My Biological Clock Is Ticking/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Basic Trope: A woman realizes she's not getting any younger, and feels that she needs to get married and have a baby ASAP.
  • Played Straight: Alice reaches her 35th birthday, and starts to worry about her single status and the fact that she has no children.
  • Exaggerated: Alice is doing this even though she's still in college.
  • Justified: Alice is living in a world where it's Mate or Die
    • Unfortunately, there is a limited window of time in which a woman can have biological children, and Alice is reaching the tail end of that time period.
  • Inverted: Alice does not want any children.
  • Gender Inverted: Bob is worried about the fact that he has no wife or kids.
  • Subverted: Alice is single and sans-children at 35, but doesn't seem to spend a lot of time worrying about it.
    • Alice already has children.
  • Double Subverted: But she has six online dating service accounts, all seeking a man who is eager to settle down and raise a family.
    • But she wants another child, or if her kids are old enough, she wants grandchildren.
      • Or, her kids are all adopted, and she wants to have a biological child or children.
  • Deconstructed: Alice is so obsessed with marriage and babies that it makes her look desperate (which does tend to put men off).
  • Reconstructed: Alice decides she can lead a fulfilling life even without a husband and 2.4 children by her side, and pursues other goals. If the marriage and kids happen, great. If not, Alice still has a great life.
  • Parodied: Alice asks a guy about "where this is going" etc. on the first date.
  • Lampshaded:
  • Averted: Alice doesn't think this way.
    • Alice already has children, and does not want to have any more.
  • Enforced: Most Writers Are Male and think all women think this way.
  • Invoked: Alice is having a mid-life crisis.
  • Defied: Alice decides to focus on other goals.
  • Discussed:
  • Conversed: "Now that I'm 30, maybe we should start thinking about having kids? I won't be young forever!"
  • Played For Laughs: Alice will take any man - literally, any man - just so she can have kids. She even comes up with elaborate schemes to trick guys into getting her pregnant.
  • Played For Drama: Alice is an intelligent and powerful businesswoman, and yet all her parents care about is getting grandchildren, and favor her less-accomplished sister Betty simply because of her many kids. Alice feels pressure to get married and pregnant simply to make her parents happy.

Back to My Biological Clock Is Ticking

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/My_Biological_Clock_Is_Ticking/Playing_With?oldid=112486"