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Unpalatable reason so many career women end up childless

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Former Lehman Brothers CFO Erin Callan now says she regrets letting her Wall Street career consume all her time, keeping her from having a personal life

Erin Callan is a former tax lawyer once dubbed ‘the most powerful woman on Wall Street’. She now says she made a mistake in choosing a career over having children — and is trying for her first baby at the age of 47.

She’s an extreme example, but there is an increasing number of women like her. Last week, new research from the Office of National Statistics revealed the devastating figure that one in five British women over the age of 45 is childless.

Of all the unmarried women I know who don’t have children, none has been as extraordinarily successful in their career as Erin, who rose to become the chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers. But they’ve all got good jobs and enjoyed years of the kind of economic freedom their mothers could only have dreamed of.

So why are they single and childless? I’m afraid the reason is unpalatable, but simple: most of them put far more effort into honing their careers, their figures, their homes and their wardrobes than they did into their romantic relationships.

Unlike previous generations, they haven’t been dependent on a man for social status, a roof over their heads or permission to buy a new pair of shoes. Unlike their mothers, who made getting married a priority, they didn’t have to.

Instead they played the field, just like too many men have always done.

And just like too many men, when the going in a relationship got tough, they didn’t hang around. Then one day they woke up and found that all the decent available men had gone.

Erin Callan says that since she lost her job in 2008 she has been able to focus on her personal life and her new marriage, but has only just started trying for a family

Women today are better educated than men, with more of them gaining degrees and entering top professions such as law and medicine than their male counterparts.

So the available pool of similarly well-educated men has shrunk, and as these women are often reluctant to ‘marry down’, potential mates are snapped up faster.

But when I ask men why they think so many women are still single, they all give another reason: most of the career women they meet are controlling and uncompromising — and men find this behaviour emasculating.

Sheryl Sandberg says women must 'lean in' to their work as they consider starting a family rather than leaning out, as they usually do

That’s why younger women — our daughters, our sisters, our colleagues — need to understand that finding the right mate is just as important as building a fulfilling career. If that means making compromises, so be it — marriage is about compromise, on both sides.

And I’ll tell you this: you won’t find many women in happy marriages who wake up one day and realise at the age of 45 that they were too busy to have a baby.

At the moment, the chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, is in the headlines for having written a book called Lean In, which urges women not to give up on their careers when they have a child, but to work out ways of having both.

It’s an interesting idea and one that I believe is possible — but, in practice, it requires a supportive partner and the relinquishing of any ambition of getting to the very top.

Not fair, I know. But better than the crushing sadness of discovering, when you’ve reached the top of the tree in your 40s, that a missed period means not that you’re at long last pregnant, but that you’ve hit the menopause and will never be able to have a baby.

Yes, a career is glorious. I cherish mine, and urge all women never to give up theirs if they can help it. But not at the cost of something even more precious and much longer- lasting: a family.

Sarah Jessica Parker says that a lifetime of high heels has ruined her feet

As the formerly high-flying Erin Callan says: ‘Work always came first . . . I now realise I sold myself short.’ Sadly, she’s realised it too late.

At last, a reason to love Mondays again. ITV’s new crime series, Broadchurch, is simply brilliant. David Tennant and Olivia Colman are sublime and the plot utterly gripping.

We haven’t had this much reason to look forward to Mondays since the late and much lamented Spooks. Already, I never want Broadchurch to end.

SJP’s style slip up

Sarah Jessica Parker says that after a lifetime of wearing high heels, she’s ruined her feet. The alternative could be worse.

According to the Daily Mail’s health pages yesterday, slippers cause 11 times more injuries than high heels. They don’t get you much sex in the city, either.

Police are still failing childrenThe first complaint about Jimmy Savile was made in 1964.

Because he was famous, it was put in a file marked ‘restricted’ by Scotland Yard, together with two later complaints.

So when other forces began investigating similar accusations, the earlier allegations didn’t come to light.

Kirsty Allsop says the phrase 'too posh to push' distresses some mothers

A similarly ineffective file-sharing system meant that Ian Huntley was able to get a job as a caretaker at a school in Soham, despite the fact he’d been investigated by other forces at  least eight times for sexual offences, including rape.

So what’s happening now? Not much at all, by the sound of it: almost 50 years after that first allegation against Savile, the 43 police forces in Britain still don’t have an effective system for sharing information.

How many more children must suffer before they do?

Kirstie Allsopp says the phrase ‘too posh to push’ distresses mothers like her who gave birth by Caesarean. I’m sure she’s right. But as the NHS hospital with the highest rate for Caesarean deliveries is the Chelsea and Westminster, where some of Britain’s wealthiest mothers give birth, and the lowest is in Barnsley Hospital, where some of the poorest babies are delivered, I think she’s lost the argument.

Bowie’s dark past David Bowie’s first wife Angie has revealed their marriage featured drug-taking, adultery and frequent three-in-a-bed sessions.

      More from Sandra Parsons...   Can no one force GPs to do their job properly? 21/05/13   How could Tia's grandmother have trusted such a monster? 14/05/13   Here's proof Kate McCann's right never to give up hope 07/05/13   My advice to new mum Kate? Ignore ALL advice: Why the Duchess of Cambridge should follow her instincts - and turn to her Mum for support when she needs it 30/04/13   Behind most great women is a resentful husband... Denis Thatcher, found his wife's success hard to deal with. The need to strive and achieve is inbuilt into most men's DNA 23/04/13   We women failed to follow her blazing trail 09/04/13   Single child families and an epidemic of loneliness 26/03/13   Miser Mick is right not to help out his children 19/03/13   VIEW FULL ARCHIVE Once, she claims she came home to find him in bed with Mick Jagger — but then her ex-husband’s technique, she says, was to seduce any competitor.

Meanwhile, Bowie and his current wife, Iman, say they are ‘very strict’ with their 12-year-old daughter Lexi, monitoring what she watches and refraining from telling her about her father’s background.

This is understand-able, but doomed  to fail — especially when she finds out about her father’s rampant debauchery.Theresa May is being talked up as the next leader of the Tory party. She’s certainly an impressive Home Secretary, but much as I’d love the next

Tory leader to be a woman I doubt she’ll make it. She lacks one essential ingredient for a great leader: passion.

Mrs Thatcher had it; David Cameron doesn’t. You can’t manufacture it — and you can’t be a successful Prime Minister without it, either.

Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce put their pride before their family, inflicting terrible harm on their children in the process. What a pity their sentence didn’t include an instruction that they spend two hours of every day of their incarceration talking to each other about what they can do to repair the damage.

Gwyneth Paltrow says carbohydrates are unhealthy and avoids feeding her children bread, pasta and white rice. I know she’s only trying to give them the healthiest upbringing possible, but this is madness.

The response of my daughter’s school friends who were banned from eating sweets when young was to gorge themselves on chocolate at every birthday party.

I fear that Gwynnie’s two children will grow up to have similarly disturbed relationships with food.

Can Sam avoid curse of Hello?The wedding of Richard Branson’s son, Sam, to Isabella Calthorpe (whose half-sister, Cressida Bonas, is dating Prince Harry) was a five-day extravaganza in the African bush.

The couple allowed their wedding to be covered by Hello! magazine — an astonishing spread of 46 pages, with more to come next week.

Sir Richard Branson's son and heir Sam tied the knot with society blonde Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe

Perhaps, like his father, Sam is addicted to publicity and likes to take risks. But given the infamous curse of Hello! and the fact that the more lavish the wedding, the more likely divorce is to follow (who can forget Liz Hurley’s extravagant nuptials, which ended in divorce four years later?) this seems foolhardy in the extreme.






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