
Many rom-coms and self-help books preach that "there's no right time for meeting Mr. Right" and that "it's okay" if you don't follow your friends' footsteps in meeting a man at 28 and getting married by 30...and that you've got absolutely nothing to worry about if you wait it out while pursuing your myriad of interests and developing your illustrious career. They make it sound like you've got forever to wait for the right guy.
Yes, you have all the time in the world if love is all you want and love is all you need. Who could put a time limit on love and marriage right? The oldest woman I know who got married for the first time in her life is 67 years old.
But those rom-coms and self-help books that are meant to sound so life-affirming and inspirational nary mention the"having kids" part. ("First comes love, next comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage." Take it from your childhood playground nursery rhyme.) Why do you think "30" often comes up as a benchmark for marriage then? It's not just conveniently put there, or just a number that sounds grown-up and complete and signifies the culmination of adulthood.
The reason for "30"is that it's a well-known fact that women's fertility drops after 35, hence the ideal scenario is that they meet someone by 30 or get married by 30, which gives them 5 years give or take to have a child or a few.
What infuriates me the most about these rom-coms and self-help books is not their messages of idealism and empowerment, as we could all use some in our daily lives. But that they gloss over the harsh and unforgiving fact that if you wait around forever to find The One, you'll miss your train to parenthood.
This applies exclusively to women and not to men, because men don't have biological clocks and they're not the ones giving birth to the babies. Men can be fathers any time they want - look at Alec Baldwin who's onto his seventh child at age 64, and Robert De Niro who also had his seventh...at age 80 (!). All they needed to do was to find women who were 20 to 40 years younger than them.

Unfortunately, this is not a choice for women. If they miss the train, they miss their chance. So if having a baby is a woman's childhood dream, they really should take their reproductive fates into their own hands in lieu of waiting for Mr. Right.
Because let's face it, as much as I or any relationship expert or dating coach want to help you find a marriage partner, we can never guarantee when it'll happen. It can be a matter of weeks or months - and if you're born in the year of the Horse, then congrats, because it's supposed to be your "blossoming" year in the Year of the Snake, aka: this is your year for finding Love! But for the rest of the single ladies, it can be a matter of years. You'll never know. While you can't put a time limit on finding love, you can on having children. So if having a child is what you want and you've been dreaming of becoming a mother ever since you were 12, then you need to be more proactive in making it happen.
Mel Johnson surely knew what she wanted and set out to get it. She, like more and more single women who yearn for children are tired of waiting out for the perfect man and the perfect marriage. They know that the longer they wait, the slimmer the chance they have of ever achieving what they want the most - a family of their own. These are women who refuse to let their chance of having a family slip away just because they can't find the right man. They know they don't have forever to wait, so they made the biggest decision of their lives: having a child on their own. Some using an anonymous sperm donor through IVF and some through adoption.
Mel is also the UK's First and Only Solo Parenthood Coach who supports single women who have or are planning to have children on their own. God knows it's an arduous and daunting experience physically, mentally and emotionally, and it takes a lot of guts, determination and resilience to bring a child into the world alone, or to become a mother to a child who doesn't have one. These audacious and admirable women cannot and should not be left to their own devices - they need someone like Mel and her organization, The Stork and I who can be a support network for them, giving them all the help, advice and love they need. It takes a village to bring up a child, and there's no exception here too.
Kudos to single women out there who have made the decision to have and to raise children on their own without a man in their lives. Who knows? They might meet someone along the way who can be a supportive partner. Or they might not. But they'll be just as happy with or without a man - because they already got what they want the most in life: a family of their own.
Women who have children know it best: there's no other bond that's as special as the one between you and your child's and it's the most profound and unconditional love you can ever experience in your life. (No offence to men, boyfriends and husbands: maternal love and romantic love are two different things so they can't really be compared. That's why women can choose to have children on their own without men or relationships.)
Of course, not everyone wants to become a parent. I don't blame you. Not everyone is up for a lifestyle change that lasts for 15 years, thereafter which you can pick back up on what you've been doing. But before then, your interests had to take a back seat and you only got to do whatever you were doing intermittently, subject to the needs of your child. (That is, if you were a very hands-on mom and just couldn't bear to leave things in the hands of others.)

For women who aren't especially keen on having children, or don't see it as the ultimate outcome of a marriage or relationship, they don't need to worry so much about time. As there's no time limit to finding love; they can find love at 60 or 70 or 90 like my aunt's friend who got married at 67.
But if having children is what you want, you should start exploring your options. There's no point in waiting for the perfect guy who may or may not come along during your most fertile years. Not everyone goes through the "standard trajectory" of "meeting someone at 25, getting married at 30, and having a child or two before 35." If having a biological child is what you want, then you need to start freezing your eggs before your late 30s.
Two of today's most successful and busy career women, Lucy Liu and Naomi Campbell had children on their own without men in their lives - via surrogacy (another woman carrying their baby) with Lucy confirming that she used her own eggs she had frozen when she was younger. They are most content and satisfied with their choice. Conversely, Jennifer Aniston who had been married twice and struggled with infertility bemoaned how no one had told her to freeze her eggs when she was younger.
It's a sensitive subject, egg freezing, sperm donors, solo parenting. But it's worth touching on to avoid having regrets in the future, especially for today's successful and busy career women who don't follow the "standard relationship timeline" or "common trajectory" but have a boundless capacity for love that extends beyond romantic relationships with men.
Comments