Delaying Pregnancy Due to Career Path, Demands, or Goals

Symposium Editor Renee J. Flores, MD, MHSA, EdD

Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics will publish a collection of personal stories from people who have delayed pregnancy due to career aspirations or demands. Balancing parenthood and career demands can be challenging. Increasingly, women are delaying pregnancy to complete professional training, advance their education, or because of overwhelming career demands and expectations. Women delaying pregnancy may have concerns about inadequate institutional parental leave policies, the availability or cost of childcare, and parental responsibilities. At the same time, women may feel pressured to start their families despite career demands due to declining fertility or increased risk of genetic abnormalities, pregnancy loss, or complications.    

We want true, personal stories in a form that is interesting and easy to read from people who have delayed pregnancy due to professional demands or goals. When writing your story, consider these questions:

• Why did you decide to delay pregnancy? Are you satisfied with your decision to do so? Why or why not?
• What current or past concerns about fertility, pregnancy, or pregnancy loss have you experienced?
• What would you want to share with healthcare providers who work with those delaying pregnancy?
• What would you want to share with decision or policymakers about how to best support professionals balancing family planning or early parenthood with careers?
• What would you like other people considering delaying pregnancy to know as they make decisions about pregnancy?
• If you are a parent, what challenges did you face because you delayed parenthood? What benefits did you experience from delaying?

You do not need to address each of these questions—write about the issues that you think are most important to share and that pertain to you. If you are not a writer, tell your story in your own words, and our editorial staff will help you. If you’re interested in submitting a story, we ask you first to submit a 300-word proposal—a short description of the story you want to tell. Inquiries or proposals should be sent to the editorial office via email: narrativebioethics@gmail.com. We will give preference to proposals received by January 6, 2026. If your story is invited, we will ask you to submit it within 6 weeks of the invitation. Final stories are 4 – 10 double-spaced pages or 800 – 2000 words.

For more information about the journal Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, the guidelines for authors, and privacy policies, visit our webpage at: http://nibjournal.org/submit/guidelines/

We plan to publish 12 stories on this topic in our print edition; additional stories may be published as online-only supplemental material. We also publish 3 – 4 commentary articles that discuss the stories that are published in the journal. To see a finished symposium, please visit Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics’ page on Project MUSE and click on the unlocked, open-access issue.

Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics is indexed in PubMed, MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and PhilPapers.
The journal is published by the Johns Hopkins University Press and is available in print and electronically to over 1,200 institutional subscribers via Project MUSE.