Organic versus strategic timing: how undergrads think about reproduction

In the last century, motherhood, and parenthood in general, evolved from a form of biosocial conscription to being about existential consumption. The vocabulary of “planning,” which informs this evolution, has mostly revolved around delaying reproduction; but, in this century, among the college-educated, it has also become about managing the so-called biological clock. In other words: about managing a “deadline” of sorts—albeit one that is becoming malleable thanks to ever-evolving reproductive-extending technologies.

In this paper, I explore how college students are thinking about issues around reproductive timing—how they project forward; how they view their parents’ timing strategies, and how this impacts how they think about the shape of their own lives. I have undertaken a 10-year study involving interviews with semi-randomly selected college juniors (about 100 every two years). I argue that some students think about their likely reproductive timing in an “organic” fashion and others in an explicitly “strategic,” or “planned hindsight”-type fashion.

Using the data derived from these now coded interviews, I will discuss how students’ answers have changed over the past 10 years, the gender differences that characterize their responses, and the role of “availability cascades” in how they think. And I’ll discuss which groups are aware of “clocks” (i.e. of deadlines vv fertility-extending technologies). Recent research has suggested that all-too-many female students are still, in their very choice of majors, downgrading career goals in anticipation of parenthood. I will deepen and complicate that literature.