Motherhood vs career

by Nana Adae-Amoakoh

A nice house, a loving husband and two beautiful kids – this was what most of the women of the ‘50s aspired to.

Sixty years later there’s the added extra of their own successful careers.

The economic empowerment of women in the 20th century now means that every female in the developed world can expect to achieve as much as her male counterpart.

But this comes with a cost and today, women are often forced to juggle between career and family life.

With many prioritising their education and careers before raising a family.

The number of female graduates has been increasing for years and as a result, many decide to delay having children.

Students of today

Jennifer Crouch, a Camberwell student said:

“Having children is a huge responsibility and I would like to be able and willing to prioritise their future above my own.So before I have any, I’d need to be satisfied with my ‘achievements’ or profession and currently I’m not.”

And when university draws to an end, female students are consumed with the prospect of finding work and immediate plans seldom include marriage and starting families.

There are of course exceptions but the statistics can’t be ignored – according to the report carried out by the Office for National Statistics, one in five women remains childless due to the modern lifestyle.

Those trying to establish themselves in the creative industries are very much aware of how difficult this might be.

Talks with industry professionals boil down to the same points; work experience, low-paid internships and making contacts: essential if you are to last in this dog-eat-dog environment.

Some female students may have relegated having children until they are older, but how many of us have considered the difficulties of having children around or after their mid thirties?

During this period the chances of having a down-syndrome child sees an exponential increase as well as the possibilities of other congenital abnormalities.

A study, published last year by Queen Marry University London, revealed that delayed pregnancy has become a main contributor to a 71 per cent increase in number of babies diagnosed with Down’s syndrome.

“It is better having a child younger, because you get the most challenging part of your life out of the way very quickly,” was the opinion of a mother studying at LCC.

Tilley Harris agreed with this but included: “You can be a young mum and still have a successful career, if you have a support network around you.”

Hollywood stars have also glamourised childbirth in later life, encouraging us to further indulge in this idea.

Have the traditonal roles changed?

However, the success rate of getting pregnant after forty is poor and few have mentioned the need for donor eggs.

The booming fertility trade is a testament of these difficulties as well as the price at which treatment comes.

In the “bread winner model” that commonly prevailed only half a century ago, women’s careers were seen as subordinate to that of the breadwinner men.

Now, programmes and films such as Sex and the City (SATC) have fed us with an image of strong independent women, who are successful and free.

We may wince at the idea of being a 1970’s stay at home mum but how much better is modern-day motherhood over theirs?

It's doubtful that we'll ever put the genie back in the bottle and even debatable if we should attempt to.

However, female liberation through education and the expansion of the work force shouldn’t be at the expense of women as mothers.

How society intends to cope with these changes will certainly be an interesting struggle.