We Need To Have More Honest Conversations About The Biological Clock

In the vulnerability and honesty only found in a full body laser appointment, the technician opened up to me and said, "Do you think I should freeze my eggs?" She was 34, had a friends-with-benefits situation, and was going on dates and not finding anyone she was excited about. She was also in nursing school and hoping to get married and have a family with around four children. It was routine for us to discuss these intimate female situations. After all, before therapists were a thing, women would go to their hairdressers. Beauty salons have historically been a safe place for these kinds of conversations, and laser clinics have followed suit. So we jumped right into the topic, knowing that while I was the one physically naked, today, she was the one emotionally naked, and we would be having a more honest conversation about the biological clock. 

The term “biological clock” was first coined in the late 1970s in an article in The Washington Post titled “The Clock Is Ticking for the Career Woman.” This article highlighted how a vast majority of women who had pioneered a lifestyle of work, travel, and advanced degrees over husbands were now desperately craving babies. Journalist Richard Cohen wrote, “There was something about their situation that showed, more or less, that this is where liberation ends. This is where a woman is a woman – biologically, physiologically, uncontrovertably different.” 

Nowadays, this article is considered sexist, and The Guardian even recently referred to this article by pointing out that if a relationship doesn’t end in marriage and babies, it’s said that the woman wasted her time, while no one would say the same to a man. Both of these articles point to a hard reality: The biological clock has been politicized. It has been made to fit ideological agendas, and as a consequence, we are all victims of the mixed messages thrown at us. Messages that, even when they make sense, aren’t the truth. 

Nonetheless, the biological clock initially referred to the female body’s natural decline and end of fertility. Going back to the technician, she has clearly followed the idea of “I have time, I won’t be rushed, and my expectations for family and children remain unaffected by my age.” This idea has been strongly encouraged by the reproductive technologies of our times – an option our grandmothers never had – but I would like to argue that it’s an unfair hope. Yes, you could freeze your eggs and take your time to have children, but this will inevitably come with less-than-ideal compromises that many women tend to take too long to honestly consider since we’ve been thinking of hypotheticals the whole time. Instead of fighting against your biological clock and settling for inferior alternatives, it’s time we befriend the enemy and even make it serve us. Making peace with the biological clock significantly changes your life as it makes us reconsider how we approach and prioritize dating, our career, and our own health. 

How It Impacts How We Date

Most of our grandmothers had the man secured before they turned 25. In contrast, most people getting married under 25 today are told they are too young. Perhaps we've made excuses for delayed maturity – excuses that are a disservice to ourselves. I’m not saying we should all marry under 25, but I will say that we should all date for marriage even if we’re under 25. There is strong data suggesting that women’s brains are wired for long-term mating instead of short-term relationships and hookups. So, while marriage and children may not be in your immediate future, dating as if the man in front of you may be your children’s father can absolutely change your approach to the situation. 

There's currently a cheeky TikTok trend happening where women are shutting down men for doing or saying something that “my husband wouldn’t say” or “the father of my children wouldn’t do.” Having this attitude toward dating can oftentimes save us heartache, drama, time, and ultimately serve our biological clock much better. 

Society has left many women in an odd trap. We’re either hooking up and dating too casually, or we’re busy trying to convince a man to marry us and have children. Or, what’s worse, we’re lying to ourselves, thinking we can save these topics for later, when in reality, even if you aren’t planning for children right now, you will always be better off being in relationships in which there is a healthy conversation about family and children. Intentionality in dating will always play in your favor. The trope of the cool girl has pushed many to neglect what has been important all along: the feeling of safety and support, often provided by a quality marriage. But it’s not a matter of women vs. men. It’s about dating someone who wants to get married, instead of forever dating a best friend who is enjoying the ride but hesitant about true commitment. 

We seriously need to factor children into how we date and be aware if the person we’re dating wants them too and in somewhat of a similar timeline. While the relationship may still not work and while, for whatever reason, children may still not be part of the equation, women are still beneficiaries of dating with an awareness of the biological clock. 

How We Plan for School or Career

Many women are told to wait to have children until they are well established in their careers, but perhaps we should consider more what having children while in grad school or while climbing the corporate ladder looks like. Our predecessors have done incredible work securing benefits for us such as paid maternity leave, but the underlying problem is that our professional lives are in many ways compared to men’s. The problem with this is that, ultimately, we are living a woman’s life, not a man’s, and this means we need to do things our way. We should not expect our bosses, colleagues, and industries themselves to treat us as men, even though many have been built around that. This comes down to more than benefits – it needs to be an overall attitude in which women's needs are not a threat to our professional performance. 

Indra Nooyi, the renowned CEO of PepsiCo, has talked quite honestly about her own journey as a successful CEO and a wife and mother of two girls. She encourages women to challenge those around them to be accepting of what comes with being a woman in business. She shared the example of how she had a rule that if she was in the office after 5 p.m., then her daughters must be welcome in the office too. She added that she never received much pushback on this from her superiors, but she had clarity in her mind that if this was too much, she was okay with being let go for this reason. She always stood firm on the fact that she was not one of the boys. She was a mom and a wife, and she demanded to be treated as such. Indra is realistic and optimistic about this, and I believe we now have it easier than she did, as the aftermath of Covid has opened a lot more opportunities for work flexibility and workplaces are more accustomed to working mothers than they were when Nooyi was climbing the corporate ladder.

A good example of this is the Scandinavian influencer Hildegunn. She is a med-student and mother of four under 6 years old, and she often talks about her twin brother who is already a doctor. In this Instagram post she expresses her gratitude for the support she has received in her pursuit of medicine and children simultaneously, and in her joy it is clear that she doesn’t resent the fact that her path toward becoming a doctor has taken longer than her brother’s. She has done it her way.

Another valuable take on this is the book The Comeback. It shares stories of women who took breaks from their careers to have children and were now in their “comeback era,” shall we say. The book itself is a comeback. The author, Emma Gilbey Keller, paused her career in journalism to raise children in New York City. She claims she loved doing this but eventually reached a point in which her children needed her less and her intellectual curiosity was itching. As a response, she went around America interviewing women and writing down their own comeback stories. 

There is no cookie-cutter answer to how to balance children and a career. Nonetheless, both are sacrificial, rewarding, and very personal experiences, so it’s worth taking your time to think of how you’ll craft your own path and take it step by step. Your particular situation and your options are unique, and sometimes they are ever-changing, so stay open-minded and patient through the process. Sometimes, it may feel as if children are a threat to our careers and our careers a threat to our children, but honestly speaking, this should never be the case. So, as you navigate this, consider your values, priorities, and wide range of options. 

I’ve met career women who had planned to come back after their maternity leave and ended up deciding to become stay-at-home moms, and I’ve also met women who aspired to be stay-at-home moms but somehow ended up running businesses afterwards. As they say, what is meant for you will come to you. 

How We Consider Our Own Health

The biological clock is not just about having children, however. At its core, I believe it’s about acknowledging how our bodies function and respecting our own biological nature. Even if children are not in the equation, we should not sacrifice our hormonal health for a lifestyle that imitates a man’s natural rhythm. There’s a reason why the female cycle is now considered the fifth vital sign – it’s a signal of the woman’s overall health.

I recently saw a TikTok reel from entrepreneur Grace Beverley, talking about how much trouble she was having with her PCOS and how she was advised to try and relax more. She acknowledges the fact that relaxing and being an entrepreneur are oxymorons, and she only plans to do so the day her companies are at the level where she wants them. In the meantime, she is being generous with her own self-care. I appreciated her honesty because it is true that we live in a world in which high stress levels are a given in many situations. But why stress ourselves out so hard if we are only to spend our time off in operation burnt-out recovery? 

It’s difficult to say if there has been a rise in hormonal issues or if we’re simply more aware of them nowadays, but what we do know for sure is that, for a long time, we have been slapping bandaids on the hormonal issues that do present themselves. Sometimes, things go unnoticed as some hormonal symptoms can be subtle, and other times, doctors simply prescribe birth control with the promise of more regular cycles. The problem with the birth control approach is that even if it works in temporarily masking some of the unpleasant symptoms a woman was experiencing, it does not ultimately heal the human body. As women, we are far better off getting to the root of the issues and prioritizing our hormonal health without the use of bandaid-solutions. Among the small things that can take you a long way towards hormonal health are:

• Taking long walks.

• Drinking warm water with lemon first thing in the morning.

• Avoid eating processed sugars.

• Get 7-9 hours of sleep every night.  

• Eat 30 grams of protein at breakfast.  

• Don’t drink any caffeine until after breakfast. 

Once we have mastered the fundamentals of hormonal self-care, we can dive deeper into understanding our fertility and how to preserve it naturally. Knowledge and respect for our cycle and biological clock will empower us to make informed decisions about our health and our future family planning. In a 2019 American Osteopathic Association survey, only 28% of the women surveyed said they believe age is the number one factor in female infertility. And almost 40% of women over the age of 35 say they would have tried to get pregnant sooner if they had fully understood their age-related chances at conceiving.

Why IVF Isn’t the Solution to the Biological Clock

It’s easy to understand why freezing her eggs was the obvious solution for my laser technician. For many, egg freezing and IVF are the solution that buys them time, but IVF has been around long enough for us to see that it doesn’t deliver on all its promises, and its results are not equivalent to natural conception. IVF is difficult, more often than not. Many women who believe this is an option aren't fully aware of just how emotionally draining, expensive, and dependent on your health IVF conception actually is. Furthermore, sometimes, even after all the money and effort, it still doesn’t work. So why are we encouraging it so much? The answer may ultimately boil down to greed. There is a whole industry profiting immensely from couples in this situation or women who have decided to take the leap on their own. Like any other product, it’s well-packaged and full of promises people are willing to pay for.

It also provides modern day women with the false perception that they can have their cake and eat it, too. They can waste away their 20s, engage in casual relationships and hook up culture, destroy their bodies with unhealthy habits, and girlboss their way up the corporate ladder while also being able to have a baby if they want later in life. Or so they think.

Ultimately, what this all points to is an unhealthy desire for control over our biological clock. We are playing God, trying to exert how we want our bodies to work instead of understanding how it works and working with it. After years of telling our bodies they are not supposed (read: allowed) to conceive by committing ourselves to birth control, we demand our same bodies create a baby via IVF treatments.

Closing Thoughts

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when we declared war against the biological clock. I believe it must have been at some point in our fight for equality, when we started imitating a man’s rhythm of life instead of honoring our own. The irony surrounding the biological clock is that, aside from any perceived biological limitation, there is joy in having children and using our reproductive system in the way it's meant to be used, and there is no shame in desiring that sooner rather than later. The societal messages about waiting for the perfect moment have left more than one woman wishing they had jumped at the opportunity sooner. So don’t push it away – acknowledge it, understand it, and befriend it; you'll thank yourself later.