Are they connected? Anne Taylor Fleming, in Motherhood Deferred, speaks with some bitterness of her youth, which she spent enthralled with the women’s movement. She achieved everything her feminist gurus said women should - succeeding in a man’s world, becoming a successful writer and journalist.

 Then the longing for a baby struck when Fleming was in her 40s, and after spending a fortune on every infertility treatment in the book, Fleming had to accept that she would never have children. Maybe she would not have had children even if she had tried in her twenties, but she would not know now.

I am afraid a lot of women in my generation may make the same mistake. Not that the woman’s movement was itself a mistake, or that we are better off looking after the children and home (we are definitely not) than going off to work. But when we have to choose between career and babies, the choice should be the babies, especially in your twenties.

The best time to have a baby physically is the twenties. After that the risk of not being able to conceive, or have a baby with problems, becomes steadily higher as you grow older. Of course, a lot of women in their thirties and forties will give birth without problems to healthy babies, but the risk is higher.

If you have your children in your twenties, you can go back to work once they are in school. Even earlier, if you have a good support system for your children in place. That leaves a lot of time for building your career.

Know more about women’s infertility:

1. Change your lifestyle, change  your infertility

2.  Weight loss surgery improves fertility

3. Infertility in women linked to passive smoking

4. ‘Kiss’ therapy for infertility

I read on an internet site that one in six couples in India is infertile. I don’t know how reliable this figure is, but worldwide, doctors agree - infertility is increasing, quite apart from all those national population control programs and  the declining populations of developing countries.

Many conditions of modern life can…