In May of last year, I took a trip to Nevada to report a profile of a political candidate. After a three-hour interview with my subject, a member of her communications team suggested we go to lunch. Midway through, I jumped up from the table and ran toward the restaurant’s bathroom. I was unable to make it all the way to the toilet and ended up retching on the floor of the stall. After cleaning up as best I could and shamefacedly informing the manager about the remaining mess, I was spent. I staggered out of the restaurant and found myself unable to do anything but take a quick nap (i.e., pass out) in the car of the campaign staffer.

I didn’t have food poisoning. I was six weeks pregnant, struggling with the biliousness and debilitating exhaustion that accompanies the first trimester for some women. I don’t recall this episode as cute, or with any of the maternal bravado sometimes found on parenting blogs. The staffer in whose car I crashed was really nice about it, but it was professionally humiliating. Pregnancy made it hard for me to do my job in the manner in which I’ve done it for the past 15 years. And there was no simple fix: I very much wanted to be pregnant; I also very much wanted to do my job well.

If you’re a person who has worked ambitiously, energetically, and efficiently for decades, it can be wildly discombobulating to find yourself suddenly tripped up by your own body, especially when it’s not illness or disability that’s stopping you, but among the most common and human of conditions. Yet this is a regular, lived reality for more women than ever before.

In 1970, the average woman had her first child at 21.4; by 2012, it was almost 26, an age by which many young adults are at least a few years deep into jobs or careers. Around 15 percent of first births are now to women over the age of 35, compared with just 1 percent back in 1970. Women across all classes are now participating in the labor market like never before, and far too few are able to spare a cent. Women comprise about 47 percent of the workforce in the United States and two-thirds of the low-wage workforce. In 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 64 percent of mothers with children under six worked. In 40 percent of households with children, women are now the sole or primary breadwinners.

The confluence of all these factors means that women are now having babies smack in the middle of their peak earning periods and that their earnings are crucial to the economic stability of their families. And there is no denying that motherhood makes an economic and practical dent in the shape and solidity of their careers. University of Massachusetts sociologist Michelle Budig has found that, on average, an American woman’s earnings decrease by 4 percent for every child that she bears, a figure that sounds even more brutal when compared to the fact that after men have kids, their earnings increase, on average, by 6 percent. Researchers have also found that fathers are more likely to be hired and to be regarded as more competent employees than mothers.