Why are Smart Women Waiting Until the Onset of Menopause to Try to Have Kids?

In a recent PBS “To the Contrary”show about the infertility industry, host Bonnie Erbe` asked: Why did Miriam Zoll wait until age 40 to try to become a mother?

Here is Zoll’s response.

Over the last four decades, we emancipated daughters of America have been taught that we have the power to control our destinies. Programs like the Ms. Foundation for Women’s original “Take Our Daughters To Work Day,” which I helped co-produce, reinforced the notion that we could grow up to be just about anything­­––from astronauts to doctors, to lawyers or plumbers. With abortion and contraceptives legally accessible, we believed from an early age that we could control our reproduction, too. If the Pill could help us prevent unwanted pregnancy, surely we could just as easily manifest a wanted pregnancy whenever we were ready. If we encountered obstacles, well, there was always reproductive medicine like in-vitro fertilization (I.V.F.) to save the day. 

When it came to motherhood, from the late 1990s onward, rumors like “40 is the new 30” began to spread like wildfire among a small demographic...