"Settling" and feminism (2)

Believe me, I'd love to join the large chorus of people out there dismissing Lori Gottlieb. But, I think she has something right—not everything right, just some things right. I think the problem she has identified is not quite as she describes it, but she has a few things right. This is one of them:

Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

I'm not so sure about the "by extension, a child" bit but, otherwise, this is true. Gottlieb is not talking about women in general here, she is talking about "soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual women". A year ago, the Serpentine One and I found ourselves trapped in a social gathering where there were three such women present and we ended up listening to them go on about the subject for three hours.

One thing that one of the women said really jumped out at me, apropos of the remark about children above. One of the women said she had tried dating younger guys and had given up on the idea because, They wanted children and "I can't promise them that." You could say a lot about that, not the least of which would be the way her experience upsets what you might come to think if you relied entirely on journalism to shape your ideas about men's and women's attitudes.