If you are a woman who’d like to have one or more children read on…

Single?

Assume that you’ll meet that special man and raise a family, once you have established your career?

In a committed relationship, focused on career and delaying having children?

Beware!

For ever-increasing numbers of women today, the achievements gained over recent decades have come at an unexpected cost. There’s a lot of grief and enduring disappointment because they do not have the children they’d assumed would be theirs one day.

As a human relationship consultant I’ve heard hundreds of women in their forties and fifties tell of their feelings of sadness and loss because they will never have a child of their own.

Beth Forbus, in her seminal book, Baby Hunger, first published in 2000, revealed the results of interviews with women in the UK who in the 1990s, as ‘the breakthrough generation’, held major positions in business and professions.

Initially intended as research about the achievements of successful women, this research morphed into something else: a sorry tale of the sadness felt by the majority of those interviewed because they had missed out on having a child. For only a small percentage, not having offspring was a conscious decision.

These days you do not need to be a CEO or very ambitious to find yourself with an empty nest – and not because the chicks have flown. I would agree with the conclusion of Beth Forbus that women who have a child high on their wish list should strategise to achieve this early in their careers.

However, if you are on the other side of 40, don’t despair. I was blessed to have my only child when I was nearly 43, even though this was against the odds!