childless at 40

[blondie1971]

AIBU when i get upset to read all the newspaper reports about how women are selfish and not having kids, when most of the chaps i have been out with have had kids from previous relationships, and despite being great dads and loving their kids, have split from their partners, and refuse to have any other children - and suddenly i find myself at the age where i have missed out because i didnt think i could crack it as a single mum (as i know from friends how bloody hard it is) but always believed i would meet someone that did want kids before i got too old

YADNBU
I really feel for you...One of my close friend is in the same position (43 and childless) and I have some nderstanding of how much it hurts her. Particulrly when insensitive people go on about how she put her career first etc. It wasn't that, she just didn't meet someone at the right time and it didn't happen for her. She would have been a fantastic mother.

Is it too late for you or are you in a place now where you could 'go for it?'

40 is not to old to concieve or have a child....?

Beautifully put BestNameEver

Of course YANBU. You are nt selfish and all those stupid Daily Mail-esque articles are mean spirited and, to be frank, misogynistic twaddle. there are all sorts of reasons why people who do want children might find themselves without them, and very rarely are those reasons 'selfish', ime.

Have you totally ruled out going it alone?

You're certainly not alone in that situation. I have friends who are heading that way. So many women seem to think that marriage/babies will happen for them one day but the years go bye and the distractions of unsuitable partners, insecure jobs, overcrowded homes, lengthy education and a lack of savings mean that there is never 'the right time'.

I think women should be told when they are young to plan for this and helped not to fall into this childless trap.

Giving more women the confidence in themselves to become single mothers would be a start...

If you think about it logically it's actually the fault of men for why childbearing is put back so far. Men are encouraged to NOT settle down and NOT sow their seed as much as women are encouraged to have it all, to have a career and to leave it as late as possible to start having children.

Sometimes you have to talk a man into having children (i've not done it personally but know people who have!) usually they're not so much anti-kids more indifferent to having them. It's a shame that so many women are missing out for the dream of having it all.

YANBU

There's a frequent assumption in certain parts of the media that women are delaying children/not having them altogether for reasons of career advancement etc. That doesn't apply to anyone I know - I have many childless friends in their late 30s and 40s, various reasons - infertility, single (and not wanting to be a LP), only recently met their DP after years of singledom, or those who by the time they did meet their now DP/DH were too old....none of them put their careers first, in fact several of them would describe what they do as just a job, rather than a career.

YANBU - just reading your post has made me feel less alone.
I read something recently in response to this that made me think a bit differently...
"Life is complicated and we don?t always get everything we want. Start enjoying the life you do have rather than yearning for one that you don?t. I you don't get what you want, your life isn?t a failure. It?s just different to the one you imagined you would have."

YANBU.

I started off single again at 30 after divorce. I dated around for 2 years, and they were all either my age or older, but ridiculously immature or didn't want children at all, for whatever reason. I married DH when I was 31 and he was 24 and we had DD1 soon thereafter.

Before I met him, I was going to either go it alone or co-parent with a gay male couple, becoming a mother to one or more for each man in the couple, however they wanted to work it.

I never had any 'career' to speak of and never wanted to put it off, I divorced my husband because, age 34, he decided for good he never wanted any children and had a vasectomy.

BestName and Hatesponge are spot on.

darlene - Why should we be 'giving more women the confidence in themselves to become single mothers'?

I have kids but it makes me mad when I read this shite.

Most of my friends have a third level education and had reasonably good jobs but it was the finding a decent (and good company) man who wanted to be a father that was the hard part. I mean, we have maternity leave and you can go back to work when the baby is five days old if you want to .......

razzlebathbone - because if more women don't have the confidence to be single mothers (and I mean single by choice, rather than left), then there are going to be increasing numbers of women who don't have the children they so desperately wanted because the men they were dating were too selfish to care about their partner's biological clocks. I know a lot of men who put off having children until their late 30s - most of my male friends in fact. Luckily it's worked out for nearly all of them but some of them haven't been so lucky.

I agree with Darlene, as bestnameever says the pendulum seems to have swung so far away from what is good for women that we need to stop waiting around for men and just get on with parenthood. It's not worth risking missing out on parenthood just to avoid being criticised.

Perhpas if men feel 'cut out' there'll be a few pooooooor men articles and being a family man might seem to have some value again.

We also need to somehow get this message fed back up to the journalists.

Hardhat is spot on, too. Men are increasingly infanticised, IMO. 'Oh, he's just a child/needs to sow his wild oats', not to mention the women who seem to get off on mithering and mothering grown adults.

As a mother of both a son and daughters, I find this shocking. My father does, too. As he put it (he's 75 in July), men used to be teens, sure. But by the time they were between 18-20 and certainly after that, they were expected to behave as adults, have an adult job or on the way to an adult career, get married and have a family; not act like goons till they were in their 40s and then marry a 20-something who was too inexperienced to know better but dumped him as soon as she wised up.

My husband was 24 when he became a husband and father and was far more mature than a lot of 40-year-old 'professionals' I went out with.

Around here, too, a man that age is expected to have largely outgrown acting like a 16-year-old.

Totally agree with you ChrisinedePizan.

I'm single now but I would advise any woman to go and do it alone rather than miss out totally.

Having been a lone parent i think i'd be inclined to advocate going it alone but ONLY if the father is on the scene and has a full hand in the upbringing. You WILL need a break and you WILL need all the support you can get from all parties (financially and emotionally and all the rest of it).

We really need to get away from this 'have it all' society and the 'omg im missing out' feeling when you're not keeping up with your peers. The norm now seems to be teens - 20's = university, 20's = travelling, 30's = career, 40's = oh shit i meant to have children!

I work with a woman in her mid 30's whose whole life focuses on when she can next get round the world and when colleagues and I discuss our children you can see in her face she's a bit despondent about the fact she can't join in (that and she keeps butting in to try and talk about her travelling!). I asked her in a quiet moment about her wanting children and her response was "oh i'd have them tomorrow if i could but xxxx (her DP) isn't so sure just yet and wants to wait a few more years" they've been together since they were 14 :( i feel so sad for her.

YANBU. I didn't meet DH until I was 37, and didn't have DD until 40. Wasn't looking to marry, but well aware that the men I had relationships with were poor husband/father material. I didn't think I'd have the patience to be single mum and have dread of poverty, so that was off the cards.

Had I not met DH, I might well have reconsidered this, though.

I had a career, but that wasn't why I didn't marry/have children.

I loathe the representation of women as selfish, although to be fair I have never ever heard this expressed in RL, even as hearsay, only in the media.
For this reason I think these views are at best just fodder to sell papers, at worst women-hating drivel.

You're NBU. I was in my late 30s when I met my DH. We lived a little (well a lot actually), and hoped that we would be able to become parents. This didn't happen until last year, when at the great age of 43 I had the most beautiful DD.

SO it can happen for you too

this thread is enlightening, thank you.

How should a woman become pregnant with the intention of being a single mother? Is deliberately depriving a child of a father ok?

Is the need of a woman to be a mother greater than the need of a child for a father?

I dunno. I split with my first husband because after years of soul searching and agony he just really didn't want to become a father. He was in his mid forties, me in my early thirties. In retrospect I see his behaviour as completely adult. If a man doesn't want children then the responsible thing is for him not to have them.

I remember my friend advising me at the time to have an 'accident' with contraception (she had done it herself). But I never once considered this. She saw his behaviour as depriving me of my right to have a child. I saw it as him depriving me of my desire to have his child. And fair enough.

Just speaking for myself, another friend once told me she was considering going it alone (not sure how). I just responded instinctively really from my own experience, I said I couldn't imagine anything worse. I don't know how I would have coped without my (second) husband. It was so often hard, so tiring, all consuming. About so much more than confidence.

I think single mothers are fucking amazing.

'I'm single now but I would advise any woman to go and do it alone rather than miss out totally.'

I get branded a man-hater often, and yet I still advice the vast majority of women in their 30s who come on here posting about how they've been in a long-term relationship and the guy tells them he doesn't want to have children (when she does) to RUN. When a man tells you who he is, believe him.

There's nothing wrong with not wanting children, three of my four closest female friends in the world never did, are now in their 40s and have no regrets (they have all been sterilised, too, of their own accord). There's nothing wrong with not wanting children now.

But when you do and he/she doesn't, and you're not 25 anymore, then you need to really take a hard look about what you need and want to make you happy, because only you can make yourself happy.

If that means looking at alternatives - co-parenting with another man, be he gay or straight, egg donation (I have a good friend who wanted to procreate, but not bring up children, and is the biological parent of 4 children that she knows of), adoption, fostering, going it alone, etc. - then don't let another person stop you from taking that introspection.

For me, it meant divorce and then seeing what might happen. It was very painful.

But I know, in my heart of hearts, it would have been far more painful had I not cut my losses and had a go.

I am a single mother by choice razzlebathbone so yes, I think it's okay (obviously or I wouldn't have done it :o). Yes I would rather have had a child within the context of a loving relationship. But my DS and I are very happy and he seems perfectly accepting of the fact that he doesn't have a daddy.

I'm very, very glad that I did it - I think I would be a very bitter woman now if I hadn't had my longed for child.

i do think being a lone parent really isn't for everyone - sadly most of my childless friends would rather not have DC at all than be on their own, part of that is financial, and partly lacking support.

Whilst I had ds1 on my own at 26 (his father was not on the scene and I have no living family, so was completely on my own) I can fully understand that others may not want to be in that situation. I don't regret it, but it was hard emotionally and financially.

expat is right about the infanticisation of men btw - not wanting to settle down at all is one thing, but all this 'oh we've only been together for 10 years, he's not sure if he's ready for the commitment of children' as a friend said to me of her DP...words fail me!

You are NBU. But 40 is not necessarily too old - my friend was told that she could not have children - had three between the ages of 40 and 45.