My immediate surrounding are different - women don't have successful careers, they have mweh sort of careers, usual, run-of-the-mill, nobody won a Nobel Prize or anything, nobody invented a vaccine. It is a daily slog, that is all. But many of them were lied to, they were told to concentrate on their 'careers', postpone motherhood and freeze eggs. Many are without children and bitter, because they bought the lies - that age is just a number, that you should concentrate on your 'career' first, then have children, that marriage is not important, that cohabiting with a guy without getting married is normal, etc. etc. My most upsetting example is a very beautiful woman, an academically intelligent one too, who also thought 'age is a number'. I knew her when she became a student, she was 35, we were 20. She then did a PhD in East European Political Systems, funded by the British Council, I think, so she bought the lie that with that PhD she would waltz into a highly paid job in the EU (aye, right, at 45, looking for her first proper job, armed with a PhD). Needless to say, it did not work out, but she bought those lies. So no, I don't find what you see sad in any way - they are lucky to have realised what important things are.