Madsen says she's hopeful that more couples — and companies — are learning about the biological limits on fertility. “I think there is more awareness today of the need for women to take the pregnant pause in their careers and have their kids,” she says.

But that doesn't necessarily make it any easier to break away from a successful career and jump into pregnancy and parenthood — and then try to juggle it all with an employer who may or may not be family-friendly. “A lot of women feel trapped,” Madsen says.

‘Sold a bill of goods’
Heather Duvall, 37, of Burnsville, Minn., waited to have kids not just because of her career, but because her husband was finishing business school. So when the couple felt the time was right, they started trying and Duvall conceived. But the happy news wasn't met so warmly by one of her managers. She recalls him saying: "Heather, why did you have to go and get pregnant on us?”

He knew she most likely wouldn't be maintaining her current hours — from early in the morning until late in the evening — as a financial analyst. One woman at the company did keep up the pace and her 3-year-old developed an imaginary mommy as a result.

“I thought, gosh, I don’t want my kids to have an imaginary mommy,” Duvall says. So after her son was born eight years ago, she went back to work part-time, working from home. But she always felt pulled in two directions, especially since her son developed cerebral palsy — likely from complications during her difficult childbirth — and needed medical attention. So she quit working altogether and volunteers on the board of her hospital and takes care of her family, which now includes two kids.

She doesn't think women today — who are often raised to get advanced degrees and pursue high-powered careers, and are then confronted with the pressure to have children in a relatively narrow span of time — have an easy time of things.

“I think my generation has been sold a bill of goods,” Duvall says. “We've been told that we can have a career and children and we can take our time doing it. Everyone who lives on my street, in a metropolitan suburb, has used some type of fertility assistance.”

Helen Farmer, a professor emeritus of counseling psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has studied women in the workplace, says there is a long way to go before many women find any kind of work/family balance.

“Here we are in 2007 and it’s the same problems we were addressing in the ‘80s,” she says, referring to women trying to do it all yet not getting a lot of support from companies or having access to quality, affordable childcare. “We made some progress in the ‘70s and now it's still stalled.”

Law firms, universities and other white-collar employers have started making things easier for valued workers — women and men — to take time off for kids, allowing employees to return after an extended leave and still accrue time toward tenure, promotions or retirement plans, for instance, Farmer says. But many other employers still don't view parents, especially mothers of young children, as an asset: “They think they're not going to get as much dedication,” she says.

Still searching for Mr. Right
Of course, for many women, timing a family isn't just about career paths and being educated about their fertility. There's also that little issue of finding Mr. Right.

Ideally, Kerri Wakefield, 31, an academic advisor at the University of Maryland, would like to have kids before she's 35. But she's single and about to embark on a Ph.D. program in education at the University of Michigan, which she hopes to finish when she's 36.

“I worry about an increased risk of birth defects but hope that if I keep myself healthy, I will have healthy babies even after 35,” she says.

And if she doesn't find that special someone in the next few years and have kids of her own, she's not going to stress too much about it.

“If I can't conceive, I will definitely adopt,” she says, even as a single woman in her 40s. “I’ve never been really attached to having kids that have my genes. If you have love to share, then who cares if it came out of your womb?”

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