Get married first, then focus on career
Women who want to have kids should make it a high priority in their early twenties to find a partner. This week’s Newsweek cover story, Marriage by the Numbers, says is okay to wait until after 35 to get married. Newsweek is revising the saying that a woman has more chance of getting hit by a truck than getting married after age 35.
But the article ignores one of the most pressing issues facing Generation X: Infertility. No generation of women has had more trouble with fertility than this generation who received the terrible advice, “Wait. You have time. Focus on your career first.”
In fact, you have your whole life to get a career. This is not true about having a baby.
Even if you are past your early twenties, or not heterosexual, if you’re single and want to have kids with a partner, you need to find one now. Take that career drive and direct it toward mating because your career skills will outlast your ovaries.
In case you think you’re waiting for “the right time,” there is no evidence to show when in a woman’s career is best to have kids. At any point, she is thrown off track. At any point when a woman has kids, statistically she will start to earn less money even if she takes no maternity leave whatsoever. There is no evidence to show that it’s easier to take time out of the workforce at a certain point in a career. People just plain don’t know.
Phyllis Moen, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, told me in an interview, “Don’t wait until the right time in your career to have a child or it will never come.”
However there is lots of evidence to show that a woman’s biological clock takes a nose-dive at age 35. I know, because that’s when I started having kids. The geneticist showed me and my husband a graph of Down’s Syndrome and we nearly keeled over when we saw the cliff at 35. We had no idea. That Down’s Syndrome cliff, though, is a stand-in for everything, because a huge percentage of fertility statistics get bad at 35.
There is also lots of evidence to say that having kids at least two years apart is best for the kids. However there is a distinct advantage for first-born kids. They are richer, smarter, and as if that’s not enough, year after year 90% of Harvard’s incoming freshmen are first-born. You can mitigate the impact of birth order on your second child by having three years between kids.
If you start when you are thirty-one, you can have two kids, three years apart, before you’re thirty-five. But this plan does not take into consideration that about 20% of pregnancies end in a miscarriage. This means you have almost a 50% chance of having to go through three pregnancies to have two kids, which means you should start when you’re thirty.
If you want to have babies when you’re thirty, then you probably want to be married when you’re twenty-eight. This is good news because if you marry very young you’re more likely to get divorced, but the statistics get much better if you wait until you’re twenty-five. For a healthy marriage, experts think people should be married two or three years before they consider having children. A reasonable expectation is to meet someone, date for a couple of years, and get engaged with almost a year’s time to pull off a wedding. So you need to meet the person at age twenty-four.
So this means that it may make sense for men to work full-speed ahead on their career in their early twenties, but women cannot afford that. Women need to make time in their lives to search for a mate in the same systematic, focused way that women have been searching for careers in their early twenties. And don’t tell yourself you’re waiting until you know yourself better. Getting to know yourself is a lifelong process, and after age twenty-five, waiting to get married won’t decrease your chance of divorce.
The good news here is that a large body of research shows that you will gain more happiness by being married than by having a good job. Yes, you should not have to choose between a good job and marriage. But this column is not about what is fair or what is just. It is about what is real.
You have a biological clock that does not pay attention to issues of social justice. You cannot control your biological clock and you cannot control the workplace. But you can control where you spend your time and energy, and you should look hard for a husband early on. Line up the marriage first, then the career.
Or maybe a woman can have a child at 38 or 39 and raise it on her own. Maybe some women have decided that jumping into a marriage early on is not a good idea, and if you are rushed off to the altar before 35, you also up your chances of being a divorce statistics indicate people who wait to get married until they are more educated and established tend to have more successful marriages.
So sure all women who want to get married could run out there and get married before 35, but what if you end up marrying a guy who is the biological father of your children, and then does not like to do chores and such. What if you are raising the kids all by yourself even though you are married. Well situations like that can lead to divorce. Anyway, I think people should get married when they find the right person, and should have kids if they want, whether or not they are married. Today we have extended families that can help us with watching are kids, and we can hire a nanny, and women do not need to feel guilty about reaching a certain milestone married or not.
So I am 34 and definitely will most likely not be married by 35. I might even decide to have a child in the next couple of years on my own. This works well for me, and it feels better than rushing into a marriage.
I agree with you in every single word.
Thank you, Penelope, for writing such a great blog. Your words are great inspiration for me.
I think its horrible enough being 20 now and being in a serious loving relationship with a 32 year old guy who wants kids when you’re ready but of course take into consideration he wants them before 35 which would make me 23!!!! just graduating and I’m being told I should have children at 29? 30? Even if I was not having the pressure of being with an older man and wanting to give him a family he never had, I want kids at 25 maximum start! Is this bad? I definitely want to be groovy young mum but I already feel the fear/pressure of my hubby being an old daddy, however 40 is the new 30 right? so surely it shouldn’t be that bad?
It’s not wrong getting married before pursuing a career, neither is it wrong getting a career first. All you need is, make your planning and decisions base on what you want and how you want it to be. Be carfull, life is not a game but seek God for help.
Very interesting post. This is particularly interesting to me as a man in my 40s who’s never been married and had no children. I’m all good with my situation.
However, I’ve met women around my age who’ve also never been married and have no children. Some of them are in a spooky zone where they don’t know if they should just chill out and hang with me or, spend every precious moment urgently looking for a husband and getting pregnant.
I have a male friend who’s in his 50s. He’s been married and divorced and has 2 kids who’ve graduated from college, and has no interest in another marriage or a newborn baby. He described a relationship with a woman in her 40s, no kids never married. Same story: she was torn between chilling out or looking desperately for a husband until she’s got 100% certainty that her window of opportunity is closed closed closed and nailed shut.
My best relationships have been with women who’ve been married and had kids by this point. And when we’ve broken up, it’s more about personalities, and nothing about wasting more time with a biological clock.
my name is bene and I recently had a breakup with my bf about 2 months back. He said we are done that we should move on that he has someone else now. I could not even bear the pain and everything and just so unfortunate, I discovered I was pregnant when me and my ex we going through some big fights. I couldn’t tell him I was pregnant because I knew he would blame it on me. I suffered with the secret on my own and I could not go through an abortion on my own. The funny thing is I discovered that he had two other girlfriends I was not aware of. I know if I could turn back the hands of time I would do it again because i could not suffer everything alone, I almost drop out of varsity because of a guy. On a faithful day after i lost of thought, an old friend told me about a spell lady with this email priestessifaa@yahoo.com who could help me restore my love and have my baby in good terms. I sacrifice everything to make sure the spell was done. and the spell was now the savior. her spell brought back my lover after 2days. My joy, love and happiness is restored because of this spell lady, my baby comes soon.
From planning out and crafting the nursery, to ordering the perfect birth announcement, every expecting parent can certainly use a hand during one of the most overwhelming times of life.
I agree that it is problematic to put career first and then find out you have fertility problems at age 30. I actually think it’s a shame that women are not specifically taught that fertility could be am even bigger problem after a certain age, because it gives us this false security that we have all the time in the world.
At the same time, not everyone who is single is simply lazy or putting career first. Presumably, to seek a mate, you have to have relationships, and not every relationship will necessarily end in marriage. I know women who are considering marrying the obviously wrong guy just because they want kids in a timely fashion. That is not a better option than waiting to get married. Once you know it’s wrong for marriage, break up and move on, yes. (That is one mistake to make – staying in a relationship with someone you already know you would not marry.) But even a woman who only dates a man until they are confident about the marriage question with that man may find that each of those non-marriage relationship experiences can set them back on the “ideal” plan you have proposed. I have one friend who dated someone for a while whom she thought she would marry. He was fun to be with, smart, driven, similar values, and also wanted to get married to her soon, etc. Then after they got more comfortable from many months of dating, he became abusive. To her, it was completely out of character from what he had been like in the earlier parts of their relationship, but when the behavior repeated, she broke it off (obviously devastated.) Another woman I know ended up having a sudden illness and was home-bound until her mid 30’s. Now she wants to start dating to find a partner.
As far as it is up to a woman to make wise decisions and set her priorities, she should do it. But it is not right to tell someone that every single situation in his or her life is by choice. That level of control is an illusion. We are all affected by both circumstances outside our control and by our own choices. It is not an either/or situation, but a both/and one.
“20% of pregnancies end in a miscarriage. This means you have almost a 50% chance of having to go through three pregnancies to have two kids”
No.
You don’t know how probability works.
In “with replacement” scenarios, this is faster:
Chance of neither pregnancy being a miscarriage = (0.8)(0.8) = 0.64
36 percent chance of needing more than two pregnancy tries. Around 1/3, not 1/2
Women over 30 who want to get married are a joke to my single male friends. We totally disrespect them, ignore them, and mock them behind their back.
That’s life. And there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it ladies. The fact is, at age 30, the “power dynamic” between women and men swaps. Suddenly, we men who have been the powerless ones in the relationship dance — who have to bow and scrap and beg to get a girl — suddenly at 30 we find that women are throwing themselves at us (because they want to get married).
We aren’t going to take one microsecond to look at women over 30. We’ve been the relationship underdogs for so long, and suddenly we are in control.
So ladies, get a clue. After 30 we are GOING to put you at the bottom of the pile. We are GOING to choose 24 year olds. And that is FAIR.
Don’t like it? Tough shit.
If you want to get married, prove it to us by starting when you are 25. Otherwise end up a scraggly old cat lady and be a nobody in the eyes of society. Or become a lesbian and screech about how awful men are. In either case, we don’t care, we will never care, and no amount of social changes or legal baloney will ever make us care.
If the world is only filled with men like you and your simple mind, then I will hopefully die a cat lady.
How scary that women think like this!? Are you a joke? Ugh how depressing.
I think this article is absolutely ridiculous. Young women are under enough pressure as is, I understand the facts on fertility rates but in this day and age a woman has more than one option in regards to child birth.
Life isn’t “one size fits all” type of thing. I’m in my thirties and I’m glad I didn’t get married on my 20’s.
I was too naive back then and definitely not ready for any kind of relationship.
It’s nice to read comments from those who married very early and had kids then saying they have no regrets on their decision and wholeheartedly agree with this blog post.
I did the opposite of what this post suggest and I also don’t regret my decisions either.
I can’t believe people are silly enough to believe that life is just something standard that everybody has to follow.
I very rarely leave a reply about a post but reading this led my fingers to the keyboard like a magnet. Because if I read ONE more editorial about what women should or shouldn’t be doing in regards to our reproductive organs, our careers, our relationships and our lives in general in order to “fit everything into” life like some sort of nice, neat, mathematical graph, I’m going to puke up my toenails. Because these sorts of “editorials” play on women’s insecurities about what we are “supposed” to be doing – – insecurities which are instigated by a society which seems to be obsessed with the “supposed to’s” of the female sex in regards to what we need to do to have a full and satisfying life.
Penelope – life doesn’t come down to math, and not everything has to be goal oriented. Some people who don’t want kids will end up having kids and some people who end up having kids won’t have initially wanted them…..because life is what happens when you’re off making other plans. All your article does is worry women into a froth that once again…in some way shape or form…we’re either “doing it wrong”, or have already “”done it wrong. Which is complete and utter BS.
I got married at 36. And it had nothing to do with me chasing my career instead of a husband. It was just LIFE – – my life. And I look back at the expanse of it and know there is not one thing I would have changed before I met and married my husband. Not one. Would I advise someone to get married at or after 35? Probably not. But I also wouldn’t advise someone to get married at 25 either. I would advise them to get married when it feels right to them – – because everyone is different and it’s not a formula. The most irresponsible thing I can think of is to tell a woman to make it some sort of mission to find a man by the age of 25 to 28 in order to stay on some sort of Baby-birthing schedule based on statistics that will likely change by next year. Because they always do.
I’m fully aware that at 38, I might not be able to easily get pregnant and have a baby, or even get pregnant at all. Or, maybe like some of my friends who are my age, I’ll get pregnant within a few months of trying. Or maybe we’ll be foster parents. Or maybe we’ll adopt. Or maybe we’ll just take our two dogs and move to France and live the life of a bohemian, childfree couple. WHO KNOWS? But that’s part of the amazing wonder of life: we don’t have to know everything and plan our future to the ‘nth’ degree. So please….don’t tell women there’s some formula to getting the life they want, because there isn’t. Women should strive toward being an intelligent, loving, decent individual…..and be open to the happy accidents, surprises and mysteries of life that make the human existence so damned AWESOME.
So true!!! I was lucky enough to have met my husband at 22 right after college (we married at 28) and earned my M.A.Ed. while dating/first married and I began my career teaching. We had our daughter at 31and I was lucky enough to have the option to stay home with her. She is now 15 months. We plan on trying for our second around her second birthday. I figure I’ll refocus on my career after our next child is close to 18 months and probably starting nursery school. I loved teaching but now that I have a family it has adjusted my priorities to need to be compensated more to be away from them. So, in the meantime, I think a lot about what it is I really want to be when I grow up around 35.
I wish that my best girlfriends made meeting a husband more of a priority in their 20s, we’re now all 33ish and none of them are married or have kids and I think Hollywood makes them think they can easily start a family later. Not only does it get more difficult to procreate the closer to 35 you get, the worse off the dating pool is too!
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I’m only 18, but I, thankfully, have a decent idea of what I want in life and good reason to assume it will remain the same. I decided that I want to firstly be a wife, secondly a mother, and thirdly a professional in Psychology and/or a STEM career. I can assume that this ranking will remain fairly constant because, so far as research has been done on life satisfaction, it places those life decisions in that order for women who wish to be as happy as possible. However, in order to make those things work in that order, I need to have a financially stable partner who would not require my income.
Due to the flooding of the labor market by women, all people make less money from their jobs than if only half of the population worked. Therefore, finding a man who can financially support a wife and kids on his income alone is difficult. The few men who can do this can be found at trade schools, professional schools, and college math and science departments. I, fortunately, just happened to stumble across a guy who I’m highly compatible with, who has the same values and goals as I do, who plans on working in a moderately paying career, and who will inherit somewhere between 1 to 1.5 million dollars in the next five to ten years. He knows quite a bit about investment as it currently stands, so by the time he gets the money, he should have a firm idea of what to do with it.
Also, I know that, if I want kids, they have to come sooner than later. I’ve already been diagnosed with PCOS, so, if I want to have kids, I need to start young. I also hold fairly traditional values, so I believe marriage the foundation for a stable family. I plan on starting that when I’m either 23 to 24, since my partner and I decided that we should wait until after college to get married. While marriages typically work better if people wait until they are 25, most people aren’t in a stable relationship 6 years before making that decision. Also, upper-middle class, college-educated, high-IQ people tend to have lower divorce rates overall, so I don’t worry much about marrying a year or two before I turn 25. The risk of divorce would be low, so the benefit of trying to have kids in a stable environment during my reproductive prime would be worth it.
Depending on the difficulty of conceiving and carrying pregnancies, I plan on having somewhere between one and three children. During the time I plan on conceiving the first one, I’ll work on my Master’s degree. Then, once the last one is preschool age, I’ll get my PhD and start applying for associate positions at universities in my field of expertise. If none are available, I can do another year or two of work and get a PsyD. There are plenty of positions for trained Psychologists, so, if all else fails, I can still have a fulfilling job in an applied career.
I sure hope my life works out that way. If it does, I will live the post-feminist dream.
i just want to share my experience and testimony here.. i was married for 6 years to my husband and suddenly, another woman came into the picture.. he started hating me and he was so abusive..but i still loved him with all my heart and wanted him at all cost…then he filed for divorce..my whole life was turning apart and i didn’t know what to do..he moved out of the house and abandoned the kids.. so a friend told me about trying spiritual means to get my husband back and introduced me to a spell caster.so i decided to try it reluctantly..although i didn’t believe in all those things.then he did the special spell casting for me. After 2 days, my husband came back and was pleading..he had realized his mistakes..i just couldn’t believe it.. anyways we are back together now and we are happy..in case you wanna contact this wonderful spell caster, his email address is ishvaratemple@yahoo.com
I met this spell through a friends description and he told me that he help him to get his wife back when another man took her from him and then i decided to try him out and i discover that he is the best and he is very powerful and just yesterday my husband whom i thought will never come back to me came and said to me that he was sorry for leaving me. i now so happy that my desire have been fulfilled. thank to the Dr.Wala of the wildernessofspirit@gmail.com he is so powerful.
My question is, given that this is a blog written by an entrepreneur, why not encourage women to start companies in their twenties and flip them? Sell it for enough, you won’t have to work when the children are under the age of 5. (Heck, sell it for so much you don’t have to work when they’re 50).
I understand it is difficult to create and flip a startup, but why not encourage women to start a company fresh out of college? If the average startup lasts 18-24 months, that’s enough for 4-5 startups – and the probability favors at least one successful exit.
I agree that it may be best for the average person to have marriage and children first. But for female entrepreneurs, I think it’s good to have the experience while young.
Good lord, what medical school did you go to?
This had very little basis in medical reality, nor demographic reality. The percentages of first time moms over 40 has skyrocketed. Most of those are natural, but for those with declining fertility, there are many treatments to compensate. And for those willing to take the time and expense, there’s egg freezing as well.
Why aren’t you advising guys to concentrate on home and family first because, you know, they are likely to die from a heart attack in their late 40s or early 50s, they won’t live long enough to benefit from that career anyways….oh, ooops that medicine was nearly half a century ago.
Probably worse than any bad career decision is taking medical advice from some unemployable English major blogger.
I would like to thank you for one specific point , “getting to know yourself is a lifelong process” and I will not be the person who will stop doing anything , until I find out Who I am .. Thanksss
Goodness, this is anxiety-inducing. All through middle school and high school: work, work, work; a heavy load of AP and honors classes on top of mastering multiple instruments. No dating (guys never asked me out, despite being 5′ 8″, thin, and reasonably pretty). Conservatory was a little easier, but still frustrating due to alienation, such a small environment, and the lack of decent men (most not academic, heavy pot smokers and drinkers). It’s stressful to be transitioning into an adult world when I feel like I never had fun as a teenager and young adult.
Focus in the career is more important than getting married because you need to be able to find a good job if you want to support a family. A woman cannot depend on her husband anymore because men are not as good providers as they used to be in the past, many of them do not even want to help with the house expenses in the way they are supposed to.
I’m somehow surprised at home much a like this article. Honestly, so much of it shouts “unfair!” and “ridiculous!”
As women, we don’t want to believe we can’t have it all… exactly when we want it. The idea that there is an “ideal” or “correct” time to get married, have children, begin a career seems terrible. How can we possibly control when we meet the right person? When we are offered an amazing career? The only thing we do seem to have some control over (planned parenthood) is just ironic. Most of the time I just wish I couldn’t control that, so I wouldn’t have to make any decisions about it.
I hate that we have to make decisions in a certain order or time frame but I am glad you said it out loud. It just is what it is.
The truth is, we CAN have it all but we DO have to prioritize and make time. Sometimes this means temporarily sacrificing a career…
This article is exactly how my life has been, met my husband at 24, got married at 26, starting trying for a baby at 29, never got pregnant, all that happened was my career was put on hold, not to tell you the cost of fertility treatments.I was also diagnosed with endometriosis. I am 35 now.I so much wished I would have just concentrated on my career. My husband does not want to pay for fertility treatments.it’s all going from my earnings. So yes, life is not how you plan to be.
I regretted not actively searching for a husband in my twenties, but I didn’t really care for marriage at the time. But, I think this is terrible advice to give young women. It makes it seem they have to go out and hunt for men while men just focus on careers. So, if you don’t find a husband by age 24, I guess you are doomed for unhappiness. It’s also important to note that paternity age also affects fertility and according to recent studies the chance of Autism. So, older women should find younger men. Down Syndrome happens at all ages; genetics are a huge factor. BULLSHIT! You may end up with a terrible husband and then you’re screwed because you didn’t work on your career. FUCK THAT. Work on your career and if you are meant to find a parter and procreate it will happen; the right man will come to find you as you are working hard on your career.
Thank you for this article. Although it’s true that everyone follows their own path, and this advice may not apply to everyone, it is good to keep these things in mind, and be logical about where our choices take us.
Too many people put off marriage, relationships, and babies, thinking they are not ready. Me and all of my friends, male and female, were strongly encouraged by their parents to not even think about relationships until after years and years of school, years of work, saving up enough money to have purchased a house on our own, and having met every life financial goal first (I’m Chinese). But these same parents got married and started having kids at 18, successfully raised them, built careers, bought houses, and although they aren’t financially wealthy, they have lived very rich and fulfilling lives.
The truth is, getting married and having children doesn’t exclude the possibility of success. We like to look at the lives of friends and people on tv that became “teen moms” that totally screwed up their lives and derailed their success and blame that on the kids. Listen, those people aren’t unsuccessful because they had babies, they’re unsuccessful because they weren’t motivated for and working hard for their success. For every washed out pair of parents (or single parent), there’s another one who is building their dream and bringing the children and the spouse with them, with intelligence and determination. Our parents did it and, despite the terrible economy, we can too!
She’s not saying “run out and have a baby with the first loser you meet,” she’s saying don’t ignore your marital and baby making prospects because you think they’ll interfere with success. And don’t be so myopically focused on your career that you don’t even see the family opportunities around you.
Hi Penelope,
Amazing job with your blog, I feel sorry I discovered it just a few days ago. Your drive for your work is admirable. I am turning 30 next year and yes neither am I married nor do I have a boyfriend. I am little bit lost with my career, I don’t know if I am in the right path after a huge change I made last year.
Anyway, I couldn’t help to comment that your article depressed me.
I know these words have a sense of truth. But honestly, how many girls under 24 read your blog to take up this advice? What I mean is, can you please write a motivational post for women who are concerned and curius about their life so they don’t get sad at 07.00 am in the morning, just because this post caught their attention?
Also, I just wanted to clarify I didn’t mean in a bad way what I said earlier. I am not critisizing your words.
Have a nice day,
I find this article to be sad and old-fashioned. I got married at 31 to the perfect man for me. I am about to turn 33 and we are currently expecting our first and only child (we only want one). If I had been so desperate to find a husband I would have married one of the many men I dated before my husband, none of whom were wright for me.
Where do I even start with this article. I cannot relate to this or agree with it in any way, and I am in my mid twenties and eventually want kids. Also, marriage is just a piece of paper that costs a lot of money.. You can still love someone forever without it.
I wish articles like this and articles about the science of the biological clock were widely disseminated. I’m embarrassed to tell you the things I believed because I was not taught the science.
What does marriage have to do with anything? Just get yourself a sperm and/or egg donor and you can have kids whenever you want. Problem solved
Penelope, a lot of what you say makes sense but you are overlooking the possibility of marrying a SAHD. Today this usually happens by accident but it is also something that an ambitious young woman can plan for at the start.
Where is the link to the large body of research that shows more happiness is gained by getting married? That doesn’t seem correct considering the divorce rate and unhappily married couples.
But what about the women with like me who got a bachelor’s degree, tried hard to get married by dating lots of different guys but none of them wanted her? So now at 28 I figure I’ll just focus on a career. Because what guy is going to want a woman with no job?
Yeah guys….marry her FIRST…..THEN she’ll work on her career…..so she’s got about 5 years or so to suck off of your paychecks to get ahead educationally and professionally before she has to serve your divorce papers to you! THEN SHE GETS EVERYTHING. DONT BUY THE LIE! DONT MARRY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE! ITS A SETUP GUYS!!
The world has enough kids. Women need to understand happiness lies within and there is no time table to settle down.