Biological clock
The term "biological clock" refers to the societal and psychological pressures women face regarding reproduction, particularly as they age. It encapsulates the tension between personal aspirations, such as career advancement and fulfillment, and traditional expectations around motherhood. This concept gained prominence in the 1980s, reflecting a cultural moment where women's choices began to be more openly discussed yet were often accompanied by conflicting narratives. While media portrayals emphasized the urgency for women to marry and have children, women's studies literature critiqued these pressures, framing them as scare tactics and advocating for broader definitions of success that did not solely hinge on reproduction. The idea suggests that women's fertility peaks in their twenties and declines significantly after thirty-five, although there is considerable individual variability. This dual perspective illustrates the ambivalence towards feminism during that era: while more women sought independence and career-oriented lives, there remained an underlying expectation that motherhood was an essential aspect of a woman's identity. Overall, the biological clock serves as a metaphor for the challenges women navigate in balancing societal expectations with personal choices.
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Biological clock
Slang term referring to a purported desire (primarily female) to have children while still of child-bearing age
During the 1980’s, popular culture embraced this term to emphasize the pressures felt by professional or single women who wanted to become mothers but believed they were running out of time to do so.
Although often meant to caricature the situation, the term “biological clock”—with its image of a ticking timepiece counting down the period in which reproduction remained a possibility—pointed to a genuine double-bind felt by some women forced to choose between different kinds of personal fulfillment.
Beginning in this decade, women’s studies texts and the media treated the social expectation for women to have children, as well as the importance of age to that process, in contrasting ways. Media treatment hyped the desirability for women to marry and have children and the unsuitability for them to have careers preventing this. Women’s texts treated the topic under “infertility” and as reproductive choice and additionally were critical of what were seen as scare tactics. While the media told women they cannot “have it all,” the women’s studies books emphasized that reproduction is not the only measure of success for a woman.
Both, however, agreed that women’s fertility peaks in the twenties, remains strong through thirty-five, and thereafter declines sharply until forty, after which it becomes problematic, although women’s health sources emphasize great variation in decline dates and rates.
Impact
The concept of a biological clock exerting pressure on women as they approached their late thirties was the invention of a society in which some women prioritized their careers or other sources of personal fulfillment above marriage and child rearing. It was therefore emblematic of the ambivalent attitude in the 1980’s toward feminism: The term would have made little sense earlier in the century, when the average woman had little choice but to “settle down” and have children, but it would have made just as little sense were there not a residual sense during the decade that women were “meant” to be mothers and that those species of feminism that denied priority to motherhood were somehow unnatural (opposed to biology).
Bibliography
Birrittieri, Cara. What Every Woman Should Know About Fertility and Her Biological Clock. Franklin Lake, N.J.: New Page Books, 2004.
Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves. New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2005.
Hewlett, Sylvia Ann. Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children. New York: Hyperion, 2002.
Payne, Roselyn. AMWA Guide to Fertility and Reproductive Health. New York: Dell/Random House, 1996.
Sandelowski, Margarete. Women, Health, and Choice. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1981.