Playing Russian roulette with those pesky biological clocks is the latest gambling fad to grip superwomen who’d happily trade a buggy for a seat in the boardroom; Editor’s Comment looks at whether career-hungry ladies are really having their cake and eating it.

Madonna did it at 42, Liz Hurley at 36 and Cherie Blair at the grand old age of 45. Candles on the cake, it seems is just no longer a barrier to starting a family and just as we can cheat the ageing process with a liberal smattering of botox injections and an ashtanga yoga teacher we can also fit family around our own personal greasy pole goals.

Reported in the Times, an editorial out today in the British Medical Journal gives warning of the risks run by women who wait until their mid-thirties before trying for children.

“The authors, all obstetricians and gynaecologists, said that the ‘have it all’ generation of women who go for careers first, then try for children, were defying the natural progression of their biological clocks. They said that many seemed unaware that they could miss out on motherhood altogether.”

And according to the Office for National Statistics, over-35s now have the fastest-growing birth rates.

“Women having babies in their 40s have nearly doubled in ten years. The number in their 30s is up by two thirds and now outstrips those in their 20s,” the paper goes on.

Speaking to the Times Susan Bewley, a consultant obstetrician in maternal-foetal medicine at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, said that many career women appeared unaware that they were gambling with their ability to reproduce.

But is it really that simple? Are women actually ‘choosing’ to delay pro-creation? The thing is that most career women aren’t actually super star rockers, the face of Estee Lauder or married to the Prime Minister.

Indeed, many women festering in the quagmires of middle management might view it rather differently. Trapped by rising house prices that will get you reaching for your lottery ticket, many households are simply built on the two-incomes no children formula.

Halifax, the leading mortgage lender reports that 69% of property in the UK is owner-occupied. We are locked into a culture where home-ownership signals a level of success and acceptance into society, renters being frowned up as if they have some ugly disease.

Indeed many couples decide to buy before they tie the knot seeing home-ownership as the clear winner in the priority stakes when it comes into battle with a trip down the aisle.

For many women, the fact of the matter is that the mortgage simply won’t get paid without a dual income. And if we take a look at the maternity pay stakes the picture becomes even clearer.

The majority of companies in UK plc are made up of small businesses, many of whom simply can’t afford to pay over and above the statutory minimum.

The first six weeks of statutory maternity pay (SMP) are paid at 90% of the employee’s average weekly earnings while the remaining twenty weeks are paid at the SMP standard rate (currently £106 per week), or 90% of the woman’s average weekly earnings if lower.

And so it seems that for many working women it’s not really a case of dicing with science but more a case of simply not being able to afford it. And with pensions no longer a guarantee it’s not just today we need to save for but tomorrow too. Putting bread on the table in a home you own is not as easy as it seems.

If fecundity strikes at 40 then so be it but given all the money in the world like Madonna would women choose to put it off and cheat the clock? I’m not so sure. It certainly doesn’t seem to be all about that seat in the boardroom and shattering that glass ceiling for the majority of women wage-slaves many of whom would much rather be at home baking flap-jacks and playing mum then power-dressing for their next business meeting.

What do you think? Let me know your thoughts.

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