To think some older women having tax payers funded ivf are hypocrites?

Is this a thread about teenage mums vs older mums? University degrees? Alcoholics?

I'm struggling to see the relevance as to what someone chooses to study at uni as any relation to an age someone chooses to have a baby (or even why your old neighbour us brought into it)

And if you didn't go to work you'd still be living parasitically off the state.

If you really want to scream at someone about student loans go and take on Blair or the companies who demand you have a degree or two in some cases to even get a foot in the door.

You get judged as a woman. Get. Over. It. You're judging millions of women who you've never met and know nothing about because of someone who lived next to you. So far you've judged mothers over 35, women with degrees. How dare people use a system they've spent years paying into.

Who wants unmarried mothers in convents ? I’ve never heard even the most conservative right wing people advocating for this. Seriously

But you want university to be only accessible to the uber wealthy and/or intelligent, that's what your post about the good old days suggests.

You need to stop caring what people think about you and just live your life in a way that makes you happy. Do you think your old neighbour cares whether you think he should or shouldn't have a liver because he drinks? Nope, he's gone through the process, been given something he's entitled to, end of.

You had a baby young, got given what the state says you're entitled to. Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it doesn't change that you did that or got that or what you want to do moving forward, does it?

Some people get IVF on the NHS. They've gone through the process and they're entitled to it. Some people went to uni, got a loan they're entitled to.

No one else's views matter on what you do with your life. There will ALWAYS be people who disapprove of your choices, no matter what they are. You could do everything "right" in the eyes of the woman who clearly sparked this thread. It would be wrong in someone else's.

Just go be happy instead of bitter.

But you didn't have to have a baby at sixteen. Contraception freely available, safe, legal terminations likewise. You do actually get to 'pick and choose'.

You just seem to get very exercised by people not thinking much of your choices, and to be hitting out at a random selection of targets.

I think you'll find that certainly prior to WW2 the defining factor of many (not all) people who went to university was well enough off families who could fund them, rather than being "highly intelligent" per se.

You seem to want to categorise anyone who doesn't fit into your rather limited world view as wrong and hit out at them. Maybe recognise that women needing fertility help, people wanting to do a degree of their choice and teenagers who get pregnant are all infinitely better off now than they would have been 100 years ago and ease the chip off your shoulder.

You can't pick and choose which things from the past are good though. You want university to be like it was in the first half of the 20th century? Then all welfare goes back there, because it's too entwined to do it any other way.

Things have moved on. People are entitled to stuff. Get over it. Stop acting like it's ok for you to think some people are wasting tax payers money, but not for people to think the same about you, when all anyone is doing is using a service they're entitled to use.

Any clue on how young, unmarried mothers were treated in that same time period? Because it was much worse than these days. Good chance you'd have been shipped off to a convent and the baby whipped away from you before you'd had chance to have seen it.

Those days weren't the glory days of the welfare state...

We need to stop judging women for their choices, full stop. And the problem with this thread is that OP is being openly vile about choices groups of people have made, purely because some people were rude to her.

It's usually how bullies are made, to be fair. Someone was once mean to them so they are now mean to everyone else before they can get in first.

There was a time university was just a place for a small group of highly intelligent people to study and they paid with their own money, no government loan.

This demonstrates you haven't got a clue what you're talking about @Spiderbug and suggest you might find out about higher education for a large part of the 20th century in the UK, when there were widely available, non repayable maintenance grants and no tuition fees.

For someone of 23 (you haven't corrected people pointing that out , including me) you sound very bitter and only you know why that is. I was born to an unmarried mother in the early 60s and if you want to hear real horror stories about how they were treated, that's a good place to start, not 8 years ago.

Not only are BU, but you are also judgemental and downright awful.

I can understand where you are coming from OP.

I have never thought about it that way, and I don’t know what the stats are.

But from personal experience I feel a little overprotective over teen mums, and hate the way that they are generally treated as a category, or how they are judged as a category.

I was a teen mum, and with help and support I was able to complete studies, get into work, climb the career ladder and contribute towards society. I know many women who have had children before 25, and are the hardest working people I know - because we don’t have time to mess around. And actually have caught up to peers by the time we are 30s. I have friends that have kids in their 30s, and some choose not to work or work part time instead. Same thing - just timelines have rotated .

I think what frustrates me is the prejudice towards teen mums. And now that we are seeing a rise in infertility, I think we need to stop judging women for when they have children - across the board.

If you have them young, as long as you look after them and get the support, it’s no one’s business. If you choose to wait, well good for you, but that also isn’t anyone’s business.

Also when I was younger raising my child, I didn’t have much of a social life, so didn’t see my friends as much. That is fine. But now that a lot of them are in their 30s/40s - and I have more free time so can actually hang out with them - I get comments of “you are so lucky that you have your children”. Sometimes I want to say “well you are lucky you have your experiences” - we all make choices. But it can’t be easy if you feel like you are fighting against the biological clock - which I see a lot in my friendship circles.

I've got up to page two on this very long thread, and I'm not going to read any more. There is so much I wholly disagree with I don't know where to start.

I'm not even going to attempt to explain why so many people are so wrong. You can't argue with stupid, so there's no point in trying.

So why don’t you adopt?

There are people who can’t have children naturally, and there are children who need homes. One is not the simple solution to the other that you seem to think. They are in reality two different issues. Children in care deserve better than to be thought of as a solution for infertility. They have usually suffered traumatic starts to their lives and have issues as a result. They need the best homes that can possibly be found for them. Being approved as an adoptive parent is rightly a gruelling and invasive process and there is often very little support available once you have adopted. 1 I. 10 adoptions breaks down.

You are branding entire groups of people based on your perception of individuals you’ve encountered. As you can probably see on this thread - nobody has judged you once for your choices, but they sure as hell are judging you based on your spiteful comments towards other women.

I went to uni like everybody else, took out a student loan, dropped out half way through. I still built up a career and am now paying over £300 back on this loan + other tax contributions that take away almost 45% of money I have earned. I have no issue with this money being given back to people in need, who knows maybe one day I’ll need it too.

And alcoholism is a disease. You sound as though you think this man is living his best life and as a result the state has sorted him out a new liver so he can party his way in to another dimension. Trust me, he is battling with some serious demons.

For someone who claims to not care or judge, you've an awful lot to say about several groups of people; from older mums, university students and now your old neighbour apparently.

If it doesn't bother you what people do, why start a thread?

There is nothing wrong with wanting to study any more than choosing to be a parent. You need to try and learn to deal with your resentment and insecurities. You don’t want to be judged, but you judge others.

People using a term doesn't make it less derogatory. Mickey Mouse degrees means useless subject, and the vast majority of degree studies are not that.

And using terms like that is what makes you sound bitter. Because you're suggesting it's "less than".

Agreed.