Nearly half of all highly educated, high-earning women are childless. The more successful the woman, the less likely it is she have a partner or a baby. For men, the opposite is true: the more successful he is professionally, the more likely it is that he will be married with children. These women have not chosen to be childless. Indeed, most of them yearn for a baby and have gone to extraordinary lengths to become pregnant, often derailing their careers in the process. However, Baby Hunger reminds us that, despite the allure and apparent success of IVF treatment, only 3-5 percent of women aged 40 and above manage to conceive this way. The age-old business of having babies is eluding an entire generation of successful women: they can be astronauts, chief executives and politicians but, increasingly, they cannot be mothers. Baby Hunger looks at why. Sylvia Ann Hewlett brings to the book her professional expertise as a successful and leading policy maker and her own difficult experiences of motherhood. Revelatory and incendiary, this unique work shocks and disturbs, but it also offers invaluable ideas for how future young women can escape 'baby hunger'. It is essential reading.
