Women in MIDS Coffee Meetup: How to Know You Are Ready to Become a Parent

A discussion of decision-making, science, and experiences of fertility, aging, pregnancy, and other concerns

Open to all women-identifying MIDS students and faculty.

Beth Klem is an only-parent / single mother by choice who has worked in the tech industry for over 2 decades, in roles ranging from “webmaster” to startup co-founder, among others. She currently leads user experience research efforts at CoderPad.

As she approached 40, she had this nagging sense that she should stop waiting for “the relationship” to happen first, and should make up her own mind about having kids. Months of approaching the question through reason only sent her into impossible-to-solve loops of logic. One day, after a lot of practice listening to her intuition, the epiphany hit her: she wanted to be a mom — to experience motherhood, even if that meant the “hard” path of doing it on her own. Two years later, her daughter, Marlowe was born. It was the best decision she’s ever made.

Please note this meeting is off our regular biweekly schedule to meet Beth’s time constraints. We will not record this meeting to protect everyone’s privacy.

We will start with a presentation of data around fertility, pregnancy, and birthing. Then Beth will introduce herself and talk about her journey. The rest of the meeting is for open discussion. If you would like to present please contact Doris Schioberg (dschib@berkeley.edu).