She Had 9 Kids, Then a Career: Have It All — But Have It Early
What if starting with marriage and motherhood isn’t a detour, but a strategy? Some women’s lives suggest it’s time to rethink the script.
The New York Times recently profiled Sean Duffy, former congressman turned Trump cabinet member. But the real star? His wife. Rachel Campos-Duffy married young, had nine children, and built a media career after she'd done both. In an era that treats early marriage as a death sentence for women's ambition, she's a counter. She has it all.
In 2012, geneticist Rana Dajani suggested: “Why not encourage women to have children first, then pursue their careers?” She had four before starting her PhD.
And in Other Feminisms, Leah Libresco Sargeant writes about investing in what outlasts you — not status or salary, but the long, slow goods of family. “We postpone children for the sake of our careers,” she writes, “but few careers last a lifetime. Children do.”
For decades, elite feminism has screeched: delay. Delay marriage, delay children, delay entanglement. But what if that’s costing us more than we admit?
The Timeline We've Stopped Questioning
Consider the modern timeline: establish yourself professionally, achieve financial security, experience freedom, then — maybe — consider family. It sounds logical. Responsible, even.
Susan Patton was blazed in 2013 when she wrote that letter to Princeton women, urging them to find husbands while still in college. The backlash: Anti-feminist. Desperate. Regressive.
I wish I’d listened.
She was warning us about a mathematical reality: that pools shrink, that compatibility is easier when you're both still becoming.
I didn’t date in college, and then I moved abroad. No time for a tether if you’re living in Cambodia on your own. No room for a pause, no space for a man, if I’m too young to get married or have kids. At 23, I was kite surfing in Kampot and leading work trips in Bangladeshi refugee camps. My priorities were to have as much adventure as possible while building my career.
Rachel Campos-Duffy had her first kid at 23. And the NYT piece wasn’t flattering her when it mentioned that. Nine kids. Think of all those diapers. But if I had to choose between never having a family or nine kids? I’d choose the kids. If I had to choose between a decade of adventure and sitting in a fertility clinic at 42?
If only I hadn’t been too obedient to a timeline that forgot to account my biology.
Because biology doesn't negotiate.
At birth, you have about 1–2 million eggs. By 30, you've lost roughly 90% of them.
At 30, a healthy woman has a 20% chance of conceiving each month. By 35, it drops to 15%.
At 40, your monthly chance falls to 5%.
We know these numbers. We just believe we'll be the exception.
The Shrinking Pool
Throughout my childhood, my father constantly shared this story:
A brilliant woman in his medical residency had standards — a long list of what she wanted in a partner. Smart, accomplished, tall, funny, ambitious. She was 26, going places, unwilling to settle.
Years later, at a medical conference, he asked if she'd met anyone. The list had gotten shorter.
A decade after that: shorter still.
By their twenty-year reunion, he didn’t ask, but she offered: “Just a man."
My sister listened, married her college sweetheart, now a surgeon.
I scoffed. I’m 30, on my third dating app. She has a kid, I have eggs in cryo.
Refinement and Rigidity
I'm objectively "better" now than I was at 20. I speak more languages, I can hold my plank longer, I have mastered the brunoise. I’m kinder, mellowed out in therapy. I can host a five-course meal for a dozen people, knead sourdough challah, tablescape like it’s my job, and act like it was “no effort at all!” on four hours of sleep. My stock portfolio is solid, my Spotify playlist isn’t just Brad Paisley on repeat, and all my acne is gone. Oh! And I fixed my posture.
These are supposed to be wins.
But I’m also pickier. Less patient. More observant and less tolerant. The men I dated in my early twenties wouldn't get a swipe today (“what do you mean you can’t tell a Turner from a Constable?”). I expect guys to have thought about fatherhood and partnership (most haven’t). The girl I was then — less polished, more pliable — was better able to love. And my bad posture? Well, I was able to date shorter men.
We tell women to wait, to perfect themselves first. But maybe if we paired up younger, we’d refine together.
Beyond the Binary
I'm not advocating for a return to the 1950s. I'm not saying marry the wrong person just to marry young. I'm not suggesting women abandon their ambitions. But it’d be nice if our culture didn’t mock women like Rachel Campos-Duffy. If family first, career later was a normal option, not an exception.
Current career timelines cost us. And this idea of “finding yourself” before marriage feels like learning to dance alone — technically perfect but missing the point.
And the questions I can't stop asking:
At what point does "knowing your worth" become an excuse for avoiding the vulnerable work of learning someone else’s?
What if women are like wine — better with age — and men are like soft cheese, needing the right environment to mature?