Fed up and optimistic, times two

From thousands of miles apart, two women writing for two newspapers are responding with like minds to the barrage of negative reports on older women that have been making headlines recently.

From London and Los Angeles, today’s news on the topic is speaking with one loud, intelligent and amusing voice.

Up to their swan-like necks with stories of ticking biological clocks, children born to mothers under 25 being almost twice as likely to live to be 100 and a heck of a lot less likely to have fertility problems, Megham Daum and Daisy Waugh are digging in with their stilettos and deciding to resist being swayed by the science-du-jour.

Good thing, too, because when it comes to any of the issues making the news today, it’s a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t toss-up that can’t possibly outmaneuvered.

As Ms. Daum puts it:

Long before most women have an ounce of concern about the viability of their eggs, they’ve been well informed of the pitfalls of not planning. Delay college too long, we’re told, and you’ll wind up answering phones about the time you should be getting your own office. Settle down before you’re 28 and you’ll have cheated yourself of the all-important “experimental phase,” (promiscuity? a switch in sexual orientation? dating a drummer?) which, in certain circles, is considered a prerequisite to finding someone reasonable. Put off permanent commitment until your mid-30s, however, and you’re dealing with a very limited pool of potential mates.

As for the baby question, we all know the drill. Start a family in your 20s and you’ll likely face serious economic obstacles that might even bar you from the middle class. Wait around much longer and, well, we all know how that story turns out.

What we’re left with is a female life plan that is so beholden to tight schedules that even with careful timing you can’t win — you’re either fighting biology or you’re embarrassingly retrograde and unambitious.

From London, Daisy Waugh’s take is more than similar:

We are fed a constant drip of negative, alarmist stories about the dangers of “delaying motherhood”, and I can’t help it, I smell a rat.

… Last week, we were told that babies born to older mothers are almost half as likely to live to 100 than babies with mothers under 25. Like a lot of mothers, I felt a lurch of guilt when I first read that. Until it occurred to me that even if it were true (which I doubt: famously, there are three types of lies . . .) who the hell wants to live to 100 anyway?

Of course, any discussion of women and children in the same breath in the UK has to include a celebrity endorsement:

We should ignore the doom-mongers. Laugh at the statistics. And lie back and think of Madonna. If she can do it — at fortysomething and all scrawny and driven — then anyone can.

All skinny and driven! I LOVE it!

And from the L.A. side? Something classically SoCal:

… the only thing worse than having kids before you’re ready is knowing that they could be talking about you in therapy until they’re 100.

Yep. More writing like this is just what we need right now. If there’s one thing nay-sayers can’t stand it’s is being laughed at. YOU telling ME? Yeah, right. Ha, ha, ha, ha …

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