Quirkyalone: It’s a mindset

Is It Time To Wake Up to the Male Biological Clock?

Apr 16, 2009 - Written by Elline Lipkin  |  Filed under: Featured, Parenting, Quirkytogether

Here’s a preview of what’s to come has Quirkyalone expands to become a group blog. This piece is written by my fantastic, quirkytogether poet friend Elline Lipkin. It’s cross-posted on girlwpen.com.

Lisa Belkin, ever on top of the nuances and foibles of dating, mating and family making in our time, points in a recent Sunday New York Times magazine piece to a new study that is sure to make (at least some) men squirm and women, as she puts it, “chortle” with delight; although the news is, for anyone who thinks about having kids, actually sobering.

Women often bear excruciating pressures around choosing when to have a child, from all angles, while men are told their biology is limitless, hence their chance at fatherhood is as well. Not so anymore. Throughout the past few years more and more evidence is coming to light linking a father’s age at conception to schizophrenia, autism, and bipolar disorder, as she points out (while the mother’s age at conception shows no such correlation). Two years ago the New York Times also ran a piece entitled “It Seems the Fertility Clock Ticks for Men, Too”. Now, Belkin highlights an Australian study that shows that children born to “older fathers have, on average, lower scores on tests of intelligence than those born to younger dads.

There are those who will take issue with the research, claim there’s no adjustment for environment, individual father’s IQ, parental involvement and more. But here are the two lines that made me want to sit up and shout “so there!”: “French researchers reported last year that the chance of a couple’s conceiving begins to fall when the man is older than 35 and falls sharply if he is older than 40.” Later in the article Belkin quotes Dr. Dolores Malaspina, a professor of psychiatry at New York University Medical Center who says, “It turns out the optimal age for being a mother is the same as the optimal age for being a father.” Ha! I wanted to shout at the screen as I was reading.

Really, what I wanted was to do was shout this to all the 50something men who, when I was 35 and entering into the online dating world, contacted me, ignoring their agemates, specifically because they felt they were “finally ready” to get around to starting a family. Most were utterly unapologetic that part of what they were seeking was a woman they perceived to be still fertile enough to incubate their suddenly desired offspring. My response that being contacted in part so I could incubate a legacy child for them was insulting often fell on deaf ears.

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Warning: This post about a little-known scholarship for single parents may make you cry

Feb 26, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Parenting, Personal Growth

Every so often, something random and serendipitous happens that lifts my heart and makes me feel more hopeful about humanity. A few weeks ago, I was reading the corporate bios describing the founding team of the company where I work at my “regular job.” In addition to 25 years of corporate experience, Dianna Mullins mentioned that she is “the founder of the Beverly Mullins Scholarship fund at UC Berkeley, giving scholarships to single parents for the past six years.” Intrigued, I sent her an email saying “Cool! What’s that all about?” Later I buttonholed Dianna in the corporate kitchen and she explained.

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Do Single Mothers Have to Be Nuns?

Feb 08, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Parenting

I always thought it was possible for a single mother to date, and even, hey, get laid, but after reading the recent New York Times Magazine story “2 Kids + 0 Husband = Family,” I started to get scared. (Not that I’m a single mother, but hey, it could happen.)

The article documents a “trend” of college-educated single mothers by choice having a “second child as the path to normalcy” rather than looking for a husband. Of course, one always wonders how deep these trends go. But the article does cite research that second births to unmarried college-educated women have increased sevenfold since 1980.

The author describes very mainstream women in high-waisted jeans in places like suburban New Jersey and Pennsylvania forming all-female communities of single mothers and children. Their communities all sound wonderfully Kate and Allie, except, how do I say this? It sounds so self-sacrificial. The (presumably heterosexual) women interviewed sound like nuns, only raising children is their religion. They’ve either lost interest in men, don’t have time or energy, or don’t want the stability of their lives to be upset by breakups.

This piece made me and another single woman friend in her thirties feel like if we have a child on our own, that’s it. Game over. Single mom quirkyalones, do single mothers really have to be nuns until their children are 18? Please share.