Women 'delaying' having families

What's behind all these crappy stories is an awareness on the part of men (men-as-a-class, not your husband particularly) that they basically can't have children without the co-operation of women. Only, on some level, men-as-a-class do understand that having children is quite hard for women, they suffer physically and they also suffer socially and economically. So men-as-a-class understand that they have to force, coerce and scare women into accepting the status of breeding stock, because if they allow women to choose for themselves when or if to have babies, women might do terrible things like refusing to be impregnated by arseholes, and insisting that men do their fair share of domestic work.

On the other hand, if you make use of your fertility by having say 5 or 6 children, that's even more wrong.

Yes sadly women are less likely to escape an emergency situation than men due to the high heels and pencil skirt uniform, but at least we look bang on the money the rest of the time.

Uh, gee Trills - thanks for the insight?

It's hard to run in power suits, especially if they have pencil skirts.

I do think there's an undertone of 'silly women don't realise' in many of the articles as well. I do not need 'educating' on my diminishing fertility now I'm iny 20s any more than I need educating about the the fact that the half bottle of wine I intend to drink tonight contains more than the recommended 2-3 units.

If a woman / couple understands the options available and chooses not to ttc in her 20s that should be respected, but it should also be acknowledged that it isn't always a choice.

There was an interesting comment up thread about the assumption being that women spent their 20s running around in power suits indulging their vanity. I did spend my 20s running around in power suits: sometimes still do, though I've got to a level where it's not quite so necessary. Many of my male colleagues did / do likewise and most don't have children until at least age 30. I do wonder whether the would similarly be accused of similar self-indulgence. I rather doubt it.

Yes Trills. Newspapers used to be written by journalists. Now they employ polemicists to turn out opinion pieces that elicit the real journalism for free from readers. So I guess the more outrageous/comment-worthy the better.

The "agenda" is to write something in a newspaper or a magazine that gets a reaction.

Criticising women usually works.

Mother Nature would have us bear our first children around the age of 14-15, then produce another 1 every 2-3 years until around age 45. Having that many children ensured that at least a few would survive to adulthood. Nowadays, we assume that most children will survive till adulthood and most people aim to have 2-3 at most. Therefore there is little need to start having them very young. I do not see what the problem is, really. Yes, some women will find that they have problems if they don't have their first child till later, but really, who is to know that they wouldn't also have had problems if they'd started sooner?

Why does a certain section of the media have to hash and rehash the same old story time and time again? We have global charities devoted to educating women in the developing world out of having too many children and starting too young, whilst here they consensus is that women are starting too late. It makes no sense at all. Just what exactly is the agenda?

I think its being over analysed. Women used to have children younger, they are not any more, this tends to clash with our fertility. What is there to argue with? It's just facts. Delay means postpone until a later time, the majority of women are doing this... They are still havin children, just in their 30's mainly rather than 20's as it used to be.

OK, Trills. I am.

Very true, rosabud. If you say 'think carefully before having children' it sounds much less like Evil Selfish Unthinking Woman, doesn't it?

Really interesting thread that shows the power of language and individual words in particular. I agree, delay impiles so much - that the children should happen earlier, that they will happen rather than not at all, that there is an element of selfish choice etc etc and, interesting, that this language is not applied to men. This thread has made me think of all the words in the past which were identified as unhelpful or conveying a negative message and which we have since managed to change (eg handicaped to disabled, headmistress or master to headteacher, fireman to firefighter etc). Whenever language is identified as needing to change, it is seen as ridiculous or too politically correct by the majority, but after the change has come to pass, we look back and see clearly how much positive effect the change has brought about.

Thank christ that we are all able to "delay having a family"!! I have four children, could have had 12 in my fertile time if I hadn't "delayed" them. What would the hacks have us do- all have 12 children and die in childbed? How quaint.

I am rarely told that I can't have an opinion on things because I don't have children.

I am endlessly told on here that I can't have an opinion (such as on private schools) because I don't have children, so I can't possibly know. What a load of crap.

I have absolutely no desire for children. I'm not "delaying" anything, I just don't want them.

Actually that was said to DH quite a lot after I took to telling everyone who wanted to counsel me to get my skates on that they were barking up the wrong potential parent. I don't think it made any difference though, he wasn't primed to hear the message like we are.

kitty, that's so true about the gleeful undertone.

I suppose I am 'delaying' having children because DH doesn't want them yet. I find it bizarre the number of people who feel the need to warn me - in case I wasn't aware - that I can't 'put it off' forever, as if I'm somehow being stubborn or disobedient by not getting on with doing what they expect.

No-one is saying to DH 'are you not worried you might be infertile' or 'don't you think maybe if you wait around you'll no longer be able to impregnate your wife' - imagine the looks on people's faces if you said that in public! But it seems to be perfectly acceptable to say to me 'oh, you do know if you put it off too long you'll find it's too late' or 'I know a woman in her late 30s who can't have any, she just left it too long'. Grrr.

. I didn't want children for my 20s and most of my 30s, I was too busy having a good time. OK I had a brief broody spell late 20s but it didn't last long.

Then I got pg by accident at 39; if not for that I might not have had any DC but that would have been OK. I have a DS I love very much now and that's fine, but it wouldn't have been the end of the world to be childfree, either.

I have had this discussion with a male friend. They are ttc but it's not really working. The thing is he doesn't really want kids, but likes the idea of it. She really wants them and he previously agreed to kids. He has talked to me about how he's not sure 'maybe later' (but probably not). I have told him in no uncertain terms that he's got to make a decision soon and if that's a no at least she knows so she can have a baby with someone else, rather than waiting 5 years and finding out she can't. But I do feel for him in that he obviously wants to stay in the relationship.

I dislike it because the word implies that women "should" have done it an earlier age. You only "delay" something that had already been scheduled to happen at an earlier point.

It kind of assumes that since we ought to be having babies younger (and maybe from a biological, medical POV, that is true) it must only be because we made a conscious decision to put it off, that we're having them at an older age.

As so many people have written above, it's much more often the man who wants to put off the whole shebang of settling down and having children. It was in my case, but - fortunately - he did come round before it was too late. But my heart breaks for those women who wait and wait and wait and then finally discover - much too late - that their man isn't going to give them children after all.

Annoys me too - there also tends to be the subtle gleeful undertone that women CAN'T delay having children past a certain point and if they do they deserve to not be able to have any... slightly wagging finger thing of 'you shouldn't have bothered with a career, because now you're really sad that you can't have a baby AREN'T YOU? other women take note'

grr

You never, ever hear about "childless men" either.

I know of far more women being strung along by male partners who "aren't ready", than of women deliberately conceiving at 40 (as if you can do such a thing anyway), after reaching a desired point in their career. The one woman I know who took this approach was 28 or 29 when she had her first baby.

I agree OP its a crock of shit. I didn't " delay " having children. I had my child later in life (43) and prior to that I had a career but the two were not related to each other. At no point did I decide early in my life that I'd wait til my forties. And anyway, it's bo-one else's business when, or why I decided to have a child. Sick to the back teeth of the media and it's mysoginism.

We are either too young, too old, too working, too bot working, too fat, too thin, too dim too clever.

Often that is so and some women are led on for so long by a false promise of future children by the time he comes clean about not really ever wanting them she has lost her fertility. Perhaps they need to say a baby by 30 or I am not sticking with you.