Hidden costs of career success

She warns against the media hype that paints too rosy a picture of late-in-life pregnancy options. And she criticizes for-profit fertility clinics for perpetuating the belief that it's never too late. "We glom onto the fact that 63-year-olds can have babies. If a 63-year-old can do it, we think a 42-year-old can do it."

Not all professional women regret being childless, of course. About 14 percent of the women in Hewlett's study did not want children. And many women who might have liked to be mothers have made peace with the issue.

Marcia Gronewold Sly, development director development for the Young Musicians Program at the University of California, Berkeley, was ambivalent about motherhood during her prime childbearing years. Today, rather than having real regrets, she simply has "questions about what life would be like with children. I really define my role in life differently, and I can be quite happy with that."

Hewlett emphasizes that it is every woman's privilege to aim for a career-driven life. But to a younger generation of women for whom having a family is still an option and a desire, she offers advice:

First, figure out what you want your life to look like at 45. She suggests an exercise called "backward mapping." Identify what you want, then work backwards to determine how to achieve your goals.

Second, give priority to finding a marriage partner. "The marriage market, the possibility of getting yourself a loving, stable relationship, is much better if you find that in your 20s than if you go searching in your 30s."

Third, be strategic about when you plan to have your children. "It's a myth that you can with impunity plan to have your first child in your 40s."

Fourth, choose a career that will give the "gift of time" and provide a balance between work and family.

Young women, Hewlett says firmly, "absolutely are in command of their destinies. They can take back control and make things work for them. But they can't just leave their private life on autopilot and go after a career. You need to be as strategic about your private life as about your professional life."

That may be easier to say than to do, says Katharine Lord, a young gallery director in New York. "You may think you have a partner for life, and something might change."

Ms. Lord wants children someday, as well as a "strong career." She laments the lack of resources to help women discuss what it means to "have it all," and what sacrifices they must make.

"If I had access to people who had already gone through it, that would be helpful," Lord says. "I could ask questions, learn from their mistakes, find out what they wish they had done differently."

Karen Hurley, who is in her 20s and works for a law firm in New York, finds people her age taking a lot for granted as to how much time they have on their side.

"You need to prioritize things in a way that will make you happy in 20 years," she says. "But that's so counter to the way we see ourselves as always living in the instant. Long term, for someone in my generation, is three years."

Hewlett hopes employers will continue to find ways to be more flexible. And she shares Lord's desire for an expanded conversation about these issues.

"We are ready for much more public awareness as to what our long-houred culture, our delaying family is doing to the sacrificial load that particularly professional women are having to bear," she says. "Once the facts get out, women will make different decisions."

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