“For the first time, a majority of mothers, 54 percent, have a college education, up from 41 percent in 1990.” (Cohen, 2010)

Cohen’s article, “Long Road to Adulthood Is Growing Even Longer,” featured in the New York Times, discusses demographic change in who and how young adults are defined. In her view, there’s a new group, which falls squarely between adolescence and adulthood. Cohen zeros in on women’s changing views and roles. Educating girls as targeted by programs like The Girl Effect (founded in 2009) has become a key development strategy particularly in the last decade.

More college-educated women make a wide range of choices about their bodies and when/if to have children. As a single, never-married, 36-year-old woman, I can relate to the group of “twenty percent of women in their 40s, [who] do not have children.” Granted, I still not so secretly hope motherhood is in the cards for me, but I feel grateful to have waited to know and love myself first before possibly stepping across that line. It is essential that the proverbial pendulum continue in the direction of feminine leadership before we one day call it back to center. For now, I feel deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to make dramatically different lifestyle choices than my grandmother did.