When did the expression “having it all” come to mean “being a woman, being a ‘top professional,’ and having a family”? That’s an easier one than the question “Why are women still presumed to be fixated on having children?”
“Having it all” took hold back in the mid-70s, when British journalist (and mother) Shirley Conran (second wife of Sir Terence Conran) published Superwoman, improbably popularizing the phrase “Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom.” She went on to write Futurewoman: How to Survive Life After Thirty (1979), and these days heads up a foundation called the Work-Life Balance Trust, where “life,” of course, means “family.”