The Mother Load

I travel a fair amount.

They say travel broadens the mind. Sadly, I have found it also broadens the hips. Whether the food is airport or airline, it travels to only one place on my body; and it stays well beyond its welcome.

Anyway, apart from eating, what I do a lot of when I'm travelling is talk. It passes the time and you do meet some very interesting fellow voyagers.

For example, I bumped into a very nice young lady on a flight to Ireland the other week.

Frankly, I was a little jealous of my new friends youth; oh, to be young again and have all of that time ahead to play in.

But, leaving that aside, it was interesting to hear what my companion wanted to do in her life. Travel, travel, travel about sums it up!

More interesting still was her view of motherhood.

Put simply, she wanted to delay it as long as possible. She had seen friends get pregnant young who were now chained to relationships and the kitchen sink. Not for her, I am glad to say. She considered motherhood a load with which she didn't wish to be burdened for a least a decade (being 20, she had time to spare).

It made me think hard about how difficult it still is for young women to make the right decisions for their own futures, resisting the pressures that push them to conform.

Well, I say conform but what I really mean is one thing: have children.

It seems bizarre to me that 60 years after the Pill finally gave us the potential to control our fertility, many women are still not exercising that control to make their life experience different and better.

A friend of mine is a school teacher. She teaches in what can best be described as an inner city school. In that school, around 70% of families are single parent. The vast majority of those single parents are, of course, women on their own.

Some of these single parents have 4 or more children. Many of them are living of benefits and staying in horrible rented accommodation, with no possibility of ever getting anything better. The past, the present, the future, identical. And without hope.

So more of us need to get smarter, like my friend on the flight to Ireland.

Controlling when you conceive is the single biggest freedom we have ever gained-more important even than winning the right to vote.

Independence for women today IS available, far more so than it was in the "swinging sixties". Freedom to be educated, the ability to compete for any job, the money and time to travel to the four corners of our planet-all of that is there for women who control their own destinies-and who start by controlling their fertility.

Personal fulfilment is the prize for all women. Let's go for it, girls-like cash , it is very cool!