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In the Valentine's Day issue of The New Yorker Magazine Tina Fey struggles with a decision: to have or not to have a second child. It is a dilemma many working women face as they approach the end of their childbearing years. She asks the questions many women ask no matter what number child they are considering: "Do I want another baby? Or do I just want to turn back time and have my daughter be a baby again?"
[Update: Fey announced in April that she expecting her second child later this year.]
Throughout her "baby-versus-work life" dialogue, she talks about the career opportunities she might miss if she has a second child. Then she questions the need for more children to care for her when she is old: "Work won't visit you when you are old. Work won't drive you to the radiologist's for a mammogram and take you out afterward for soup." Will it be too much for her daughter, she wonders.
In her story, "Confessions of a Juggler," she writes, "When my daughter says, 'I wish I had a baby sister,' I am stricken with guilt and panic." She is "pretty sure" her child may be the lone only child in her New York City classroom-odd since thirty percent of children in New York City are only children.
Maybe someone needs to tell Tina Fey that the single-child family is growing at a faster rate than families with two children. And, maybe someone should tell Tina that she doesn't need to be like what she thinks family should be-the traditional family with mom at home, two children, dad at work. That family doesn't dominate anymore.
But, we should commiserate with Tina because the decision to have children is much easier than the decision to stop having them. What would you tell Tina Fey?
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Copyright 2011 by Susan Newman
