How poorly does one have to do at a T14 to wind up a CWT?

She'll be dead and gone long before making partner. First!

How poorly does one have to do at a T14 to wind up at CWT?

3.1

I believe they make one partner a year after a death match among their super duper special counsel. There are 5 tiers of special, very special, very very special, super special and super duper special counsel as part of their 19 year partnership track.

Survive and advance baby.

She said, "By the time I'm at a point in my career where I am going to be making partner,..." not "By the time I'm at a point in my career where I am going to be making partner at CWT"

Yeah...doesn't she think dealing with 2 screaming babies for the next few years is still going to affect her performance at bit?

ignore the haters - go for it erin!

she makes it sound like the kids will just be taking care of themselves at age 5. in case she doesn't know, 5 year olds are fucking difficult. CWT is most definitely NOT flexible in terms of allowing people to go home, have dinner with their family, put their kids to bed and get back to work.

in case she wants the little bastards to just fend for themselves, she is a perfect fit for CWT.

LATTY BOY - WHERE IS THE OMM COVERAGE??? A buddy told me that some associates actually went to the Recruiting Coordinators to talk about the whole situation...

I'll bet that the powers that be in CWT just love naive associates like that.

T14? Erin is Harvard baby. So she is HYS, not no stinking T14. And she started at Fulbright before CWT.
I think this is great that she is doing this. Of course she is going to have to work reduced hours for several years or farm out the raising of her kids to an undereducated third world nanny. But she can bounce back from working reduced hours for a few years and then be geared up for her partner run.

12:54 is right. 1-5, you can drop them at daycare. 6+ and they're doing sports, dance, etc - far more labor intensive and substantially more difficult to time manage absent a nanny.

This is exactly why women who want kids should not be attorneys. She wants it all? Can't be done, selfish B. If you want part time kids, convince your sister or brother to have some you can borrow from time to time, or just rent some for the weekend.

Ass. Lat is just bitter that he couldn't hack it as a real lawyer and has to waste his Harvard College & Yale Law degrees writing a shitty blog that can't even compete with the WSJ Law Blog.

Ummm....why exactly would OMM associates be looking to the recruiting dept for help??? Does OMM have some unusual policy of hiring recruiters who are smart and/or informed?

for crying out loud. i'm at a v5 firm with good work and strong career prospects, be it here or elsewhere. and as i type this, i have a baby about to wake up in one arm. it is not easy, but i actually agree that having kids early in a law career is better than later.

If you seriously entertain the prospect of becoming partner, have a vasectomy or get your tubes tied.

"But she can bounce back from working reduced hours for a few years and then be geared up for her partner run."

Not at CWT.

This is exactly why I have unprotected sex with as many females at my law school as possible.

I've got a 2 year old and a 4 month old and partnership is either going to happen or not in the next 2 years.

I am wicked tired all the time, but you can make it work with little ones. That said, most of the women here who go for partnership have their kids AFTER they make partner.

The article is hellastupid, though.

Is this going to become the new stay at home mom vs. working mom debate? Whether it's *better* for career-oriented types to have kids earlier or later in life?

As to whether it's better for one's career, at the two firms that I have worked at, there was sort of an unspoken rule that young (meaning fairly junior) associates should not give birth to children if they are striving to become partners. I'm not saying that I approve of this rule and plenty of junior female associates ignore it, but I think there are quite a few firms where one cannot work reduced hours for a couple of years and "bounce back." Of course, those are probably not the easiest (or greatest) firms for trying to make partner in general.

Kids are such a great accessory - they are the latest fad! I can't wait until mine grow out of the whole "me having to do stuff for them" thing so that I can focus my attention on making millions rather than having anything to do with them whatsoever (not that I have anything to do with them at this point).

The problem with waiting until you make partner, if you are a woman, is (or can be) fertility. I graduated from college at 22, worked for 4 years, entered law school at 26, graduated at 29, did a clerkship, and turned 31 in my first year at the firm. If I had waited until partnership decisions were made on my class, I would have been nearly 40. I don't think it gets any easier once you make partner, and I suspect that it can be harder in many ways.

Hey young, busy, professional, wealthy women have children all the time back where I live. It was no big deal.

God, it's just tragically sad the way everyone is assuming that the woman would have to do the majority of the childcare. Nobody would be wringing their hands over a 26 year old new father's partnership prospects... I understand that the reality is that women do most of the childcare, but still, it's just so depressing that the *possibility* of the dad taking on the majority of childcare isn't even considered...

IF YOU ARE NOT AN ASSOCIATE AT CW AND THINKING OF HAVING CHILDREN BEFORE BECOMING A PARTNER THAN YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2:03. Bingo. I was thinking to myself "Oh, this poor woman is a widow. Hey, wait a minute...."

That said, rotating child-bearing entirely around career prospects for a woman or a man is foolhardy. These things seldom go as one plans (likely the first time in many attorneys' lives they've had any unpleasant surprises of this magnitude). There are zero guarantees in the law. Zero.

I wish my wife was as ambitious. I'd gladly stay home with the kids. As it stands, my beloved will fail to realize her full earning potential leaving me to toil in this god forsaken profession "FOREVER." *say it loudly like in the movie 'The Sandlot.' FOREVER!!!!

This article is really dumb. Since when is 29 "young" to have kids? Maybe there's a subtle distinction between people who have kids in their late 20s versus their mid-30s, but we’re not talking about some huge generational gap. The Rolling Stones t-shirt comment was especially ridiculous. And while it's great that some people decide to have kids early in their careers because they think it is the right personal choice, that doesn't mean they've figured it all out and that it's all going to work out perfectly for them. Talk to these same people in 5-10 years and see if their careers panned out exactly as they'd planned. Probably most of them will not.

Ultimately it's a balance for everyone between work and family, and everyone has to sacrifice something along the way.

2:06, I agree with you up to a point, but the fact of biology is that mothers who do not adopt generally experience decreased ability to pull 14-16 hour days in the last months of pregnancy and need a minimum of 8 weeks to recover from childbirth-- and more likely at least a few extra months to bond with the new child. Breastfeeding an infant is a *lot* of work, and pumping and bottling is not always possible, nor is it a perfect substitute. So my point is that childbirth comes with some temporary disability for the mother, and as of yet we haven't figured out how to farm this out to fathers. And some of the work of early childrearing can be done only by mothers. That said, I am a new mom who plans to return to the firm when my baby is 4 or 5 months old, and my husband will be the at-home parent for the forseeable future. Most people are, however, surprised to hear that we have this arrangement. But I don't see what the big freakin' deal is about it, and neither does he.

2:07 I TOTALLY AGREE!!!!!1 WE SHOULD HAVE A DISCUSSION AT THIS THREAD WITH THE TWO FEMALE CWT ASSOCIATES THINKING OF HAVING KIDS RIGHT NOW.

You are a fucking retard.

2:07 = Erin Foley Lewis

2:14 - 29 is "young" if you live in certain cities. I'm female, 29, and work in DC at a biglaw firm and none of my female friends (almost all who have graduate or law degrees or are still working on graduate degrees) who live in DC, NYC, or Boston are married yet, so kids won't happen till early-mid 30s. I don't think I'd have much in common with someone my age with a kid.

2:16 - Right, mothers are inevitably going to have to take some time off, but it doesn't necessarily have to be career-crippling *years.* And anyway, from what I've seen in my life & in the workplace, new fathers' productivity really drops in the first few months too. I think it's fair to say that a new baby takes a toll on anyone's work life for the first few months.

Something else that bugs me about this article is the notion that when you have kids can be willingly and perfectly timed. I'm sure many of my female friends (me included) wouldn't have minded having kids in our mid/late 20s instead of our mid 30s and beyond, but it's not like we really had a "choice." There weren't exactly a lot of daddy candidates lining up at that phase in our lives.

2:37,

Are you suggesting that men prefer women in their 30s to women in their mid-20s? I feel like the weight of empirical data contradicts that hypothesis.

The ideal way to mix babies & the law would be to kick it old school like Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- have the babies really young, like 20 or 21, then go to law school. A lot of successful women lawyers of her generation did it that way -- they didn't even really get started in their law careers until their kids were in elementary school. But of course, they worked mostly in the public sector, since the private law firms wouldn't hire them.

Back in the old days, I wonder if it was actually easier to be a lawyer and a mother -- it was probably such a foregone conclusion that the first priority was to children that her status as a mother and her abilities as a lawyer could be more clearly separated.

It's interesting how they never, ever write this story about male attorneys.

Are there any NY firms that make it feasible for a female (junior to midlevel) associate to have children, work reduced hours, etc. for an extended period of time?

It would only be "interesting how they never, ever write this story about male attorneys" if "they" wrote for the Wellesley studnet newspaper instead of The Washington Post.

"They" do not write this story about male attorneys because every non-feminist in the country would laugh at them.

01:02,
You are a moron. And a reflection of the ignorant section of the population that sections women off into "career women" or "breeder women."

If a select few are able to make everything work - more power to them and shame on those who opt out of their hard earned career to become stay at home moms, just because they have the option to do so, while their husbands are stuck with the traditional "provider" role. Are we still in the 1800s here????

2:44 - Plenty of men in their 30s and beyond (if not most) prefer to date and have relationships with women around their age, despite the fact that they might find much younger women to be more objectively attractive. The fact is that lots of women get married in their 30s to men of the same age, so the weight of the empirical evidence would seem to be against you.

But anyway, I didn't mean to say that women in their 20s aren't attractive; just that most relationships in your 20s don't pan out, at least for my circle of friends (men & women).

It would only be "interesting how they never, ever write this story about male attorneys" if "they" wrote for the Wellesley studnet newspaper instead of The Washington Post.

"They" do not write this story about male attorneys because every non-feminist in the country would laugh at them.

2:53, congratulations....you're the only one stupid enough in the last 28 commenters to believe I (1:02) was serious.

3:00

1:02 may not have been serious, but that's not a mythical point of view. Unfortunately, many law firm partner's reaction to pregnancy news from female associates is "really? but you're a lawyer," as though the two are utterly incompatible. I've personally been told my a partner not to ruin my career with babies. No male associate would ever have to hear something like that.

One would have to be a fool to breed with a female attorney.

2:53, congratulations....in the 28 posts since my (1:02) original comment, you're the FIRST to believe I was serious. That 27 of 28 knew otherwise makes me more confident in the gene pool. /s/ 1:02

when i made an offhand comment to the partner that i work for (who i am pretty friendly with) that my father is pressuring me to have kids, she said with a completely straight face, "oh god please don't" I am a second year. There is definitely very real pressure to hold off in exercising your reproductive choices as a junior associate. I would be very curious if anyone has any insight in firms that are more forgiving of young women who want to have children and continue to have a rewarding career (even if partnership isn't the end goal).

I'm a man, a father and an associate - in that order. Because I am a man, I am expected (and PROUD) to provide for my family despite rarely having an opportunity to spend time with them. I doubt my lack of time will change when/if I make partner.

Male attorneys at big firms don't have fluff pieces written about their lack of work/life balance because we knew the rules of the game going in.

Life is about choices ladies. You made your beds. Lie in them and shut up already.

3:13 - Hogan & Hartson and Wiley have lower billable tracks that both men and women, including junior associates, with children use. I think some other firms are experimenting with the two-track options too.

Just for the crazed feminists out here, could y'all please clearly mark your jokes with "this is a joke"? Kthx.

Hogan only has the two-track system so that they can pay associates less and hide behind the "quality of life" argument. If the work is there, Hogan expects it to be done. If the work is not there, Hogan pays you less. Advantage: Hogan partners...

I am 29, a mother of 3 and a 3rd year (full associate not a temp and not a contract attorney) at Dewey. Before Dewey I worked at CWT. I've been married 7 years and my husband is in the ARMY (so he's not in the country very often). If nothing else you can be sure that my life is busy and I am tired. I don't travel as much as most of my peers, I don't shop as much, I don't go to the gym as much and I surely haven't paid down as much of my student loans as most of them.

That said, I DO spend plenty of time with my kids. I DO have a part-time nanny that helps keep my life sane. Most importantly, I DO believe my kids are well adjusted and I am sure that they know that both their mom and dad love them like crazy and would do anything for them. Yes, I have missed an occasional PTA meeting and sometimes I get home after bed time so I don't get to tuck them in, but even if I could, I wouldn't go back and not have kids just because they make life a little more hectic.

For what its worth I know it can be done (I'm living proof), it just takes alot of planning and sacrifice. You know, sacrifice, that thing that parents do to make sure their kids are ok. Well, maybe you don't know because most of you don't have kids.

So, you can say what you want about the choices my husband and I have made in life, but the fact of the matter is that it works for us.

There is no god given right to be a partnership track associate. That any firms do it is a testament to how far people bend over backward to accomodate parents.

It is my opinion that most transaction practice groups of major NY firms are simply incompatible with child rearing absent a stay at home spouse or full time live in care (in which case you are probably a terrible parent). I can't speak for litigation. People who think they can have their cake and eat it too are people willing to dump a lot of responsibility on their colleagues without considering the burden they impose on others. For the Wellesley Womyns Club members who want to jump on this, I am making this point in a non gender specific manner.

you know, some people make career decisions based on how and when they can be part of their kids' lives rather than the other way around. Even dads do it.

This is backasswards and so 1950s - partnership at CWT is not what life should revolve around.

3:38, how do you possibly get by with only a "part time nanny" if you have 3 kids and a husband in the army? That makes absolutely no sense. My wife and I are both biglaw associates with just one kid, and we have to have a nanny 60 hours a week (you know, because we both have the same job you do). It totally sucks and is not remotely sustainable (we'll be transitioning to something more manageable in a year, before our son gets old enough to resent us forever).

3:56 the answer is that the younger kids go to daycare in the morning and the older one goes to school. Nanny picks up from there and stay until I get home. She runs them to gymnastics, dance and the like. I meet up with them when I can. When dad is in town he takes big blocks of leave and stays home full time. I have to also say that I work for some of the best partners around and they are VERY flexible about dance recitals and other kid-related activities.

Look, what I do works for me. If you feel the need to change your situation, then so be it. The point is that it is possible to arrange your life so that you can have kids and a legal career.

I'm a part time associate at a large law firm. I'm 29 and have kids. It is far from certain that anyone will make partner, regardless of whether they have kids. It is silly to assume that someone will be a partner by forgoing having children. When I decided to have my kids young, I decided that becoming a mother was way more important to me than making partner with my class - or making partner at all. I did not want to be 35 and going through fertility treatments that are physically and emotionally exhausting because I thought my career was more important than family goals.

There are no guarantees in life - you cannot just decide to have a child and assume it will happen, just as you cannot assume that you will make partner at BIGLAW. The odds of having the family I dreamed of were in my favor at 25 - at 35, that is not the case. At 40, I'd be lucky to get pregnant - and stay that way - with a healthy baby. Careers come and go, children and family are forever. At the same time, I am still on partnership track - albeit a slower one - and I get to have kids too.

If I don't make partner, it isn't the end of the world. I am sure that I can have a fulfilling legal career, inside BIGLAW or doing something else. But at least for me, if I didn't have biological children, I would have been devastated.

2:44, plenty of men are attracted to us cute 20-something associates. Many of them are old enough to be our fathers. Others are young and flaky and not worth our (extremely limited) time. Others are gold-diggers. Others are boring. Still others are competitive assholes who can't deal with the fact that women can be and often are every bit as talented, intelligent, resourceful as they are, and make just as much or more money to boot. You only have to do a quick google search to discovery it has been well-documented that men, the vast majority of them apparently being whiny little bitches*, become LESS attracted to women the smarter and more successful we get, after a certain threshhold. So, yeah, 2:37 is right -- it's ridiculous, not to mention insulting, to assume that "choice" has much of anything to do with any of this.

* I don't hate men. I'm just citing the statistics. If a dude's gonna reject me because he doesn't like that I'm smart, then I'm perfectly happy to reject him right back.

2:16, you say some childrearing work can "only" be done by mothers. Such as...? If you're talking about breastfeeding, you know, they've invented pumps for that sort of stuff (and, in fact, it would be a good idea to let Dad -- or the other mom, or whatever -- feed the baby so he can get some of that bonding and closeness that BOTH parents should be working on).

I agree that this article is stupid. Where are all the people fretting about "oh noes, how will men have kids and manage their careers"? Oh duh. Excuse me for thinking this was 2008 instead of 1958. Next thing you know Lat will post an article talking about "career girls" and tips for how the poor, maligned little office worker man can manage to control himself and act like a respectable human being in the presence of Real Live Actual Breasts (TM).

I got a job in BIGLAW. Of course, that was after a sting in the ARMY. In my free time, I enjoy SCUBA diving, and am avid HAM radio operator.

"I did not want to be 35 and going through fertility treatments...At 40, I'd be lucky to get pregnant - and stay that way - with a healthy baby."

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. It does get harder as you go on, but plenty of women have perfectly healthy babies at 35 and 40 with little intervention. It just takes a little longer:

"Within four years after trying to conceive naturally:
91% of 30-year-olds will be successful.
84% of 35-year-olds will.
64% of 40-year-olds will. "

http://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/news/20040618/fertility-treatment-less-successful-after-35

If you can't get preggers on your own then you can buy a donor egg. No age limit for that.

2:46 = Phyllis Schlafly

Will everyone please stop telling women how we're "supposed" to run our lives? Or at least start nagging the men just as much?

It IS silly to assume that someone will be a partner by forgoing having children.

Whenever I read negative comments about BIGLAW moms with children, such as many of the ones above, I just think how miserable the commenter must be to lead such a sad, cynical, and probably very lonely life.

"I did not want to be 35 and going through fertility treatments...At 40, I'd be lucky to get pregnant - and stay that way - with a healthy baby."

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. It does get harder as you go on, but plenty of women have perfectly healthy babies at 35 and 40 with little intervention. It just takes a little longer:

"Within four years after trying to conceive naturally:
91% of 30-year-olds will be successful.
84% of 35-year-olds will.
64% of 40-year-olds will. "

(from WebMD article - can't post link)

If you can't get preggers on your own then you can buy a donor egg. No age limit for that.

"2:46 = Phyllis Schlafly"

Wow, I'm actually a diehard feminist! That comment was just some idle speculation based on the women lawyers from the 50s that I've known or read about. My point is basically that they were such rare beasts in the olden days that they probably got a lot of leeway to be nonconformist (once they got their foot in the door -- which they all had a hard time doing). They were also forced to take nontraditional paths to power (academia, govt, nonprofits, solo practice) because they simply weren't allowed into the "traditional" firms. That probably also allowed them a lot of flexibility. In fact, those sectors are where you'll still find flexibility, and very powerful women lawyers, today. What I'm saying is that nobody doubted their committment to the law or intellectual capacity simply because they took time out to raise kids -- because raising kids was a foregone conclusion for them. If they were going to be doubted it was because of their gender, period, not because of their childrearing decisions.

Fair enough, 4:45, but I don't think that what we're seeing here has any more to do with the choice to have kids than what you're talking about. We're still doubted because of our gender, first and foremost, as evidenced by the fact that NO choice made by women is considered legitimate (how dare we give women the ability to exercise control over their lives), and men are not questioned doubted when they decide to have or not have kids.

That childrearing was a foregone conclusion for women hardly made things better. I personally would like to have kids someday (though the chances of this happening grow ever slimmer with every miserable date I go on), but there are PLENTY of women out there who have absolutely zero desire to have kids. Particularly considering the burdens that come with an exponentially-increasing population, it's really irresponsible to expect that women "should" have kids, and if they can fit a career in too, hey, great!

Frankly, I think the answer lies not in having one stay-at-home parent and one working parent -- both will wind up miserable. Everyone needs balance. Everyone needs to feel respected and valued, which stay-at-home parents generally don't, because stay-at-home parenting is a traditionally feminine occupation, and traditionally feminine occupations are devalued and not respected -- and you're certainly not going to get that kind of respect from children. Everyone also needs love and soul-repairing relationships, which full-time workers in today's society often don't get, because it isn't profitable for corporate America if its worker bees have time to have a real life (this isn't "the free market," by the way -- the American free market was mortally wounded a long time ago).

The ideal way to solve this problem is for both parents to be able to have some sort of fulfilling career, AND have time to raise kids. The problem is that corporations are structured to think of one person as "full-time," which today means practically 24/7 if you want to make more than 80k a year (and sometimes even when you make less), and assume that someone else can just take care of the other stuff, or the employee can pay someone to take care of it. This is a flawed and broken system dating back to the 50s. It is ludicrous that you only get health benefits and the like if you work "full-time." It is disgusting that long-term debt has become a way of life for the average American. It is wrong that corporations/firms bleed the life out of their employees/associates for a few extra bucks, and slash salaries if the minions dare to request a tiny bit more time at home (as evidenced by the ridiculous "part-time" options offered by most firms, that significantly cut salary in exchange for only requiring you to work hours that would be considered full-time in any other civilized country, except maybe Japan, where they are just as evil and money-grubbing as we are).

There are plenty of creative ways to address this, but partners/CEOs don't want their salaries cut by a whole, maybe 5%, just so that their employees can have better lives (and, accordingly, do better work -- but why be logical and think about the long-term when there's so much profit to be had in the short term? Who cares about the next generation... let them clean up the mess!)

It would only be "interesting how they never, ever write this story about male attorneys" if "they" wrote for the Wellesley studnet newspaper instead of The Washington Post.

"They" do not write this story about male attorneys because every non-feminist in the country would laugh at them.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 15, 2008 02:52 PM
__________________________________

Remember that the next time you and your Fed Soc buddies launch into a "Father's Rights" screed.

Good luck Erin! I'm sure you'll make partner any day now. You seem like the Real Deal!

I don't understand why this is a "very interesting" article. Hasn't this topic been addressed about a zillion times? As for the question of whether large firms are family-friendly, well, what do you think? They're paying you very, very well to put in very, very long hours. If you want unfettered, stress-free time with your child, it's simply not the setting for you. I wouldn't ever say it's not the profession for you because there's many ways to practice law, many of which have decent hours. Of course, they pay less and don't have the same name recognition as the big firms, but it's ridiculous to claim that parents can't be very successful lawyers.

Huge discrimination still against women at the firm. A lawyer's having a functional uterus is a huge potential liability to the Firm. I'm 35 and just married recently. What's shocking is that partners will actually ask, "When are you going to have kids?" Like I know or would tell them or it's any of their business. It's like they want to push you into the mommy track -- or better yet, out of the Firm -- before you're even pregnant.

It's slow-coming but definitely growing: we need a revolution in perspective: That having a family is one of the most important choices and roles a person can have in life, a fundamental human right and a pleasure, and that children need and deserve their parents' attention. When men can finally be the primary caregivers (or at least equal caregivers) without raising an eyebrow, women can finally be perceived as the primary breadwinners.

Cadwalader sponsored an interviewing tips event for Duke 1Ls tonight...you think they gave the same presentation to the people they laid off?

7:03 - I don't work at your firm (I don't think so anyway) but I'm willing to bet partners have bigger things on their mind than pushing you out of the firm. They're probably just nosy and weird like a lot of people.

Also, while I agree that a little change in perspective would be nice, and that having kids is a human right, making partner is certainly not a human right and I don't think its unreasonable for firms to view someone as less likely to become a partner when they have considerably less time to bill hours and do all the other stupid ass-kissing and "practice development" that goes into the partnership hunt.

Totally agree 4:22. My smart guy friends either "marry down" to women who are in non-threatening, traditional roles like nurses or teachers OR they love smart girls. So if a guy thinks I am too smart for him, well, I probably am.

someone is seriously overestimating their self worth if they think being a biglaw lawyer makes you (i) successful, or (ii) smart.

dating a lawyer sucks because the job sucks. guys don't like dating female attorneys because they are generally miserable, overworked and unavailable. that and 90% are fucking ugly.

Mom of 3- Don;t kid yourself- your kids will be pot smoking juvenile delinquents by the time they are 13 and they will resent you for valuing your fucking precious career over them-

Mom of 3- Don;t kid yourself- your kids will be pot smoking juvenile delinquents by the time they are 13 and they will resent you for valuing your fucking precious career over them-

"Within four years after trying to conceive naturally:
91% of 30-year-olds will be successful.
84% of 35-year-olds will.
64% of 40-year-olds will. "
---------------------------------------------

Do you know how emotionally difficult it would be to go through 48 months of failed pregnancy tests?

While there is no guarantee that a 25 year old will conceive easily, female fertility begins to decline at 27. Couple that with the increasing rate of birth defects (1 in 12 babies of a 40+ year old woman will have Downs, not to mention other chromosomal defects), postponing childbearing past 35 is a very risky decision. Even if you do get pregnant, it is heartbreaking to have to terminate a pregnancy because of chromosomal defects or very difficult to mother a child with Downs. Yes, any woman can have a baby with Downs Syndrome or some other defect, but for a woman in her twenties it is much less likely compared to a woman in her late 30s or 40s.

If you cannot get pregnant naturally, there is no easy solution. IVF is expensive (it can easily cost upwards of $100K), the hormones are difficult to tolerate, and the procedure may or may not work. Adoption is costly and can take years . There is a risk that the mother changes her mind in domestic adoption, plus the pool of available newborns is small. Further, if you choose foreign adoption, you do not get to parent a newborn.

Humans may be living longer, women may have careers, but we are physically intended to become mothers in our late teens and twenties.