Finding Fertile Ground.Infertility and IVF

THERE are two great F-words that form the central equation of the population debate: fertility equals family. Why aren't we having children? The reasons have to do with lack of family formation, or family formation that is simply too late.

That the family-fertility nexus isn't obvious is the fault of late 20th-century feminism, because the feminist obsession with "career" not motherhood as the central element of women's self-definition made fertility the enemy.

In fact babies became the enemy, hence abortion as the first feminist article of faith. Babies can really wreck your career. They consume your life and your heart. Unlike the carefully planned career path, motherhood is instinctive, even making you irrationally unwilling to go out to work, as I was when I left my first child in care and promptly threw up on the footpath outside the creche.

Read more at Finding Fertile Ground.