This post first appeared here on January 31, 2006, and not all the links within it may still work. But the point about motherhood and feminism is one I’d like to reiterate, as well as to remind folks of a great feminist voice now silenced. If you want to read the original 2006 comment thread, it’s here.
Coretta Scott King and Wendy Wasserstein have left us, much too young in both cases. Readers can easily find many obits and tributes on the ‘net.
I’ve long been a fan of Wasserstein, and remember the birth of her now seven year-old daughter, Lucy Jane, as the occasion of a bitter fight with a dear friend. As is well-known, Wasserstein spent many years in her forties in fertility treatments, anxious to have a child. In his obituary in today’s Times (rather annoyingly titled "Witty Voice of Feminist Self-Doubt"), Mike Boehm writes of her as a woman whose need to nurture led her on an eight-year journey through fertility treatments that culminated in motherhood at the age of 48. Somehow, that description bothers me a bit, and I can’t figure out why. Is it vaguely condescending? Would I mind it as much if the obit was written by a woman? I’ll mull it over. Is it the verb "need?"
Anyhow, when Wasserstein’s account of her journey to motherhood appeared in the New Yorker back in the summer of 1998, I got into a huge fight with a buddy about the ethics of becoming a single mom at Wasserstein’s age. I enthusiastically supported Wasserstein, while my friend accused her — and other older women like her, who conceive children artificially and while single — of profound selfishness. It was strange how heated the argument quickly became, and my friend and I realized that the story of how Lucy Jane came to be exposed a basic fault line in our worldviews. At the time, I was in the midst of my conversion process; my friend was a much more conservative Christian than I. While I was genuinely moved by Wasserstein’s steadfast refusal to let either aging or singleness deter her from her dream of motherhood, my buddy saw her actions as evidence of narcissism and upper-middle class privilege. My friend — at the time a recently divorced father — said bitterly: "Women like Wasserstein think men are expendable. We’re more than sperm donors, you know."
I’m not a bio-ethicist. My recollection of the fertility techniques Wasserstein actually used is vague. I thought I had her book "Shiksa Goddess" somewhere (it has the original New Yorker essay about Lucy in it), but apparently it got misplaced in my last move, or lent to a student, or it walked off into the ephemera. But even now, as an evangelical Christian, I am untroubled by the notion of a woman in her late forties conceiving, bearing, and raising a child without the help of the child’s biological father. Yes, certain fertility techniques that involve the destruction of embryos bother me a bit, but I can hold that discomfort in tension with my very firm belief that the role of science in allowing women to bear children at an older age is a good and positive one.
So many men in my family were only ready for fatherhood in their forties or fifties! The older fathers I know are, for the most part, infinitely more patient and more involved in their children’s lives than those guys who had children in their twenties. I can only imagine how disastrous it would have been had I had children in my early marriages when I was still lost — like so many of my brothers — in an angry, inarticulate, self-absorbed and quite extended adolescence! I’m fifteen months from 40, and only now do I find myself longing for children; only now do I sense within myself the reservoirs of patience and selflessness that I know good parenthood will require. Of course, as a man, I have relatively little to worry about in terms of fertility. (Yes, I know about sterility and tight bike shorts, thanks, and the stil-unclear research about higher rates of autism in children of older dads.)
And I know so many women in my life whose journey has also been a long one! Some chose motherhood young, while others — for countless reasons — chose to wait. And like many folks my age, I have lots of friends struggling with the anxiety and heartbreak of infertility. It’s true that biology is not kind to aging women who long to bear their own children, but it’s also true that one of the chief tasks of science and medicine is to alleviate the cruelties and the injustices of the natural world. Social conservatives urge women to have babies young, and some — like my friend seven years ago — make nasty jabs about forty-somethings who will go through hell for the chance to become mothers. They call it "unnatural", forgetting that our resistance to countless diseases is the product of innumerable "unnatural" modern medical treatments. Nature calls for a quarter of women to die of complications from childbirth; nature calls for 40% of children to die before reaching adolescence; nature tells us that women can’t have babies at 48.
As a man who longs to be a father, I don’t feel myself rendered superfluous by artificial insemination. The way in which Lucy Jane Wasserstein came into the world was not a reflection on men’s collective shortcomings. Wasserstein — as her plays and writings make clear — genuinely liked men. Many women who choose as she did also like men. But love and marriage are but one path to parenthood. To put it in Christian terms, the agape love of parent for child need not be connected to the eros love of parent for parent. Wasserstein went through hell to have Lucy Jane, and then endured considerable criticism after her child’s birth. But her commitment to creating new life and raising her daughter reflected a vital feminist principle: the insistence that women’s lives are not governed by inexorable and unalterable biological processes, and that marriage to a man — for all the joy it may bring to some — is not the only road to motherhood and happiness.
I have two problems with this…
The first is with using science to have a baby when there are, without a doubt, so many infants and children on this planet who desperately need to be cared for. I think that adoption is far more honorable and socially responsible than tweaking nature.
The second, comes from my experience. My mother had me, naturally, at forty with her husband who had already abandoned seven other children – I was the eighth that he left behind. In my youth I watched my mother struggle to keep a roof over our heads. She was 65 when she died, I was 25. I was too old to be considered an orphan, but at the start of my own womanhood, too young to loose the single most important role model in my life.
I hear what you’re saying, Benett, but the mandate to adopt should be for all, then, and not just the reproductively able. Why should those who are fertile have any more right to ignore what is “socially responsible” than those who need the help of science?
And in a world where life expectancy continues to rise and many folks can look forward to their eighties in comfort, the threat of early death recedes. Remember that historically, childbirth killed women all the time — countless daughters grew up motherless.
And above all, people parent best, I think, when they are ready to parent. My wife, well into her thirties when she became a mother, is much more able to nurture and be patient than she would have been in her twenties (she often says this). The same is true for me.
I think we’re mixing up two issues here – older parenting and single-by-choice parenting. My husband and I are about your age, Hugo, and hoping to become first-time parents through adoption, so I can certainly relate to the readiness issues you discuss. But as the child of a single-parent-by-choice, I have to add some caveats.
Children need more than one caring, stable adult presence in their lives to avoid becoming too enmeshed with the single parent. Plus, there’s the benefit of two perspectives and of seeing a healthy loving bond between adults. If someone chooses to be a single mom or dad, he or she ought to work extra hard to support the child’s forming relationships with other mentors/parent figures of both sexes, inside or outside the biological family. The mom also needs to allow the child to have different feelings from her parent – to be OK with the child growing up to say “I missed having a dad” or “I’d like to know my dad”.
I’m not saying it can’t be done right, but it’s often done without this kind of awareness. You get a romanticized “mommy and me” dyad that leaves insufficient room for either mother or child to transfer their affection to an adult partner when the child grows up.
I have no idea whether Wendy W. did this well or badly – I’d just like to see the child’s psychological needs discussed more, in general, instead of always focusing on the woman’s rights.
I’d have to echo Jendi there, Hugo. I’m not sure if you’ve thought about this issue in the last three and a half years, especially since you’ve become a parent. Everything above, however, discussed the situation from the perspective of Ms. Wasserstein with nothing said about how the situation might have been for Lucy Jane, who wound up with only one parent, and not even that after only seven years of her life. Incidentally, do we know whatever became of Lucy Jane?
I have thought a great deal about the issue since becoming a parent, and the experience has only reaffirmed what I wrote here. Even if we concede that the two-parent model is “best”, we cannot let that “best” be the enemy of the good.
We always have reasons to deny someone the chance to parent, or to criticize a decision to reproduce: “They’re too young”, “They’re too old”, “They’re too poor to provide properly for children”, “They’re gay” and so forth. Children thrive on many things, but most of all they thrive on love. Older parents can often give a kind of love and attention that younger ones cannot, and as the son of a single mother, I know full well that single parents can do marvelously well.
Lucy Jane lives with her uncle, Bruce Wasserstein, who is a billionaire.
I’m not talking about preventing anyone from reproducing, but about validating the child’s perspective when his or her needs differ from the single parent’s. Hugo, you had your dad in your life, even if your parents weren’t together, and I seem to remember that you also have siblings, right? That’s different from a mother-child pair w/o extended family, or the child of an anonymous sperm donor.
Now, my mom did a heroic job in many ways, and I’m certainly glad to be here, but when well-meaning feminists reinforce the defensiveness of single parents who want to be everything to their children, important growth opportunities are lost. I agree that we shouldn’t stigmatize any parenting choice unless a child is being neglected. On the other hand, the fear of seeming judgmental prevents a liberal community from even talking about how to support this child’s special needs, and that’s a shame.
To be fair, Wasserstein (like most women who made the choice she did) never dodged the reality that her child would have special needs, and she ensured (read her work Shiksha Goddess) that Lucy Jane would grow up with a community that cared for her.
I think it’s a false dichotomy to say that either we emphasize what’s good for children or we emphasize women’s reproductive rights. If ever there was a “both/and” rather than an “either/or” scenario, it’s here.
Glad to hear that Lucy Jane is presumably well-cared for. I think in any case in which parents are single, by choice or circumstance, some planning is required. Obviously, the issue of the death of the sole parent comes foremost to mind. But even absent that, a sole parent is simultaneously the sole role-model, caregiver, and breadwinner for their child. Difficult to be all of those things at once. Single parents of lesser means often fill in the gap by networking with each other. In any case, I wouldn’t go so far as to call single-parenting per se selfish or neglectful, but I think that planning of some sort for the needs of the child and the means that are and will be available given a lot of potential future events over at least 18 years is the responsible first step.
People die, period. And death is, in many cases, independent of age. Think about car accidents, homicide, cancer, heart attacks, and whatnot. If two people travel together and get into a car accident, both are likely to die. In fact, even if a child grows up with two married heterosexual parents, the mother often ends up doing single parenting, especially if both work. So, please don’t do the “children need two parents” dance without remembering that nobody lives in a social vacuum any more. Biological parents aren’t the only caregivers a child has, in other words, which is why it doesn’t make sense to reiterate the latent heterosexism/ monogamism inherent in the former statement.
Charlotte, I’m not sure who was doing the “children need two parents dance”. Yes, people die, but they are more likely to have fewer years the older that they get. Also, when there is only one parent, that means a “single point of failure”, the death of that one parent is more likely to leave that child an orphan than the rarer occurrence of the death of both. Moreover, death itself isn’t the only issue, as you point out, the modern demands of work often limit the parenting a child gets. My point in my last response was that planning for such exigencies is important, and all the more so in the case of a single parent, and more so again in the case of an older parent who is less likely to be around for 18 years.
In Ms. Wasserstein’s case, it seems that she had a fallback for her child. Realistically, issues with single parentage and care for children are less likely in this sort of case than in a parent who is younger and has fewer resources. That’s where planning probably becomes all the more important, and of course, is often all the more absent (which is usually how younger people wind up as single parents in the first place).