Clock Talk: Metaphor, Aging, and the Reproductive Body after 1980

It was in 1978 that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen first coined the expression “biological clock” to describe the dilemma of declining fertility with age. From the beginning, the biological clock was an inherently gendered metaphor, a symbol of biological difference that revealed the limits of female, but not male, reproductive biology. In the years since its first appearance, the clock was become ubiquitous, cropping up everywhere from movies to memoirs, comedy to high-concept art. In this paper, I will argue that the popularity of the biological clock metaphor has had a profound impact on the way we conceptualize and act upon the reproductive body, both male and female. To this end, I will explore two short case studies which reveal the different ways in which the biological clock metaphor has shaped our conception of the reproductive body. First, I suggest that use of a clock metaphor invoked a mechanical understanding of fertility, in which reproductive time could be stopped, counted down, or even rewound. As a consequence, delayed pregnancy has come to be understood as a technical problem waiting to be solved, foreclosing a more nuanced discussion of the social and economic reasons women delay parenthood in the first place. Second, I will explore the relatively recent adoption of the expression by the medical profession to describe the problem of male reproductive aging, asking how the clock language has shaped both scientific debate and public health practice around this issue.