Abstract

Subject to Debate

Change the sexes, though, and the same story gets a different slant. According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, today's 50-something women professionals are in deep mourning because, as the old cartoon had it, they forgot to have children--until it was too late, and too late was a whole lot earlier than they thought. In her new book, "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children," Hewlett claims she set out to record the triumphant, fulfilled lives of women in mid-career only to find that success had come at the cost of family: Of "ultra-achieving" women, only 57 percent were married, versus 83 percent of comparable men, and only 51 percent had kids at 40, versus 81 percent among the men. Why don't more professional women have kids? Hewlett's book nods to the "brutal demands of ambitious careers," which are still structured according to the life patterns of men with stay-at-home wives, and to the distaste of many men for equal relationships with women their own age.