Women: the coming of age

Every product has an expiration date. According to my doctor's nonchalant claim, the expiration date of an average woman 25 years old. It’s a nice round number that rolls off the tongue: a quarter of a century. Indeed, it could be worse. In places like Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, I am sure it is much lower, but somehow, I don’t find that particularly comforting.

The fact that in our very modern world, women are still under pressure to reproduce while they are increasingly expected to fill more seats at the same table as the big boys, is unjust. I suppose big boys expect us to thank them for opening their club to us, but this is hardly a relief if the only way for women to crawl to this summit is by making the baby understand that the blackberry is the only toy that mommy cannot give up.

I should come clean and specify that my doctor did not exactly say 25 is our official expiry date. This was more of a point by which women are best to procreate. Push the limits much beyond this date, and you run all kinds of fertility risks. His look tells me: “you do what you like my dear, but consider yourself warned.” I walk out of his office resenting a mixture of resent and gratitude. I have been warned.

This advice might come as a surprise to most professional women, particularly in Europe, where formal education - assuming one wishes to get a Masters or a PhD instead of baking cookies at home - is completed at 30 if not later. That is, at least a whole 5 years after past the ideal age to procreate. These 5 years might sound like a minor difference, but according to this esteemed professional and to be fair many of his compatriots, it’s a “procreational” lifetime.

In 5 years, we might be able to make a baby step in our career, but we can certainly make a not very baby-like 4 year old. That’s perhaps where our efforts are best put to use. After all, at 25, we are lucky if we have managed to get some sort of a bachelor’s degree, which in France is about sufficient to babysit or to sell cookies. So, basically all we need to know before starting a family. Or at least, this is how it goes according to my doctor.

Looking from his imposing black spectacles, he examined my face briefly when I timidly posed the delicate question. “You can start as soon as you have found a suitable papa” was his as his answer. You’ve got to give him some credit not beating around the bush. This coming from a man who is over 50 and whose last child is 3 years old is a little difficult to swallow but I try. I remind myself his wife is close to 20 years younger than him and that he seems to follow his own advice.

Fair enough. What is not fair is that at the same time as women are expected to step up to the bar and compete professionally with men, we are expected to do so in parallel with nursing. So much for equal opportunities. Actually, the opportunities have become less equal. Even some 20 years ago, a woman was expected to deliver a baby and keep it fed, clean and happy, now we are expected to breastfeed the baby between a board meeting or keep it happy during a work trip to another part of the world.

If my doctor’s prognosis is right, it seems we are stuck with a bad bargain. So, perhaps we should stop looking for vaccines for bird flu, and focus on what matters: prolonging women’s fertility to the time when they have the desire and, not unimportantly, the means to start a family.  This would not only lower the realistic expectations that women can excel in management positions while at the same time popping out offspring, it would also release the pressure on women – to put it as bluntly as my doctor did – to find a suitable papa.

Brushing all these deep thoughts aside, I rush out on the street, put my oversized sunglasses on and try to console myself. “I have no yet expired!”, I tell myself, mentally arguing against his advice. By the way, that advice delivered over a 5 minute consultations had cost me over 100 euros. I wonder if I would be able to afford that if I had my first baby by 25 as he recommended. I also wonder if I pay more, if I would be able to find another doctor who would raise my expiry date closer to 35, and who would ideally not let me linger in his waiting room for one hour. After all, I am not paid the big bucks for flipping women’s magazines in doctors' lounges!