Women delaying motherhood is worrying

Funny, I think that that question is so loaded, it is hard to answer. If I say that a man and a woman in a committed relationship should plan a family considering all the factors, then aren't I being heteronormative? What about women who don't 'have' a man - she may not want a partner, or she may be gay, or both. And I have seen people on here royally skewered for expressing such opinions. But I know what you are getting at, and if that is the situation, then yes, agreement is the ideal situation.

Don't get me wrong, I still feel full of life at 37. Just that I needed ten more years to cram more stuff into. Am quite looking forward to 40's really.

Replying to orig post, I can't speak for all but I feel I didn't have enough life. I'm missing about ten yrs. I needed ten extra years between 29 and 30.

I wanted a career in the city. I wanted boozy nights with mates in my twenties, was still growing up. Wanted to travel, be cool, be fashionable etcetera. I resent being told at 34 I was an old mum even if biologically I was. I get the medical reasoning but feel a bit cheated of some life. Of some experiences.

I guess others do too maybe. Life's just too exciting now and techy to settle down early. Til mother f-ing nature catches up people will perhaps 'choose' to leave it because they are living first.

If you are a woman in a relationship and you know you want a child, I would say get on with it
Can thoroughly recommend having children early

OK, so why are we all celebrating the fall in teenage birth rates? Why do 'benefit scrounger' rants always include feckless women having more than 2 children, and/or having them before they've got a career started?

Our society doesn't care about women's fertility, women's gestational well-being, or the putative stability of any woman's family set-up. It cares only that women are child-bearers, and uses this as a tool to blame and control women.

I am among the ONE IN FOUR women who've silently protested against this. We are not defined by our reproductive organs. No woman should be imo, but even this thread is focusing on the 'right time' to have children and society's self-contradictory views on that.

Is remaining child-free still taboo, even here? Is it not a valid outcome for women? Why are one in four of us still unheard?

If it is part of a princess costume, better get a suit of armour too!

If this is going to slide off into a 'how is abortion different from deciding to conceive a child' debate, I'm off, though.

Well, surely the issue is that for most people, choosing to conceive a baby is something you wouldn't do within a relationship unless your partner was on board. So men need to know too.

I could be unrepresentative, but I don't know that many couples who were so burning with unanimous desire to start a family that one of them simply said 'let's have a baby!' and the other said 'brilliant, I'll get my kit off', and that was it. Most people discuss this, at least a bit.

And yes, obviously you can simply say 'love, I'm 35, here are the stats on my chances' but it'd be nice if both people had a reasonable chance of understanding the situation from the start.

Get you tin hat on then, funny

Can thoroughly recommend having children early. I am approaching the rend of my schooling years and my 40 plus sister is just starting hers.

Maybe I did not express this clearly before, but there are two parts to parenthood - pregnancy and post birth. Post birth is equal responsibility for bot parents.

Pregnancy is completely the woman's choice. It is her body, her risk, her carrying the baby. So all medical advice should be given to her primarily. And this is what this article is about. If it was banging on about post-birth problems or issues, then yes that includes the partner too.

My limited understanding of FWR is that all aspects of pregnancy are down to the woman, from conception to birth. Whether to try in the first place, whether to carry to full term or not, what risks are involved. Apart from a minute or two of exertion, what health issues are there for men?

If you are a woman in a relationship and you know you want a child, I would say get on with it

That's fucking terrible, TERRIBLE advice though.

It basically says that if you are a WOMAN and you are lucky enough to get a man to be in a relationship with you, you should have a baby as soon as possible.

So it doesn't matter if it is THE RIGHT relationship. It doesn't matter if "getting on with it" hurts your ability to earn money in the future or pushes you into poverty.

The ONLY thing that matters "if you are in a relationship" is getting pregnant.

If women followed this advice and didn't wait until they were with a decent man who would make a good co-parent and father and until having a child wouldn't destroy them financially, then the costs to the state would be a lot higher than a slightly older average age for becoming a mother.

And the costs to the individual women "getting on with it" before they were in a good position to get on with it would be incalculable.

A quote from the article;

“If you are a woman in a relationship and you know you want a child, I would say get on with it,” she said. “But a lot of women are intentionally childless – let’s not knock the fact that woman have more choice now about planning a family than was the case in the past.”

Nowhere do I see an implication that women are stupid or selfish, but rather far more in control. But once we get into the realms of what the article implies rather than what is written, discussion becomes pointless.

Artetas I'm not assuming anything. That was the stereotype portrayed in the article

in my experience it is usually because women want to get an education, maybe travel and get established in their careers

Quite often we will see businesswomen of 42 or 43

What other group of women are being discussed there if not middle class career women? There are no other examples in the article.

I'm not suggesting only career women (bloody hate that phrase incidentally, but it's a convenient shorthand) have trouble meeting the right man, settling down and having a baby before age 35. If that article is aimed at those people, why aren't there a broader range of examples? Why is there no mention of couples meeting and settling down later - at all?

to be fair, if what the article says is true prof davies was addressing 'a group of health practitioners', so it is right that she is highlighting the problem that will affect their work/funding needs etc specifically. without seeing her transcript it is difficult to tell how she was phrasing her comments

it's the newspaper that has extended this to include comments from others that are telling women to Get The Fuck On

"Still, if anyone wants to see a conspiracy anywhere, it's usually possible."

Nobody is talking about "conspiracy", we're talking about culture.

A culture that is unhealthily focused on controlling women's fertility and sexuality.

The responsibility lies with us to analyse the statistics and not be so trusting.

Well if we're clever enough to do that, we're clever enough to make our own decisions about what is best for us without quarterly "reminders" of what the great and good think we should be doing with our lives.

Well, you are assuming that those being 'demonised' (very emotive btw) are careerist, and not women with ordinary jobs who are still beholden to the same pressures as everyone else. What about office workers, or cleaners, or computer operators, estate agents, shop assistants or delivery drivers who don't meet a suitable partner, or cannot afford kids early on, or who have other commitments?

Still, if anyone wants to see a conspiracy anywhere, it's usually possible.

Reporting isn't a bad thing but focus on women only and the careerist stereotype is unhelpful. It's taking valid information but using it to demonise a particular demographic (middle class women).

Exactly.

If the delaying of parenthood (by obviously women ) is such an issue why isn't this covered extensively in high school as part of standard education for boys and girls and why isn't there loads of stuff aimed at young men and women at uni or part of sexual health communications that are plastered over every GP practice that I have ever been into?

That way, whilst not encouraging people to have babies right there and then it would seem sensible to get them young, educate them so they can make life choices to have babies earlier, and both men and women can understand the potential impacts of delay of parenthood when the women are the right age.

Some how I think that if this was the case there would be a HUGE uproar.

But Sally Davies, is just one person. She can use the stats to show her point of view. But it's not the full picture. The only thing that seems off is the suggestion that motherhood is inevitable. I don't fully understand why people don't like it, you don't have to take it on face value