How to Stop Worrying About Your Biological Clock

In 2001, Rachel Lehmann-Haupt a journalist and essayist living in New York City was on the fast track to having it all; a career, family and love. Then at age 31 she broke up with her boyfriend and found herself starting over with a lot of blooming questions about her future. During this time Sylvia Ann Hewlett's book Creating A Life causing cultural stir. This cautionary tale warned women specifically high-achieving career women about the risks of conceiving a child later in life. Hewlett recommended that women nearing the age of 35 should start thinking seriously about getting married and having kids. Lehmann-Haupt realized she was edging closer to Hewlett's failsafe age of 35 without a plan to have a baby. Rachel Lehmann-Haupt: At 31 newly single and for the next couple of years single and dating. I was very aware of this age 35 that was looming over me with this pressure to sort of find love and create a family before I ran into the risk of having a high risk pregnancy. I thought this isn't fair, this isn't right and I think the answer for women to start earlier is seems too simplistic. Female Speaker: In 2009, Lehmann-Haupt released In Her Own Sweet Time. A candid account of her efforts to reconcile modern love and modern life. Rachel Lehmann-Haupt: And what I wanted to do is I wanted to explain why I thought that it was hard to start earlier and I wanted to create a new road map of all the new choices that we have. Female Speaker: Among the many choices at women's fingertips today is the freedom to remain singe. As Rachel explains, "Our marriage and wedding-obsessed society often makes this option difficult." Rachel Lehmann-Haupt: I actually think that they urge to settle down as more social and motivated. I think that there is an enormous amount of peer pressure around getting married, especially among women. Jainee McCarroll:They each sort of want what the other has, on some level. Rachel Lehmann-Haupt: Right, the freedom. The married women want the freedom, and the single women want -- Jainee McCarroll: Want to be, they want the Cinderella story. Rachel Lehmann-Haupt: I had a whole group of friends get married in their late 20s and early 30s and I didn't do that. And a lot of those marriages are breaking up now. Female Speaker: So how can a woman reconcile watching it all. A loving life partner, a successful career and a growing family, all while maintaining her sanity. Rachel Lehmann-Haupt: I think knowing that she is not alone is one way of reconciling it, that some how we all have this idea that we are supposed to do things in the right order, in the right way, having it all which is obviously what all modern women want is really hard. And the other thing is and I think it's really important is that, you don't have to have it all, maybe you decide you want to be a really good rider and you focus on that and you have a partner and you guys don't have kids. The way to do it is to expand your concept of choice. There are less social stigmas now then they are used to be, so it's okay to become single mom. It's okay to have a kid at 40 and even if you have to use advance reproductive technology that someone tell you that it's not a walk in the park, and it's probably not the first choice, I mean obviously having sex with the person you love is a lot more fun. Female Speaker: In the chapter The sweetness of doing nothing. Lehmann-Haupt described as how she was offered the opportunity to do something she hadn't ever considered and it didn't involve marriage or kids. Rachel Lehmann-Haupt: There was this one day in February where I was so frustrated with dating in New York and I was staring outside at this sliver of the world that I usually love and really makes me feel very calm and I was feeling so constructive. So I called my friend Molly and I told her that some friends of mine were going to down to Costa Rica and she said Rachel, I think you need to just let go and be still and live your life. What she meant by being still is that I need to remember how to live in the moment again and let go of worrying about the future as if marriage and children are the only roots to becoming legitimate, adult maybe a trip to Costa Rica isn't such a bad idea after all and I mentioned the invitation to Molly, go she says, maybe this is my chance to try being still.