Domestic Product
This blog lives at the intersection of home economics, pop culture and national policy–where we all live as we raise our families (those most domestic of products) or think about when, how or whether to raise them in our transformed world of birth control, expanded longevity, and redefined work options for women and for men. Hard fun. What’s your story?
Ready: Why Women Are Embracing
The New Later Motherhood
In 2006, one in every twelve women giving birth for the first time in the US was 35 or older, while in 1970 it was just one in one hundred. Add in the many contemporary later adoptive moms and you’ve got a substantial portion of the population starting families after 35!
I wrote this book to explore why so many women are making this choice, and what the effects are for the individual women involved, their families and the wider world.
• MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK • new 2012 ready paperback with new data
• view all books
“Gregory, head of women's studies at the University of Houston, has a serious point, and she marshals both anecdotal and statistical evidence to make it. Today's 40-year-old first-time mother not only has plenty of company; she also possesses confidence, professional experience and occupational clout that translate into either leverage on the job market or a happier time out of it, whichever choice that mother makes.”
—Kate Tuttle, Washington Post Book World
• more reviews of ready • view press and media coverage
recent essay
“‘Still Leafing’: Celebrity, Confession, Marianne Moore’s ‘The Camperdown Elm,’ and the Scandal of Age,”
Journal of Modern Literature 35.3 (Spring 2012), 51-76.