Oh Baby!: Karen Kersting at TEDxRVAWomen

Karen Kersting developed a passion for examining the tough decisions women face when trying to balance career and family. Karen's doctoral dissertation examined one of these issues -- How do women really feel about the ticking of their "biological clocks"? -- what she found should make us reconsider how we see women's desire of having babies at any age.

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All right!

Today, I am going to talk about

a worry that I have.

And it is one that I think

a lot of women in
their 30s and 40s might share.

I think I maybe forgot
to accidentally get pregnant.

(Laughter)

So, let me break that down
a little bit, ok ?

Years ago, when the possibility

of me accidentally becoming
pregnant became a possibility.

I took care of business.

I did my research,

I made an appointment way ahead of time,

I read everything.

It was my way. It is still my way.

I can spend three hours researching
which to flanel sheets to buy,

I definitely read fine print
on shampoo bottles,

this is my way.

So, of course when the time came,
I was on top of that.

I was on top of that.

And, of course, I was.
I have been told for a long time

that it was... that having a baby
too young was bad.

Having a baby outside of
the committed relationship was bad.

Having a baby without enough
folic acid in my blood was bad.

So, I listened to this.

And, I took it very seriously.

So of course, I was on top
of that situation by that time.

But, in my 20's, I had things to do.

I was busy having a life,

I was busy having the experiences

I needed
to get that first internship,

to get that first job,
the second job, then grad school...

I was learning things,

I was learning about myself,
and I dated.

I dated great people.

Just nobody that ever
made me feel like

it was really urgent
to have a baby.

So, here I am, mid 30's.

I have done neat things.

I like who I am.

I even almost have Ph.D.

But then I look around,
then I think, Oh!

Oh! So, if I'm going to have a baby,

this is going to need to...
this is gonna need to happen soon.

And there is a lot of fear mongering
out there in the media.

Some of that is true.

There is a greater risk of
not being able to get pregnant

after a certain age.

And there are risks that
your child might have a problem.

But a lot of that is actually overblown.

But knowing that there are some risks,

you'd think that a planner
like myself would have a plan.

But, I don't have a plan.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I'm not even sure
what a plan would look like.

Would a plan be an Okcupid profile?

Would the plan be freezing my eggs?

Would that be buying a house?

I am... I really am not sure.

And I know that I am not alone.

Lots of women are waiting
to have children

or deciding not to have children.

In 2008,

the average age for a woman
to have her first child was 25.1 years.

In 1970's, it was 21.4.

That was the average age
to have her first child.

Also in 1970, only 1 out of 100 women
had a baby past age 35.

Now it is 1 in 5.

So, this is changing that's
affecting a lot of people.

And there is a lot of reasons
for this change.

Of course, there is a birth control now,

so women have a lot more control
over their fertility.

We also getting married later
and less frequently.

But then a lot of women
are also working more,

so we have got issues to think about like

if we can take the maternity leave,

will we lose traction in our jobs,

lose money in our paychecks, maybe?

A lot of women are also
pursuing higher education,

so you spend all that time in training

and there is a different, you know,

a different question at the end of that.

Do I want to risk my training,

the profitability I have, the career
I worked for, to have a child?

And it is a question.

And, you know,

these reasons why women
maybe are having children later

or deciding not to,

tap into another debate
about how we support

women with children
who also choose to work.

And there are policies
that work great for that.

For example, maternity leave
is really important,

flexible schedules are really important,

and child care is really important.

In some places, these are available.

But they're definitely not
available consistently.

And even when they are available,

they don't necessarily alleviate
all the anxiety

of trying to "have it all".

So, there's this
complicated set of factors,

and women are making
their own decisions about

what to do about this

and make sense with all this in flux.

And by the way, young women
know all about the struggles

that other women face
in having children.

And they maybe
making decisions based on that.

It makes sense to feel ambivalent about

whether you want to have a child.

And, amid this complicated
set of factors though,

we see in the media

portrayals of women
in their 30's as baby crazy.

She is a walking uterus.

She is baby-daddy hunting.

Baby panic...

And for goodness sake,
poor Jennifer Aniston!

(Laughter)

We're putting this out there

that women in the 30's
are baby crazy, or

need to be baby crazy or

if you partner with a woman in her 30's,

you need to be worried
about her baby crazy.

So, being the researcher that I am,

I decided to take a look at

what was in literature about
how women like me

feel about their future fertility.

What they were thinking about it.

How they were feeling about it.

But you know what?

There is nothing out there.

There is no research.

There is plenty of research
on women experiencing in fertility.

But, there is nothing on women

in this biological clock worry place

that we hear so much about.

So, the whole baby panic thing
is totally anecdotal.

No research on it.

Well, I decided to change that

and I just recently completed
my doctoral dissertation,

in which I got information
from 600 women

between the ages of 25 and 40,

about their thoughts and feelings,

and how much they were worrying
about this idea of future fertility.

25... 600 women who had
never had children so far.

And here is what I found.

First, women really, really
want to talk about this topic.

I had planned to get
200 people to participate,

and I got that in 12 hours.

No problem.

And ... women just
really wanted to participate.

Not only that they participated
fully in the survey,

but I had open-ended questions
at the end

where they could elaborate on
what they were thinking and feeling.

Everyone filled it out in detail.

My poor boyfriend helped me
read all those, by the way.

So, what I found is women really,
really want to talk about this.

and, I am really excited
to be talking to them about it.

I think it is really interesting thing
that we need to talk more about.

Two, I found that women are worrying.

This worry about future fertility is real.

But, at the moderate level.

They are worrying about it
along with other things like

how they are going to pay the bills,

how they are going
to take care of their parents.

it's one of many background stressors

that we all have.

There is no baby panic.

The worriers are at moderate level.

Third, I found,

and this is really interesting,

I expected that the women
who are worrying the most

would be the oldest
of those women in my study.

That would actually increase with age.

But, that's not the case,

not the case at all.

In fact, the thing that was
most closely related

to high levels of worry
about future fertility

was a little measure that I put in there

about the importance of motherhood:

how much the women
valued that as an identity;

how much she wanted that in her future.

Which it makes sense, right?

The women who are worried

are the ones who
really care about this topic.

And that was different across the board.

And then, fourth,

I found that high levels of worry
about future fertility

were not necessarily related to
clinical depression or clinical anxiety.

There is no baby crazy, ok?

So, yes.

Women are worried

and this is an issue that
we need to be talking about

and not in this myopic, baby panic way.

But also it's not the same
for every woman.

Lots of women
don't want to have kids.

And that needs to be just ok

as having kids late
or having kids early

or having kids middle

or whatever it is that
you choose for yourself.

And what really matters are

a woman's personal values

and how she makes that decision

about how she feels
about her future fertility.

So, people are marrying later;

they're having children later;

they're making different choices.

There is no perfect age to have a baby.

And women need not make that decision
based on social pressures.

There is nobody saying:

"it has to happen by 30."

"it has to happen by 35."

And there shouldn't be.

Because that is not
the reality for every woman.

Bottom line is that

it'ss not fair to characterize,

characterize women as baby crazy.

We need to stop doing that.

When we do that, we devalue
the individual experiences of women

and we really devalue
the society that we've created

that allows people to create
their lives the way they want.

Which is a great thing.

And we need to support that

also for women in their 30's.

So, we need to contextualize
this biological clock thing better

and stop yelling about our crazy ovaries.

We need to do a better job

supporting people who do parents

so that it’s not so scary
to have a child,

and is a rational choice for someone
with a great career.

We definitely need
to let up on the baby panic,

and we need to add this topic
to the overall conversation

about "women having it all."

(Applause)