Instead, she did something oh-so-2018: She launched a podcast and began interviewing all the men in her life to see if their sperm was up to the task.
Throughout the course of the podcast season, Hawkey delves into her own childhood, asks close friends and old lovers why they think she was never able to find “the one,” and instructs guy friends on how to use sperm analysis home kits.
In addition to being hilarious, the episodes are invasive and TMI and self-deprecating and embarrassing. But beyond the immediate task at hand, which was to find sperm for her first insemination, Hawkey’s episodes hint at deeper issues.
Why had she failed at finding a mate? Why did Hawkey feel as a young woman that she was encouraged or “allowed” to be driven about her career aspirations but not her family-making goals?
“Women don’t really feel open about talking about this kind of stuff,” Hawkey said. “We feel like we’re whining, or that we sound like we’re little romantics… and it will scare a man away.”
It’s unclear how many women, like Hawkey, set out to become a single mother on purpose. Research to date suggests that these numbers are very low, and because few representative surveys ask women about their plans before birth, scientists can only guess at how common the decision is.
A 2015 analysis of national data from the early 2000s estimates that, at most, less than 3 percent of women become single mothers by choice. Researchers could only guess, but for the purposes of the analysis, they deemed “single mothers by choice” those women who were 35 or over, obtained higher education, and had wanted to get pregnant but were neither living with someone nor married when their first baby was born.
These demographic descriptions fit Hawkey to a T.
Now 40 years old, Hawkey says that if she had known she would be sacrificing her goal to become a parent to achieve her goal to be a working actress in Hollywood, she isn’t so sure she would make the same choices over again.
“I have failed at finding the man of my dreams, and I’ve failed at making that family that I’ve always wanted,” she said.
“I think that probably was hard for me, [and] made it hard for me to start my podcast,” Hawkey continued. “To admit to the world that I was not able to do this thing that I’ve always wanted, and now I have to figure it out by myself.”
As an insurance policy for herself, Hawkey froze her eggs at age 37, reasoning that if she ever did end up finding a partner, he might help her pay for IVF with his sperm if they were too old to conceive naturally.
This put her in the company of more than 20,000 American women who have frozen her eggs.
Experts have often explained a rise in egg freezing and delayed childbearing by pointing to women’s higher educational attainment and ambitious career goals, both of which compete with family-making, as Hawkey said.
But in-depth interviews and surveys with women who freeze their eggs suggest that not finding a partner is an even more salient reason for delayed childbearing. Like Hawkey, these women say that they can’t find romantic partners that they think would be good co-parents.
A 2018 qualitative study of 31 women who had frozen their eggs found that the majority of them hadn’t been able to find a romantic partner, or they hadn’t been able to find a romantic partner willing to become a father, by the time they froze their eggs.
The study, published in the journal Human Fertility, said that two-thirds of the women froze their eggs to avoid what researcher Kylie Baldwin called “panic partnering.” In a piece for the Conversation, Baldwin, of De Montfort University in the U.K., describes “panic partnering” as “entering into a relationship with a partner they would not have otherwise chosen simply to prevent unwanted childlessness in the future.”
Baldwin’s study echoes the findings of a 2013 survey of 478 women who had frozen their eggs. The results, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, found that 88 percent said they didn’t have children yet because they hadn’t found a suitable partner.
Lauren Grimley, a 38-year-old single mother by choice, also joins this episode of IVFML. She said she couldn’t find a romantic partner and that was the primary reason she decided to become a single parent through the use of donor sperm and fertility treatments.
“I’ve definitely met some great guys dating, but I’ve never had a long-term relationship that I thought, ‘Maybe this is the one,’” she said.
When she was 34, she actually did meet someone who was interested in a long-term commitment and parenthood but decided not to pursue the relationship because of a lack of romantic interest on her part.
“It finally occurred to me that this guy was great, I really liked him as a friend, but there was no romantic interest,” she said. “I remember bawling on the bed to my mother on the phone, saying, ‘I don’t want to break up with him, because what if I don’t meet someone else?’”
In the end, Grimley decided that staying with him just to have children would be unfair for their potential family, so she cut ties to embark on motherhood alone.
Four years later, there’s nothing she regrets about her decision.
“You do get to make all the decisions yourself, and while sometimes that can be stressful, a lot of times it’s easier to just have one person doing that,” she said. “I do think I’d love to have a partner, but I know it adds another layer to things, and I don’t have to stress about that.”
In the getting-to-know-you phase, when we're presenting the very best, borderline-Stepford-wife version of ourselves, there are certain things we hold back. They're our things -- anything from resisting the urge to adjust his collar, because the little way it flips up at the back taunts your inner desire for orderliness, to the fact that your guilty pleasure is reading bodice-ripping romance novels -- the campier, the better -- and you dream of writing your own someday. Not talking about that part of you is like trying to hold a beach ball under water -- it's manageable for a while, sure; but eventually, it bursts to the surface. And occasionally, it pops you in the face. Your partner doesn't have to love it (or even get it, really), but if you're interested in this thing going farther, he deserves the chance to know that it's part of who you are. After all, if he's worthy of your time, he's worthy of your crazy.
How Old Is Too Old To Have a Baby?
No matter whether you're in a serious relationship or seriously dating around, almost every woman has done the baby math: If I got married two years from now, and waited a year to get past the honeymoon phase, what are my chances of getting pregnant? Or, "If I met someone great on my next date …" The questions (and calculations) go on and on, all tinged with a lingering concern that our time may be running out. If you do want a child at some point, you can't help but put thought into this question; but when you do, make sure you're armed with the latest information. Recent reports show that your chances of fertility after age 35 might not drop as dramatically as initially thought. (Though it's worth noting that the chance of a miscarriage increases significantly: 15 percent of women ages 20 to 34 experience one, and that figure climbs to 27 percent for women 35 to 39 years old, and hovers at 26 percent for those 40 to 44, according to the National Vital Statistics report in The Atlantic.) At a time when everyone has an opinion about when you should -- or shouldn't -- have kids, it's important to know the facts. And know that the only opinions that matter are yours and your partner's.
Do I Not Want What I Thought I Wanted?
On the days when you leave work fuming, you and your boyfriend love talking about moving to the Midwest and starting an organic garden, leaving all of the city's traffic jams and your office's insufferable meetings-upon-meetings behind. Except now that your partner's looking at real estate listings and it's dawned on you that your days of eating egg sandwiches at the corner deli are numbered, you're starting to realize how much you hate weeding. And how much you love being an hour's drive from the ocean. Letting go of your own dream can be crushing; letting go of a shared dream can be downright devastating, especially if you see that your partner is still gung ho on it. This is not going to be a fun conversation, but it's possible he would be open to a compromise. Maybe you can move to the suburbs, where you can have a garden and remain just a few hours from the beach. Maybe you agree to move West for a few years, and set up a vacation budget for the occasional long weekend near the shoreline. There are a million maybes that may just work. And there are a few that might not work at all. It could dawn on you that your cold feet have nothing to do with the dream -- and everything to do with the person who comes along with it. Instead of moving together, one of you may be moving out, or moving forward, solo.
Is This The Person I Want By My Side As We Fight To Stave Off The Zombie Apocalypse?
Okay, so hopefully you won't ever battle for your life World War Z-style, but (and this is a corollary to the above question) when things seem like they can't get any worse -- and then your car breaks down in the middle of a rainstorm while you're blocking an intersection -- who would you want to be there with you? Not a perfect clone of Brad Pitt, per se, but someone who's ready and willing to see you at your screaming, ugly-crying worst -- and vice versa. Now is the time to climb a ladder of why's, as in: Why do I feel like I can't trust him or her to be there for me? Maybe your climb stops there, with "because it's date No. 3 and the most you can trust someone to do at that point is watch your purse while you're in the bathroom at Starbucks." Or maybe it leads to something like: "Because he's always texting his co-workers," which leads to: So why does that worry me? "Because my ex always chatted with his co-worker Lisa, and now they're dating -- oh." You may find it's not so much about the other person as it is the ghosts of unreliable exes past. So maybe you start with small acts of trust -- like asking your partner to pick up a prescription because you can't get off work before the pharmacy closes -- that can make you feel as if you can count on him to help tackle anything (the rise of the undead included).
Is This All That's Out There?
As quickly as this question comes to mind, we're likely to bat it away, because after a few too many nice-but-not-right dates, it's easy for another, more insidious fear to slither in along with it: the one about being unlovable, unmatchable, destined to be the quirky sidekick in somebody else's romcom. The key to getting out of the rut -- bear with our mushiness here, please -- can be focusing on you. Not in a tour-the-world "Eat, Pray, Love" sort of way, but in a figure-out-what-you-love-to-do-and-do-it way. Martha Beck compares each of us to a bell curve: "The skinnier, upper end represents your greatest gifts, the areas where you are most talented and extraordinary. The few people who share your most exceptional characteristics are your tribe, the population that is most likely to contain your heart's partner." The more you tap into those traits, the more likely you are to meet someone who restores your faith in what's out there. After all, before Zooey Deschanel's "adorkable" qualities made her the "New Girl," she was the eccentric sidekick to Jennifer Aniston in "The Good Girl."
Is This the Real Thing?
In a way, this is one of the happier questions to be faced with -- after all, it only comes up when there's someone with true potential around. It's also one of the cloudier, since it requires you to define what you mean by "real." It can also be Whitmanesque, containing multitudes of other, smaller questions, like "Are we going to get married someday?", "Is this really going to last?" and "Am I settling just to settle down?" The "real thing" can feel vague and unquantifiable at first, but when you whittle away to what you're really asking -- or maybe by going through some of the previous questions -- this one often answers itself.
Former New York Yankees left-hander Fritz Peterson died at the age of 82. He is probably best known exchanging wives with teammate Mike Kekich in the 1970s.
Missed opportunities and crucial mistakes in fights often haunt fighters long after the moment has passed. For some fighters, those regrets can live on in their memories for years.
It's another edition of 'Mock Draft Monday' on the pod and who better to have on then the face of NFL Network's draft coverage and a giant in the industry. Daniel Jeremiah joins Matt Harmon to discuss his mock draft methodology, what he's hearing about this year's draft class and shares his favorite five picks in his latest mock draft.
Tesla management told employees Monday that the recent layoffs -- which gutted some departments by 20% and even hit high performers -- were largely due to poor financial performance, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The layoffs were announced to staff just a week before Tesla is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings. The move comes as Tesla has seen its profit margin narrow over the past several quarters, the result of an EV price war that has persisted for at least a year.
