The bad news arrived in a brown envelope. I was sitting on the sofa, digging into a korma, half-watching telly as I went through the post.
‘We regret to inform you,’ the letter ominously began, ‘that your AMH (anti-mullerian hormone) levels are low. We suggest that if you want to start a family, you do not delay.’
In short: my ovaries were cooked, my eggs down to their last dozen.
A week previously another 30-something friend and I – curious to see how much time we had left on the biological clock – had gone to a private clinic to get a fertility blood test.
I had not expected the results to be concerning, or to be delivered in such stark fashion. The words on the letter swam in front of my eyes. This was 12 years ago and at that point single, 33-year-old me was nowhere near ‘starting a family’. Wretchedly, I sobbed into the sofa.
I have wanted babies since being a baby myself. As a toddler I spent hours tending to my dollies Suzie and Lucy: feeding them dry cornflakes, changing their nappies, shushing them to sleep (their dad, a Postman Pat doll, was no help at all).
When I was a teenager my mum fostered children who had been taken into care. I spent many a happy hour with a baby on my hip, glowing with the certainty that one of these would be mine one day.
As a young woman I fully expected to be having my first child somewhere around 30. But life takes its turns – and by the time I was on the sofa reading that letter from the fertility clinic, I was very much single.
Our writer Clare Foges often felt judged by others for not starting a family
There had been a few serious relationships and not-so-serious ones. None were bastards or bounders – but also none were quite right.
A serious unease set in: what if I didn’t meet a man in time to have children? The tick of my biological clock clanged like Big Ben at midnight.
As my 30s rolled on, the sight of a pram being pushed down the street triggered panic. Would it happen at all?
What made it worse was the prevailing idea that women like me were not having children because we had chosen to put our careers first. We were cold, hard, ‘liberated’ sisters doing it for themselves – or at least doing it for the status, the designer handbags and the luxury holidays.
For the first half of my 30s I was chief speechwriter to the Prime Minister in Downing Street. It was a great and enjoyable job – but it led many to assume I was choosing a high-powered career over having a family.
If I had a pound for every time someone made a comment to this effect, I’d be giving Elon Musk a run for his money.
There was the older male colleague who, on a work night out, slurred at me: ‘Don’t lose sight of what matters in life… I see a lot of very successful women get to a certain age and regret the choices they’ve made.’
There was a guy I briefly dated whose parting shot was to ‘remember what Marilyn Monroe said: a career won’t keep you warm at night’.
One relative rather smugly said that while she (married with three children) ‘worked to live’, I clearly ‘lived to work’. Most nauseatingly, there was the friend’s husband who – while I cradled his cherubic baby at its christening party – said rather loudly across a crowded room: ‘You’re a natural, Clare… You don’t have forever, you know!’
The implication of countless interactions was that me not having children was my own selfish or foolish choice.
Around 600,000 young women may miss out on motherhood. according to the Baby Bust report by the Centre for Social Justice think-tank
Despite the gloomy warnings of that clinic letter, Clare and her husband now have four children
Their words sprang to mind this week when reading a report from the Centre for Social Justice called Baby Bust. It predicts that around 600,000 young women may miss out on motherhood – and states that ‘immature’ men are partly to blame because they delay responsibilities until later in life.
Finally, an acknowledgement that Britain’s falling birthrate is partly a result of men’s attitudes to having kids – not just ‘self-centred’ career women who prioritise their climb up the greasy pole.
Having been chucked into this bracket myself, I know how painful that portrayal can be. Especially as in my 30s, I was doing everything I could to meet a man: internet dating, real-life dating, taking up a variety of hobbies (fencing and gilding, boxing and lindy hop dancing) in the hope that one of them would throw me into the path of the father of my children.
When I did meet nice men the same age as me, I got the strong impression they were on a different timeline. Had I mentioned children, I’ve no doubt they would have run for the hills.
Many 30-something friends have been in a similar position: dating relentlessly while, yes, having ambitious careers. What else are they going to do while trying to meet the right man – sit around waiting in a pretty frock, picking out baby names just in case?
A good friend, Annie, had just met a man at 34 when her mother sent her a newspaper article about female fertility declining after 35. Why do people think intelligent women don’t know this stuff? Anyone with two brain cells to rub together understands that women’s fertility declines through our 30s.
From my observation, when 30-something women who would like to have babies are not doing so, the reason is less often the allure of promotion and more often men who are a bit flaky.
I have seen friends strung along for two or three years in their 30s, in relationships where no conversation has ever been had about having children. Why? Because they didn’t want to scare off a man who doesn’t have to worry about his biological clock.
Knowing that they have more time to play with, many men are relaxed about not settling down until their 40s or 50s. They believe they can do a George Clooney: stay single until the grey-haired years, when they can pick a beautiful younger woman to be their wife – and mother of their children.
In the meantime, online dating provides them with an endless stream of attractive women they might potentially meet and fall in love with. The choice the internet provides – or at least illusion of choice – has undoubtedly exacerbated the mismatch between the sexes.
With no in-built biological deadline for having kids, it’s understandable that many men want to play this ever-widening field for longer and longer. I wouldn’t call this ‘immature’ – it’s just human nature – but it is having a huge impact on women who can’t meet a partner to settle down with.
Thankfully, when I got together with my husband at 35, we didn’t dilly-dally. We had been friends for over 15 years, so the conversation about having children was had within weeks. Now, despite the rather gloomy warnings of that clinic letter, we have four.
But I have not forgotten that early-30s limbo, when I wanted so much to have children. I feel deeply for all women in that position. It is very tough when the one thing you really want seems out of your control.
Let’s not make their lives worse by painting them as cold, career-obsessed or short-sighted – because this is usually far from the truth.
Brooklyn’s an ungrateful twerp
Brooklyn Beckham with his wife Nicola Peltz in Los Angeles earlier this year
Brooklyn Beckham chose UK Mother’s Day to gush that his mother-in-law Claudia Peltz is ‘the best’: another calculated way of hurting mum Victoria.
Failing a reconciliation (an opportunity that seemed heartbreakingly close when his father stayed at the same LA hotel as him this week), the nicest gift Posh could have had on Sunday was a bit of social media silence from the ungrateful twerp.
I won’t miss NCP parking
So NCP is going into administration? Fetch me the tiniest violin. Dark, dank car parks, tiny spaces, stairwells that smell like an open sewer, extortionate prices.
While I feel sorry for those whose jobs are lost, the company deserved to go under. You shouldn’t have to remortgage your home to pay for two hours’ parking in a cesspit.
A mural by Banksy, whose identity has just been revealed, in Chelsea, west London
Banksy is a genius whose art brings delight around the world. So what a shame that he has been triumphantly unmasked.
His real identity was one of life’s wonderful mysteries – and God knows there are vanishingly few of them.
So, how do you spell ‘hummus’?
Hummus has made it into the nation’s official ‘shopping basket’, the items used to measure inflation.
As a solidly middle-class lover of quinoa, avocado and sourdough bread, the news didn’t surprise me – but the spelling did.
For decades I thought it was houmous, and several supermarkets agree. Who’s right?
