Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children [Hardcover]

"Between a third and a half of all high-achieving women in America do not have children" and "the vast majority yearn" for them, says Hewlett, founder of the National Parenting Association. In this study of baby lust, Hewlett portrays the anguished hand-wringing by middle-aged women who were career-obsessed throughout their 20s and 30s, only to wake up single at 40, biological clocks all petered out. Infertility treatment is not a solution, she says; it's expensive, dangerous to women's health and unlikely to produce a pregnancy, much less a live, healthy baby. Moms and potential moms from playwright Wendy Wasserstein to a 46-year-old single woman who traveled to China to adopt illustrate Hewlett's thesis that "some of the most heartfelt struggles of the breakthrough generation have centered on the attempt to snatch a child from the jaws of menopause. A few succeed; most do not." Hewlett attests that "if high-altitude careers inevitably exact a price, it's profoundly unfair that the highest prices... are paid by women." "Self-indulgent" women might try to have a child and a career by hiring a nanny, but for Hewlett, it's more "courageous" for a woman to forgo childbearing if a career is her real goal. Hewlett's advice to young women is strangely retro: get married you'll be happier and healthier. She counsels them to give "urgent priority" to finding a marriage partner fast, "have your first baby before 35" and look for work at a family-friendly corporation. Though ardently argued, her case is unconvincing.

Founder of the National Parenting Association, Hewlett reports on new data showing nearly half of the most successful women in corporate America are childless, mostly contrary to their heartfelt desires. Hewlett begins with interviews of high-powered women--lawyers, journalists, scholars, doctors, businesswomen--who wanted children but ran out of time to begin their families. She reviews recent data on career women and their odds of marrying and raising a family, noting that despite promising medical technology, most women over the age of 40 aren't able to conceive and deliver healthy babies. According to the author, "most of the heartfelt struggles of the breakthrough generation have centered on the attempt to snatch a child from the jaws of menopause." Finally, she presents strategies on how young women can avoid the fate of the previous generation and what corporations can do to support women who want both careers and families. Vanessa Bush
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"(Her) findings to seem to tap into truths nobody wants to talk much about. " -- USA Today

"A powerful and moving book." -- Judith Wallerstein, Ph.D., author of the Unexpected Legacy of Divorce

"Hewlett reaches out to young women and shows them how to create rich, multidimensional lives." -- Cornel West, author of Race Matters

"She presents strategies on how young women can avoid the fate of the previous generation." -- Booklist

"Sure to ignite a lot of discussion among working women and mothers everywhere. " -- Katie Couric, The Today Show

"What Ms. Hewlett found has seismic implications." -- The New York Times

A survey, undertaken specically for this book, shows that 40% of women earning $50,000 or more a year are childless at age 45. So why is the age-old business of having babies so very elusive for this generation of high-achieving women? Why is it that all the new power and prestige does not translate into easier choices on the family front? It seems that women can be astronauts, CEOs, Secretaries of State, but increasingly, they cannot be mothers. Sylvia Hewletts powerful book looks at the hard and disturbing facts and goes on to advocate a new way of approaching the question of motherhood vs. career for a new generation of women.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and author of several books, including When the Bough Breaks -- winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Prize -- and The War Against Parents, cowritten with Cornel West. She is the founder and chair of the National Parenting Association and lives in New York City with her husband and children.