When Mira Kaddoura, an artist and freelance art and creative director who lives in Portland, Oregon, was in her early 30s, she visited her doctor for an annual physical. During her examination, he asked if she was thinking about having children, and warned her, "If you really want to do this someday, you should start thinking seriously about it." Caught off guard, Kaddoura began to think. Not only did she find herself thinking about whether she wanted to have kids, but also about what his question meant in general for women, for men, and for how we talk about that still taboo subject of our biological clocks—whether we want kids, how we want to have them, and what we might do if it turns out it's too late for us to have them naturally.

One of the most inflexible differences between men and women is the looming (yet abstract) end-date after which women can no longer conceive, and because of that, the issue of a "biological clock" comes up again and again. Sometimes it's almost used as an insult, or a point of mockery, as in: "I can hear the ticking of her biological clock across the room." On the other side of that are women who don't really know if they want kids, but who don't want to eliminate the possibility, even as they focus on careers and what appear to be more pressing realities. And another extreme, of course, are women who are "shunned" or must provide excuses for never wanting kids at all.

At the time of that doctor visit, Kaddoura told The Atlantic Wire, "I was just out of my 20s thinking, I'm just building this life, building a career, working. It caught me off guard." The fact that this was her first real moment of realizing after years focused on trying not to get pregnant that there was a new side to this coin struck her—as did the fact that this was not something she heard talked about much in broader circles.