The biological clock

Sylvia Ann Hewlett has released a new book called 'Baby Hunger' which is causing a storm on both sides of the Atlantic.

She interviewed a large number of highly successful women and found that 49% were childless, most did not chose to be and most bitterly regretted it.

Far from having it all, they left it too late.

On Breakfast, we spoke to Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Christina Odone, deputy editor of the New Statesman.

(To watch the above discussion click on the video icon on the top right hand corner of this page)

The author had conducted the survey in the U.S in January 2001 and it was called 'High Achieving Women'.

It targeted the top 10% of women, measured in terms of earning power and focuses on 2 age groups, the 'break through generation' 41-55 and their younger peers 28-40.

High Achievers are defined as those who earn over $55,000 or $65,000 depending on age and ultra achievers earning over $100,000.

The book is the results of her findings. She found that:

33% of high-achieving women are childless at ages 41-55, that figure rose to 42% for cooperate America and 43% for academic America. In contrast, only 25% of high achieving men are childless in the same age.

Only 14% of those women say they definitely had not wanted children, more than a quarter of the women said they would still like to have children.

Only 60% of high achieving women in the older group are currently married, in contrast 76% of older men in the same category are married.

29% of high achievers and 34% of ultra-achievers work more than 50 hours a week. 14% work more than 60 hours.

The problem is getting worse, 55% of the younger women are childless at 35, only 38% of older women were childless at that time.

89% of young high achieving believe that they will be able to get pregnant in their forties.

66% of women who left their careers would like to go back to work.

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In her book Hewlett calls for changes in workplace policy and how women plan their lives.

She says young women should be more strategic about their personal lives and plan when they think they're going to have children.

She asks them to figure out what they want their lives to look like at the age of 45, both in terms of career and personal life.

If they think they want a career and children they need to plan very seriously. In particular she says they should;

Give urgent priority to finding a partner, particularly in your twenties.

Have a child before 35, women shouldn't wait until their late thirties.

Chose a career that will allow you to have a time off, certain careers lend themselves to mothers.

Hewlett says the facts of life include that a woman's fertility drops by 20 per cent after the age of 30, by 50 per cent after the age of 35 and by 95 per cent after the age of 40.

Only 24 per cent of 38-year-old women become pregnant after trying for a year. The Centres for Disease Control say that the chances of a 42-year-old woman having a baby with her own eggs, even with advanced medical help, are less than 10 per cent.

Some of the women Hewlett interviewed had spent agonising years and a great deal of money pursuing fertility treatment.

But a woman's fertility has declined by 95% by the age of 40.

Relatively few women are able to have a first baby using their own eggs even with the help of test-tube techniques beyond their 40th birthday.

Success rates are higher with donor eggs, but the child will not be genetically the mother's, and anyway donor eggs are in very short supply.

She writes: "The problem here is not only that women are procrastinating too long; it is that men veer away from 'challenging' women because they have an atavistic desire to be the superior force in a relationship.......In the immortal words of Cher: Snap out of it, guys."