Kirsty Allsop

Yes, I own my home with DH (who never went to uni) in London. You are correct, we couldn't afford to buy one here now.

I left a career to travel and have children in my late twenties. it took until I was almost 40 to be able to start a new career - the previous one was long gone (I was well and truly out of the loop). The problem is that at 40 i am sapped of confidence, competing against younger more enthusiastic people and finding it a struggle.

that said, i do now know what i am good at and have been able to work for myself. But it would have been better to do that when i was younger.

I wish i had spent longer in my career - at the very least, saving more money and picking up valuable experience.

Do you own your own home pubegarden? My point is it used to be much easier to buy a house with just one salary. I think KA has no idea how difficult (I would go so far as to say impossible if you live in London) that is at today's prices. Considering that is supposed to be her area of expertise I find it astonishing how out-of-touch she is with what life is like for ordinary people.
SirChenjin I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek when I talked about meeting a husband at Uni - I didn't meet my DH there. I just meant that according to her plan of finding a man in your early 20s Uni is probably not a bad place to start!

You don't have to pay any fees up front though, and you only have pay back when you are earning over 21k

I think the stupid uni fees have scuppered a lot of people's plans. Uni is no longer just something you do as a natuaral progression (unless you come from a privileged background) - I've told both of mine (DD and DS) that it's worth it if they are sure it's something they want to do and they are sure what they want to do and they might not necessarily reach that point while they are young.

So far, DD has dropped out twice due to MH issues and DS has decided he doesn't want to go and is exploring apprenticeship options instead (with little success) - I have two NEETs at home

I didn't go my route from a position of privilege. I dropped out of school at 16 and worked shit jobs until I had DD at 22. I didn't 'find a man' either (well, I did, but not a reliable one) - I was a LP through uni. I did my first degree part time and then got funding for my masters. I don't earn a fortune but I earn enough and am doing something I absolutely love. I have no hope of helping the DC with deposits for flats - I really don't think that's the norm.

It's harder now with the fees being so high but I'm not sure it makes much difference what age you decide to go. It's far easier to get emergency time off from university than it is from a job.

The back-to-front route has worked very well for dsis too. She had her youngest at 17 (not planned) and is now, aged 47, just completing her PhD. Neither of us will ever be stupidly rich but we're the first generation in our family to go to university and are both leading fulfilled lives doing things we find really interesting.

I think what this thread has shown is that there is no one right path for everyone. Guilt shouldn't come into it. A lot of women do find it difficult to concieve in their late 30s and early 40s and feel very sad about that. That could have been me if I had waited. I think it's a bit insensitive to dismiss that as rubbish.

I don't know anyone who met their husband at uni - uni was for boyfriends, and we all met our husbands well into our twenties and thirties. University is for sowing your oats - you're only in your late teens and very early 20s when you're at the university stage (if you go straight from school obv)

Good point Lillian lots of people do find their husbands at Uni, I did and some of my friends did (or in the job that they qualified for at uni).

Kirsty is coming at this from a position of extreme privilege. The idea of parents providing a deposit and getting a child (let alone children - what happens if you have several?) on the housing ladder is beyond the dreams of most people who have to make their own way in the world. I actually like Kirsty - I agree with a previous poster who described her as being like an annoying friend with absolutely no idea about how most people live. Her comments about nature not being feminist are fair enough, but as Hadley Freeman points out, not exactly undocumented. The fact is her 1950s ideal could only really work in the 1950s when a mortgage was in easy reach of a household with just one wage coming in. As for girls not going to university, but finding a husband instead - apart from anything else isn't university one of the best places to start in the search for a suitable husband?

I read this article and she is perfectly entitled to her own opinion. This wouldn't have worked for me but if it works for others why not?

My PIL didn't go to University but are successful and well off and had their children early. Now that their children are grown they have a comfortable life style, a lovely house and lovely holidays. MIL studied later whilst working and FIL hasn't bothered.

We, as a society, seem to have a 'one size fits all' approach where its the done thing to study when you are young. Doesn't fit everyone.

Op are you sure you cant get help.with university costs? On my degree most were mums already and I became one during my BA, and am starting my masters soon.

With the older men thing I dont know any 20 something mums who had babies with an older dad. Kirstie has a dp a whole 10 years older than her I could never imagine being with someone that much older than me

I kind of agree with her. I often wish I'd had DS first, decided on a life path and studied later.

I spent ages building up a career and a good wage. It was like everything was reset after DS and I'm still scrabbling about on crappy wages.

But society would need to be more supportive of young mothers for a start.

I had my first at 26 and my last at 33 (though I do have a good degree and had begun to establish a career first). The massive disadvantage of having kids earlier that we see in comparison to friends is the financial perspective. I cannot comprehend how we would have paid to put me through uni, let alone find the time.

The biggest issue was housing. With no parents to help out with deposit, no big gains from house price rises, no trust fund to see us by , affording a normal sized family home has been hard, despite us being on the property ladder before dc1 arrived. Our careers have also both been dented by having a family at the stage when everyone else was putting in crazy hours and zooming ahead. It does feel like playing catch up against everyone, not just the men.

I have managed to return to my career, and I wouldn't do it differently. But I'll not pretend it's been easy.

I also worry about how we will afford uni for the kids, let alone helping out with flat deposits, weddings etc. then there are our pensions...

Also with what you have wrote above I dont think thats true of a lot of young mums both mine so far have been in 50 hours a week childcare from teeny babies. The next one is due soon and will also be in childcare after a few months so no need to slow down at all ime.

Noddngoff - I expect she would of started saving the house deposits from when the children are young. Dd will have 20k + when Im early 40s just from me saving a tiny bit a month. I know its not a lot or at least wont be im future but its a start.

There is a big gap between the average income of those who have a degree and of those who don't. That alone should be enough incentive to go to university.

This difference is even bigger for young women compared to young men, because jobs that don't require a degree that women tend to do are worse paid than jobs that don't require a degree that men tend to do. So guess who will on average end up doing all the child care and never have a chance to start that degree?

I think young women's focus should be on being able to provide for themselves and generally the best way to do that is to get an education. My problem with Ms Allsop's suggestion is that she is basically telling women to suspend their ambitions and their priority is finding a man and starting a family. Men are never told that their priority should be finding a woman and having a family, or that they should adjust their career plans to make this happen.

Sounds like I'm a freak then too, having babies in my 20s with no career damage or apparent loss of earnings whatsoever.

Here's a bit out of Merryn Somerset Webb's "Love is not Enough" which is well worth buying. It was published in 2007 and the author acknowledges the Daily Mail fertility scare stories before saying,
"The optimum time financially to have a baby is 30 or later, when your career is firmly on track and you have something to come back to. Women further down the career tree when they give birth very often just stop climbing it. Why? Their salaries aren't high enough to pay for childcare and their jobs aren't yet senior and interesting enough to drag them away from their babies. And even if they do go back to work they are unable to put in the long hours the workplace requires of juniors trying to get ahead these days so they are fast overtaken by ambitious co-workers without dependents. If they wait until they are more senior in an organisation they will have the clout to demand flexible hours and the confidence to go home when they need to....
..The Institute of Public Policy Research suggests that women face a "fertility penalty" if they have their first baby early. A mid-skilled woman on a salary of £22,000 who has a baby at 24 will earn £564,000 less over her lifetime than a childless woman. If she waits until 28 that figure drops to £165,000 and so on. So there you go. Enough with the guilt about delaying motherhood. Doing so makes perfect financial sense. The longer you wait the less it will hurt (career-wise that is)."

I think that if you put off university with the aim of going when your children are older - you just won't end up doing it. University is hard, it requires time, effort and focus, all of which are ten times harder with kids in tow.

This advice is likely to make women put it off with a view to never getting it done - yet another thing to add to the list of life's regrets and things put to one side for the sake of children adn a husband.

A recipe for resentment...

This doesn't really make sense. Kirstie reckons you should have children in your twenties then be "free as a bird" by 45...but then at 45 your children will be in their early twenties, the time at which Kirstie said her ficitonal daughter should be saving for a flat with her parents' help. So how are you expected to help put a deposit on your child's flat when you are just getting established in your own career and paying your own mortgage and student loan (not exactly free as a bird hey).

Oh no!!! Apparently womens fertility falls off a cliff at 35! No one told me that and I had two babies in my 40 !!! Am I a frank of nature ???

Anyway, all women everywhere should run their lives the way I have because I'm a celebrity and therefore an expert on Everything

Kirsty's "find a man and forget university" comments are extremely irritating as I think they encourage the worst sort of woman i.e. the ones who are looking for a bread ticket for life, a type that I thought we should be shot of by now.

However, I did things "arse backwards" and it worked for me. I elected to train at work after A levels and earn some dosh, got married at 23 and had my two DCs in my 20s. I got my degree part time while they were small, studying at night and keeping my hand in at work by freelancing. By my early 30s I was ready for career take-off. For me it really worked well. Looking back I would have hated to have been at the nappy stage in my thirties and teenage angst in my 50s.

Of course, times were different e.g. no maternity leave (which, ironically actually helped me, purely on a personal level, as there was no reluctance by employers to employ me).

Also, I deliberately shunned university straight out of school, turning down my offers, as I felt I wanted some real life experience (and money) first. The universities of the 1960s were the days of kids smoking lots of weed and putting the world to rights, all from zero experience of the real world and all its mess.

There are different ways of achieving the same ends, and while Kirsty's stupid "find a man" comments put my back up there may be something to be said for some of us doing things the other way round.

I had mine youngish (1st at 26), and my career has only really got established recently (late 30s-early 40s) due to much moving about for the exH's job and choosing part-time work while DC were small.

A couple of my school friends waited until pushing 40 to have babies, gave up successful careers to raise them and are wondering how to reconcile their glittering CVs with low-commitment employment while their DC are young.

We did all go to university though, I think Kirstie is very wrong to suggest that it's just for intellectual satisfaction. Not going can be a significant barrier to future prospects, whenever you have babies.