The Panic Years: Dates, Doubts, and the Mother of All Decisions

Renowned journalist Nell Frizzell explores what happens when a woman begins to ask herself: should I have a baby?

We have descriptors for many periods of life-adolescence, menopause, mid-life crisis, quarter-life crisis-but there is a period of profound change that many women face, often in their late twenties to early forties, that does not yet have a name.

Nell Frizzell is calling this period of flux "the panic years," and it is often characterized by a preoccupation with one major questi...