The window of opportunity

Other than the fact that criticizing the Pill is a fast-track way for a contrarian to rile up feminists, I fail to see the point of this "exposé" on hormonal contraceptives. Are the oh-so-sophisticated, Pill-popping ladies really unaware of the drop in female fertility that comes with aging? Unaware maybe it's not a bad idea to go off the Pill a while before trying to get pregnant, to get a sense of one's baseline fertility? Is it supposed to come as a shock to women that the Pill prevents them getting pregnant during their fertile years? Isn't that kind of the point?

To address the NYMag piece's main point - women miss the chance to have babies because the Pill lets this happen... On a more general level, is any life led with such an eye towards potential future regrets? As in, however much a 33-year-old woman who finds out her fertility peaked early might think she wishes she'd been knocked up at 17, what of the 17-year-old she once was, who lived, no less rationally, in complete and utter fear of getting pregnant? Who, when she finally opted to sleep with her boyfriend, insisted they use every known method of contraception all at once? Are we to take the views of the woman at 33 as her true feelings, the ones of the girl at 17 as some kind of childish illusion? Failing to take consequences into account may be a flaw of the young, but revisionist histories of one's youth and the reasons decisions were made in the first place are just as screwed up. This is just a variant of the discussion around "settling" - women who find themselves single at 40 may wonder what they were thinking, dumping that perfectly good boyfriend at 25. If, at 25, they failed to consider how they'd feel at 40, they are also, at 40, selectively ignoring negative aspects of that earlier relationship.

The unfortunate fact of female sexuality in our society is that too-young is very quickly followed by too-old - to conceive, or even to attract many men in the first place. 'You're not allowed to date, young lady' (from conservatives) or 'You're too young to settle down' (from liberals) segues almost instantaneously into 'What, no boyfriend?' The elusive window-of-opportunity - not the Pill, not the tendency of 20-somethings in crappy relationships to end those relationships - is the problem.

Solutions? Since the biological clock is unlikely to budge, it's clear we have to look, at least in part, at the younger end of the spectrum. As it stands, all long-term romantic commitments begun prior to age 30 are viewed as having rushed into things. Without reverting to a system where women are stigmatized for not having settled down by 21, we could shift to one in which 23-year-old couples wouldn't be treated like experimenting middle-schoolers. I wouldn't suggest encouraging those who wouldn't do so otherwise to marry or similar at 20. I would suggest removing the stigma that says that to be well-educated and impressive and so on, you have to find 'that special someone' at 29-and-a-half, marry at 31, and reproduce before (horrors!) 35. I'd instead encourage the happy couples 18-25 that exist anyway not to end their relationships simply because 'there's so much more to experience.' I mean, if you're in a relationship at any age and you feel there's so much more to experience, that's not a great sign about the relationship. But if all is well, the social pressure to explore other options isn't terribly beneficial.

If this change occurred, while there'd still be plenty of women trying to have kids for the first time at 40, there'd be more having their first child with their husband of several years, whom they'd dated several years prior to that, at 25. A certain number of women who'd resented having gone the 'explore other options' route unnecessarily would have reproduced. This is, at any rate, the only way I could think of to address the 'crisis' of coastal-elite female fertility that is about increasing women's freedom, rather than the reverse.