BIOLOGY is destiny. That sentiment, often ascribed to Sigmund Freud, has infuriated women for the best part of a century. It became even harder to accept after the contraceptive pill came on the scene in the 1960s. Women had the chance to seize control of their lives and they did just that, changing society鈥檚 destiny for good.
The gender revolution remained incomplete. The pill allows women to avoid getting pregnant when they don鈥檛 want to. Alas, it is no help when they do. Men can, in principle, become fathers at any age. But women who choose to defer childbearing face biology-as-destiny in another guise: the inexorable ticking of the biological clock.
At some point, even a woman who is undecided about having children will need to make a decision one way or another 鈥� lest it be made for her. The physiological fact of declining fertility, combined with social pressure to have children, create a formidable imperative to avoid 鈥渓eaving it too late鈥�.
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Now the biological, personal and social drivers of women鈥檚 destinies are being disentangled. Reproductive technologies have already pushed back the age limits on female fertility. New research raises the prospect of becoming a mother at any age (see 鈥�Ovary banks: Freezing the biological clock鈥�).
鈥淩eproductive technologies are raising the prospect of women becoming mothers at any age鈥�
The idea of mothers much older than the norm is repellent in some quarters. But this is more of a knee-jerk response than a rational one. Our norms have already shifted: it is no longer remarkable for a first-time mother to be well into her thirties.
Critics of late motherhood also worry about the well-being of children. There are clearly certain drawbacks to having older parents of either gender. But a secure, worldly-wise mother might raise a child better than a young, unsettled one. As yet, we cannot tell for sure. And we also don鈥檛 know how many women, freed from the tyranny of the clock and given time to think at length, might eventually decide not to have children at all.
It鈥檚 early days yet. But these technologies may well make their way into the mainstream. If they do, we will find out definitively what it means for women, and for society, when biology can no longer be said to be destiny.
