Motherhood, So Confusing (1 of 5)
Introducing a mini-series on the science and history of in vitro fertilization (IVF), the fertility industry, and the social and legal implications surrounding family planning in 2025.
Since childhood, I’ve contemplated my future motherhood with the same inevitability as death. Growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, bearing children wasn’t something you chose or decided for yourself; it was something that happened to you, much like the other requirements of a life worth living: a husband, a house, and maybe even a profession.
My sisters and I would place balloons under our shirts and laugh in pretend pregnancy. My friends and classmates, little girls in headbands and pigtails, would discuss their futures in meticulous detail. The quick succession of engagement and then marriage, the ideal gender of our first-born, how many children total, how many years apart. We were orienting ourselves, asking essential questions that we could not yet articulate. How will we prove ourselves successful, well-adjusted, and worthy of our fleeting, precious existence?
Over the years, I’ve been scolded and warned so many times about entering a career in the sciences, my ticking biological clock, the difficulty I’ll have in managing both a family and a worthwhile profession. Up until recently, I honestly believed myself immune to all that talk. Yeah right, I thought, it will be different for me. My desires are different from theirs. I can have it all.
As I peer ahead at a future that contains at least seven more years of education and training, I feel my doubts swelling to a crescendo. Even if I have the chance to attend the most accelerated and cost-efficient program, my career as a physician will not be secure until I’m well into my thirties. As I’m working towards forging a meaningful and stable career, I feel my brain rushing with intrusive, seemingly unrelated thoughts and questions. When is the right time for a family? Do I even want a family? How will I know when I am ready to become a parent? When will I be able to take care of myself, let alone a vulnerable, impressionable little human creature?
It seems apt that my first job after college graduation has been working at a fertility clinic in the blue heart of the reddest state. In post-Dobbs Texas, my patients do not have the luxury of terminating unplanned pregnancies. They do not have the freedom to decide to end a pregnancy even if it means risking their health, careers, and personal aspirations.
Our patients, instead, attempt to exert control in the opposite direction. They create options in the face of transition or uncertainty, such as cryopreservation prior to chemotherapy for those with a cancer diagnosis and before gender-affirming hormonal therapy for transgender patients. They undergo expensive, time-consuming, and invasive treatments for only the potential to build a family. These patients have taught me many lessons in resilience, responsibility, and steadfast dedication. I didn’t expect, however, to see myself reflected in their faces every single day, their expressions alternating in joy and sorrow. How naive, I think about my younger self, who refused to confront her reproductive future. Regardless of how progressive our society may have become, women will always feel the heavy slapping of time against their shores. My doubts swirl all around me, growing denser like the thick white fog of a girl trapped in a snow globe. The snow globe world looks so pretty, idyllic even, until unexpectedly shaken by an uninvited hand.
On the surface, it seems that we have come so far. More than half of my class at my medical school will identify as female. Little girls can dream about both becoming astronauts and raising families. The gendered roles of domestic life have ruptured and expanded. My future has broadened in ways that my mother and grandmother could not have anticipated. I am afraid, however, that the boundaries of societal female expectations have not become less rigid. We are expected to do more and be more, while sucking in our stomachs and smiling with grace, a sentiment expressed in America Ferrera’s climactic Barbie monologue, and a contradiction we’ve witnessed amongst female presidential candidates. Motherhood, or planning for the potential for motherhood, is only one component in the complicated mental calculus required of today’s young women.
Over the next several weeks, I will be exploring the scientific and technological history of in vitro fertilization (IVF), the pathologies that may underlie infertility, the people who are most impacted, and the legal and social implications if the science is not well understood by policymakers and citizens alike. In the next four posts, we will parse through the vast landscape of misinformation to establish an evidenced-based, well-informed understanding of family planning during this emotionally-fraught moment in time.
As I commence on this project, I want to acknowledge my own privilege in having the ability to extensively plan for my future family. Too many people do not have this luxury. Please consider donating to Jane’s Due Process, an Austin-based organization that helps provide resources and support to Texas teenagers in need of out-of-state abortions. This organization offers everything from legal advice to emergency birth control options for minors who do not have the choice to proceed with an abortion in their home state. In the coming month, I will be running the Austin Half Marathon and will be raising money to support Jane’s Due Process’ efforts. You can find the link to donate directly through my fundraiser here.
I’m excited to begin this mini-series and please feel free to reach out with any questions, concerns, or ideas for future directions.
Iris Berman is a writer currently based in Austin, Texas. She will begin medical school this summer. All views are her own.
I have also grappled with questions of motherhood. You may really enjoy the book “Without Children” by historian and professor, Peggy Heffington. She examines a variety of reasons women have not had children over history, including lack of community, political unrest/war, and simply choosing a different life. And now there’s climate change.
As for society’s expectations… I’ve lived in the US and the EU. Not much is progressive about the US in comparison to the EU, including the societal pressures around motherhood. In my experience, it’s normal for women to wait to have children till their 30s, even early 40s. I wonder now if it’s also due to the high level of safety for mothers in the EU compared to the US (statistically, last time I checked, I’d never want to give birth in the US if the EU is an option).
Good luck with this series! I look forward to it.