Student Debt Forces Woman to Postpone Motherhood

At 37 years old, Eryn Bostwick faces a choice that echoes across her generation: prioritize student loan payments or start a family. With $55,000 in educational debt hanging over her household, she has chosen to wait.

What makes her story particularly poignant is that Bostwick did everything society asked of her. As a first-generation college student, she pursued higher education believing it would create the financial stability her parents never had. Instead, the debt has become what she calls a "noose around my neck."

Her experience reflects a broader crisis where the promise of upward mobility through education collides with the reality of long-term financial burden. For Bostwick and millions like her, the math simply no longer works.

Bostwick's journey began with the best intentions from all sides. Her parents, lacking college degrees themselves, pushed education as the pathway to opportunity. They weren't wrong according to economic data—four-year degrees consistently outperform high school diplomas in lifetime earnings.

She enrolled in public universities with a clear goal: becoming a college professor. The path required three degrees: a bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. Each step added to her loan balance, funded through a combination of student loans and Pell grants.

Yet the long-term ramifications remained unclear to the 18-year-old making these decisions, her parents, or even the institutions guiding her. "I wasn't fully aware of the long-term ramifications," Bostwick admitted.

Today, that debt load has transformed from an abstract future obligation into a monthly reality that dictates her most personal choices.

The decision to delay parenthood wasn't made lightly. Bostwick requires in vitro fertilization to conceive due to existing medical conditions—a process that demands significant financial resources even before a child arrives.

Initially, she and her husband could afford the treatments. But a move from Texas to Ohio to be closer to family changed their financial picture dramatically. She left a full-time position and now teaches part-time at two colleges, earning a low five-figure salary.

"Could we go through IVF? Sure, but then we wouldn't be able to afford actually having a child. It just felt like there's too much hanging over our heads."

The calculation is brutal: service the debt or expand the family. For now, the debt wins. This mirrors a pattern reported by many borrowers who delay homeownership, retirement savings, or other milestones.

Bostwick's personal financial strategy intersects with federal policy in ways that compound her uncertainty. She had been pursuing Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a program that forgives debt after 10 years of qualifying payments for government and nonprofit workers.

With 71 payments completed, she was more than halfway toward forgiveness. However, her enrollment in the SAVE plan—created under President Joe Biden to provide cheaper payments—has complicated matters.

• Borrowers entered forbearance in July 2024 due to litigation
• PSLF payment credits paused during this period
• Trump administration proposed eliminating SAVE entirely
• New repayment plans would carry higher monthly costs

The Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent stated plainly: "The law is clear: if you take out a loan, you must pay it back."

But Bostwick argues the system's complexity makes simple repayment nearly impossible for many borrowers.

Now, Bostwick channels her frustration into advocacy for her own students. Many are first-generation learners, just as she once was, chasing the same dream of stability through education.

She makes it her mission to ensure they understand the implications before signing loan documents. Her message includes a crucial caveat: a degree isn't always necessary for every career path.

"I've never once heard somebody say they don't want to be able to take out loans and never pay them back. They want to be able to pay their loans back, but the current system makes it nearly impossible."

The Trump administration's Department of Education says it's working on solutions, including proposals to prevent unaffordable borrowing and simplify repayment. But for Bostwick, who has lived the debt experience for years, hope is in short supply.

"I just feel like I've constantly been trying to keep my head above the water, and it's never really been good enough," she said. "It's unbelievably frustrating."

Bostwick's story illuminates the intersection of personal aspiration and public policy. Her debt load—$55,000—isn't extreme by modern student loan standards, yet it's enough to derail family formation for a woman in her late thirties.

The pending resolution of the SAVE plan litigation will determine whether her monthly payments increase and whether her PSLF timeline resets. Meanwhile, the biological clock adds pressure that no policy can reverse.

Her experience serves as a cautionary framework for prospective students and a challenge to policymakers: how can education remain the engine of opportunity when its cost prevents graduates from building the lives they sought to improve?