Babymania
Katha Pollitt, 21 March 1996
Having a baby is such an impediment to American women I used to wonder why they didn’t go on strike: ‘No equality, no kids!’ It may be that something like that is happening in those countries where family structure and masculine attitudes are in radical conflict with women’s desire for emancipation. Catholic Italy and Spain, of all places, have the lowest fertility rates in the world today; and in Japan, where women typically lose their jobs on marrying and motherhood is a full-time and often rather lonely business, young women are increasingly reluctant to get married at all. But while American women may be getting more sceptical about marriage, their devotion to motherhood remains strong. They may have fewer children than their mothers did (2.05 was the 1993 average) and they may have them a bit later, but a full 88 per cent of women who turned 45 in 1995 are mothers. And this generation (my own) was the first to have wide, if uneven, access to modern contraceptives and legal abortion, and to books and articles and ads touting the childless – make that ‘childfree’ – life.’