Sexual revolution has been hard on single women

THE beautiful freedoms feminism brought us has also created an enormous taboo around a very difficult subject, writes Claire Harvey.

IT is a truth universally ­acknowledged that a woman between the ages of 36 and 39 must be in the grip of ­escalating and barely controlled panic about babies.

And it is at that precise moment that this woman, no matter how beautiful or fascinating, no matter how sexy or famous or charming, transforms from desirable to desperate and is rendered redundant in the ­romantic marketplace.

She is, just as much as she was in Jane Austen’s day, a barren spinster.

That is where Sophie Monk is at right now.

No matter how much we try to pretend otherwise, how much we’d like to hope women are valued for more than their reproductive organs, there is no getting away from the truth: most women want children, even the ones who say they don’t. Of course we do. It is our primary biological and evolutionary drive; to reproduce, to nurture, and to protect.

I read Sami Lukis’ memoir this week; an account of her 30 years of dating. That’s 30 years’ hard ­labour with no possibility of release. Lukis, an objectively beautiful woman with charisma to burn, has had more romantic entanglements than she can remember (she says she sometimes tries to overcome her insomnia by counting her sexual partners and always falls asleep somewhere in the mid-40s) but she has never got what she actually wants: not to be desired as much as to be needed.

Lukis has no biological children, and never will have any. Now she’s 47, and is putting a smile on her face and being hilariously truthful about why that’s happened; dating the wrong men, at the wrong time, and perhaps letting the right kind of men go by too many times. “Maybe it’s because I never settled,” she said.

It’s an interesting notion, ‘settling’; the kind of thing girls in their mid-20s scoff about, wearing tiny skirts in tiny bars. It becomes something they say when relationships fail, and it becomes, when the 30s have passed by, an explanation for what’s more likely just bad luck, aided by some bad choices. It’s a not-so-subtle judgment on women who have found a partner and had children, too — the idea every married person must have “settled” for a putz with acne and halitosis because she was too scared to live free and love wildly.

Sophie Monk was honest about her desire to have a children.

Sami Lukis has shared her tales of the dating game.

I feel really sorry for both Lukis and Monk, and I say that without a shred of condescension. I say this, too, genuinely: to be a single, childless woman over 36 is incredibly difficult. It is deeply frightening — not just at a rational level (will I die alone, surrounded by cats that despise me?) but a reptile-brain, neurochemical level.

The female human is hardwired to want children, just as the male of the species is designed to search for opportunities to further his genetic line.

I’m really not trying to sound like Sheikh al-Hilaly here. I’m not even trying to sound like David Attenborough.

I’m saying nobody ever ­acknowledges how hard the sexual revolution has been on women who haven’t been lucky enough to match up by their mid-30s.

The beautiful freedoms that feminism and modernity gave us have also created an enormous taboo around the one thing that unites all women on the planet — the biological drive to reproduce.

That’s why you don’t hear many women approaching 40 admit they want to get married and have children. “Oh yeah, I’m pretty relaxed, let’s just see how we go.” Nobody believes that. But to admit the truth feels like the least attractive thing a woman could possibly do.

Every woman understands this and so, she knows, does every man she exchanges ­glances with. She knows she has become terrifying.

Monk, to her enormous ­credit, was open about wanting children and needing to be loved. She told the truth, in the most excruciatingly public forum, about her fears for her future. Lukis, likewise, has the courage to be open about her feelings of bewilderment about the situation she’s in. Neither is asking for pity. Both are making the best of the situation.

And I think they deserve to be honoured for their honesty.