Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children [Hardcover]

Sylvia Hewlett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2002

A survey, undertaken specically for this book, shows that 40% of women earning $50,000 or more a year are childless at age 45. So why is the age-old business of having babies so very elusive for this generation of high-achieving women? Why is it that all the new power and prestige does not translate into easier choices on the family front? It seems that women can be astronauts, CEOs, Secretaries of State, but increasingly, they cannot be mothers. Sylvia Hewletts powerful book looks at the hard and disturbing facts and goes on to advocate a new way of approaching the question of motherhood vs. career for a new generation of women.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Between a third and a half of all high-achieving women in America do not have children" and "the vast majority yearn" for them, says Hewlett, founder of the National Parenting Association. In this study of baby lust, Hewlett portrays the anguished hand-wringing by middle-aged women who were career-obsessed throughout their 20s and 30s, only to wake up single at 40, biological clocks all petered out. Infertility treatment is not a solution, she says; it's expensive, dangerous to women's health and unlikely to produce a pregnancy, much less a live, healthy baby. Moms and potential moms from playwright Wendy Wasserstein to a 46-year-old single woman who traveled to China to adopt illustrate Hewlett's thesis that "some of the most heartfelt struggles of the breakthrough generation have centered on the attempt to snatch a child from the jaws of menopause. A few succeed; most do not." Hewlett attests that "if high-altitude careers inevitably exact a price, it's profoundly unfair that the highest prices... are paid by women." "Self-indulgent" women might try to have a child and a career by hiring a nanny, but for Hewlett, it's more "courageous" for a woman to forgo childbearing if a career is her real goal. Hewlett's advice to young women is strangely retro: get married you'll be happier and healthier. She counsels them to give "urgent priority" to finding a marriage partner fast, "have your first baby before 35" and look for work at a family-friendly corporation. Though ardently argued, her case is unconvincing.

From Booklist

Founder of the National Parenting Association, Hewlett reports on new data showing nearly half of the most successful women in corporate America are childless, mostly contrary to their heartfelt desires. Hewlett begins with interviews of high-powered women--lawyers, journalists, scholars, doctors, businesswomen--who wanted children but ran out of time to begin their families. She reviews recent data on career women and their odds of marrying and raising a family, noting that despite promising medical technology, most women over the age of 40 aren't able to conceive and deliver healthy babies. According to the author, "most of the heartfelt struggles of the breakthrough generation have centered on the attempt to snatch a child from the jaws of menopause." Finally, she presents strategies on how young women can avoid the fate of the previous generation and what corporations can do to support women who want both careers and families. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Miramax; 1 edition (April 10, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786867663
• ISBN-13: 978-0786867660
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #476,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and the founding President of the Center for Work-Life Policy, a non-profit think tank where she chairs the "Hidden Brain Drain," a task force of 67 global companies committed to global talent innovation. She also directs the Gender and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. Dr. Hewlett is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Economic Forum Council on Women's Empowerment. She is the author of nine Harvard Business Review articles and 11 critically acclaimed nonfiction books including "Off-Ramps and On-Ramps" and "Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets" (Harvard Business Press). Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and the International Herald Tribune, and she is a featured blogger on Harvard Business Online and Forbes. In 2011 she received the Isabel Benham Award from the Women's Bond Club and Woman of the Year Award from the Financial Women's Association. She is a frequent guest on television, appearing on Oprah, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, the Today Show and CNN headline News. Hewlett has taught at Cambridge, Columbia and Princeton universities. A Kennedy Scholar and graduate of Cambridge University, she earned her PhD in economics at London University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't dismiss this book out of hand...., April 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children (Hardcover)

....because you think Hewlett has an anti-feminist agenda! I am one of the "high achieving" women that Hewlett describes in her book. I make in excess of $200K, have a demanding professional career....and I desperately want to be a mom too. Luckily, I am married, and I'm only 31. Unluckily, we're in the midst of expensive and emotionally/physically taxing infertility treatments. It happens more than young women may think. I certainly never expected to have trouble. Now I see all these women just like me, struggling to have children. Many people don't see this, because infertility is a very isolating, and painfully personal tragedy. Who wants to go public with being infertile? From my seat in the clinic waiting room, in chat rooms, in discussions with female co-workers, it looks like a silent epidemic. I do not regret waiting until my 30s to start a family -- putting aside my job, I was not emotionally ready to do that. But after reading Hewlett's book, I know that if I want a family (and I do), I was right to start now -- she is dead on when she talks about how the ART industry and the media lull women into a false sense of security about their fertility. There *is* a biological clock, and it should be factored into the choices we make -- not ignored wholesale.

I find the controversy over this book very sad and funny at the same time. Wasn't feminism all about giving women all the information they need to make reasoned choices? The whole idea that feminism is about steering young women into go-go professional careers is as short-sighted and uni-dimensional as the way we deal with the threat of eating disorders (that it's not OK to tell kids to exercise and lose weight because they might develop an eating disorder -- meanwhile most of the country is now overweight).

Hewlett is not saying that women like me should have chucked the idea of getting a professional degree, and that I should have been barefoot and pregnant at home by 22. She's just trying to share another side of the story. Knowledge is such a powerful thing. I used to look at women above me and assume that they had chosen to be alone and childless. Now (both from personal experience and from the stories in Hewlett's book), I know that the truth is likely more complicated. Why is it wrong to reveal the regrets that powerful and successful women have about remaining childless? Shouldn't we celebrate ALL the things that women are capable of, including child-bearing? Why ignore that? What is wrong with letting young women know that there are temporal limitations to "having it all" and that one should plan accordingly? Better to know what the potential pitfalls are now, than to find out when it's too late.

As a book, I thought that it was a little too surface-y in its discussions. The book is mostly a collection of quotes and stories (deeply moving stories) from successful women, interspersed with results from her survey. It's not a scholarly treatise, and is a quick read. But it is a book worth reading because it raises issues and questions that should not be dismissed lightly.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Let's redefine "having it all", February 21, 2005

By 

jackieskates "jackieskates" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children (Hardcover)

This book has a lot to offer. First, Hewlett gave her background as a career woman and why she IS qualified to speak as a mother. Though she was able to have a child at the age of 51, she went through miscarriages and a lot of medical expense to do so. She points out that for many women it's not easy or financially feasible to wait until your forties or fifties, and women should know this. I read articles on independent medical websites about the struggles and risks of having children after age 40. To those who know people who have been successful, good for them. But the websites and fertility clinics are reporting that most women don't have it that easy. Pregnancy rates are 4 out of 10 women among 20-somethings, but it drops to 1 out of 10 women among 40-somethings. It's not as common as it may seem.

Giving people knowledge is NOT a scare-tactic. We women deserve to be informed! It should not be hidden information just because some women are uncomfortable with it or believe that it does not apply in their case.

I have to argue with the idea of "having it all." One of my colleagues used to say, "I can do anything, one thing at a time." Males and females sometimes make the mistake of trying to have high-powered, demanding careers while at the same time undertaking the high-powered, demanding responsibility of being a parent of young children. I agree with the suggestion of having children early on, then working on your career afterwards. You can probably have it all - ONE THING AT A TIME.

Even hard-working fathers make sacrificies, although Hewlett apparently does not notice. Fathers sacrifice by not spending as much time with their children as they would like, having wives who divorce them and move away with the kids, or having two, three, or four unsuccessful marriages. This book makes it seem that men really "have it all," when they don't. She even gives exampls of men who don't live with their children or who have been remarried. She says about one man, "At least he has children." However, life is not about breeding children then feeling like you accomplished something because "at least I had children." He was regretful over the sacrifice he had made putting career before family, as many women are regretful.

I would consider being a successful parent and having a FULFILLING (not perfect) career to be the definition of "having it all," even if I relinquish all chances of ever having the corner office or partnership in the firm or the opportunity to travel around the world just a few more times. Women (or men) who leave the workforce to raise children would do well to rethink their thinking. Being flexible at how you define your goals and your happiness is better than feeling hopeless, pitiful, and unchallenged.

95 of 124 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not the life of anyone I know...., May 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children (Hardcover)

I am a 52-year-old man who married at 19, had 5 children by the age of 33, and am now facing the last stages of aplastic anemia. In other words, I think I'm a good deal more qualified to comment on family life than is Ms. Hewlett. I will be honest: Although we both hold masters' degrees, my wife makes twice the income I do, and when we were younger, we split shifts to make BOTH our careers work and enjoy parenting. My wife and I have an income well over six figures, which certainly puts us in Hewlett's "high-acheiving" category. Yet, we could only find a few "caricatures" (since that's exactly what they are) in this book that resembled anyone we knew. We DO have a daughter struggling with infertility--who married at 22, has two advanced degrees, and is 29 and married to an equally accomplished man. Her infertility obviously isn't age-related. (I was so terrified she'd find this book that I returned it to the bookstore.) Nor do I think that men are somehow dumping "accomplished" women in droves. In my professional life as a public interest lawyer, I knew few men who were not married to women who were at least their intellectual equals. Some of them, it's true, did have difficulties having children and careers simultaneously, along with their wives. Was it that they and their spouses "put themselves first?" No--it's a much simpler reason, and as a former economist, Hewlett is a fool for not mentioning it: It's the economy. While the "simple living" movement made a nice dent in this, the fact is that materialistic tomes emnating from places like Manhattan make it difficult for couples to survive on one income. At one point Hewlett writes that she didn't have to "maximize her earnings" during the several cutting-edge infertility she went through at 51. Maximize? Uh, right.

There's a solution to this--it's not scaring little girls into having babies at 19, nor whipping "career women" who have to wait. It has more to do with raising wages, affordable housing, marital stability, better health care (much infertility is caused by untreated STDs), and teaching people about when it's realistic to be parents (I wasn't at 20, some aren't at 35, and some aren't ever, especially if the baby is just another "accomplishment." My mother had six children, spoke only Spanish, and could not read or write in any language. She had her last child at 49--not by choice, either. My father was no more educated, nor did he make a "living wage" for eight people. It bothers me that as I get ready to leave this earth, we haven't come much further than Brownsville, Texas in the 1950s. In Hewlett's view, a woman must have an accomplished husband, children, and high-track career. My mother had few choices--now it appears that my daughters don't, either. What a waste, to promulgate this do-as-I-do "feminism."