dating strategy — you’re not going to find a partner you want to have that way. In my early thirties, before I remarried, I remember saying to myself, “I may be alone. But that’s ok. I have a good life.” That feeling of strength and self-reliance was important in moving forward, the feeling that “I may want a man, but I don’t need a man.”
Another alternative, too, is to realize that families are constructed. Families are the people you love. I have a great biological family, but I have other people in my life as well — students I’ve taught, dear friends who I know will be there for my children. And I have several friends now who didn’t find a life partner but have had children on their own. So I now think that if I hadn’t remarried, perhaps that’s something I would’ve wanted to do — constructed my own family with a child or children and my parents, siblings, and friends.
Many of us are moving in that direction, and for others it’s always been true. I’m reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, which addresses his son, and mentions “your Uncle Ben.” Ben’s not Coates’s brother, but his friend from college. And in Indian culture, everyone’s an “auntie.”
I believe strongly that children do better with multiple adults in their lives who love them and are there for them. But there are many ways to get to that place.
Anne-Marie Slaughter is President and CEO of New America. She is the author of Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, released this week from Penguin Random House.
Medium is convening a conversation about work, parenthood, and how the two mesh — or don’t — in our lives. To get involved, please follow the Working Parents publication and the tag, and help us expand the dialogue by writing a post or a response.
