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In the room the women come and go, talking of fertility. You can hear them speaking softly at the checkout counters in fancy shops where yuppies rendezvous. "Have you heard about that book? The baby book?"
Ms. Hewlett, an economist, has kicked up a storm of feminist ire by telling young women what every young woman once knew: Feminine fertility turns south around age 28, then plummets in the early 30s. So dangerous is this loosed tiger of biocultural information that the likes of the National Organization for Women wants to sweep it back into its cage. NOW's talking heads have blasted an American Society of Reproductive Medicine ad campaign featuring a baby bottle shaped like an hourglass and the message, "Advancing Age Decreases Your Ability to Have Children." In the room the women come and go, talking of fertility. "Wasn't feminism supposed to be about making choices?" "Or just the choices some women want?" The New York Times recently launched the literati's most powerful salvo at Ms. Hewlett: Her book, the Times reported on page A1, isn't selling. Not a best-seller! Doesn't gender (like sex) always sell? Maybe Hollywood was right: Single career women in their 30s and 40s prefer to spend their free time listening to their manic alter-egos on Sex and the City giggle about detumescence — but only after earnest discussion of Bauhaus designs and Bruno Magli footwear. "Within days Talk Miramax knew it had a flop on its hands," said the Times. Two days later it ran five letters to the editor, each dripping of snake venom, under the headline, "Women, Children and That Book." Just like that woman, Monica Lewinsky, Jezebel to the pro-feminist president, Ms. Hewlett has been called nasty names. Hypocrite: She delayed motherhood (at 51 she bore her fourth child). Liar: Since she confined her research to large corporations (thus excluding a great many women lawyers and doctors working alone or in small practices), she has been accused of statistical legerdemain. (This last criticism has some merit, yet Ms. Hewlett's sample sizes seem sufficiently large and varied to get around it). Her essential finding, while subject to statistical quibbles, is both plausible and alarming: 42 percent of high-achieving, high-earning women are childless at age 40. That's when babymaking becomes a major challenge. We all know plenty of exceptions, successful women who become new moms after 40, but that's the point: We only ever hear about the exceptions — Madonna (43), Geena Davis (46), and Julianne Moore (41). So, if this book is so contrarian, why doesn't it sell? The book's launch, after all, bubbled up a blazing-hot soup of publicity across two continents. In America, it landed on the covers of Time, People and New York magazine, and was promoted heavily on Oprah and 60 Minutes. In the U.K., it was serialized in the Times and it has attracted coverage aplenty in Canada, too. Here's one possible explanation for the disappointing sales: Gender politics are no longer sexy or interesting. As a teenager might say, "that was so twenty minutes ago." At first there was The Female Eunuch, then The Backlash and The War Against Boys; finally, Ally McBeal spawned the fleeting popularity of "post-feminism," a.k.a. the shameless exhibition of female neuroses. Nowadays Ally's off the air. So: Are gender politics really dead? I don't think so. In the room the women come and go, talking of fertility. "How many times have you tried? Don't worry. It took me and Bill five IV treatments before everything clicked." Ms. Hewlett's book isn't selling because it tells women what they don't want to hear. Sure, they'll talk about fertility, feverishly so, but only in private, tense moments with other women. Ms. Hewlett's is much like a book that tells men how their sexual prowess will wane over time. Men know this intuitively at some level of abstraction, but they don't want to buy a book that bites so sharply at their insecurity. Feminism, we see, has achieved its ultimate success; modern women, now as proud-crested as men, don't want to be told how they should feel or act. But there's a price to be had for such pride. Just as men need to demand more and better information about their risks concerning impotence and prostate cancer, so do women need to demand more and better information about their fertility so they can make better choices about when and if to have babies. OK, so Ms. Hewlett's book isn't selling. Let's hope her message is. — Neil Seeman is a writer living in Toronto. |
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