To think that society should support women to have children early in adult life

[ReallyTired]

Babies born to older mothers have a higher risk of special needs, it is harder to concieve after 35 and there are more likely to be complications with giving birth and pregnancy. It is far easier to give get pregnant and birth at 25 than 40.

Unfortunately women are under huge pressure to put off childbearing until their late thirties because its very hard to build a career after children. I feel that there should be more help for mothers returning to the workplace after children and stronger legistation to combat age discrimination. Ie apprenticeships should be open to mothers returning/ starting out in the work place as well as under 25s. I would like more help to allow mothers to have career breaks and return to the work place.

Surely its easier to change the attitudes of employers than basic biology. (Ie. its far easier to have a challenging career starting in your 40s than to start a family.

echt: "It also, I feel, says a lot about the support people think they'll get for their child with SN in today's society."

I completely agree with you. One of the worst effects of the privatisation of child-rearing is the lack of support for SN, and how that fits with the way the "choice" to continue or terminate a pregnancy is presented to women. (I', pro-choice - but I'd say pro-real choice, in a society that facilitates rather than hampers the lives of those with SN and those affected). But that's probably a whole other thread.

I do think that if women are putting off having a baby due to impacts on careers then you need to remove the barriers that make it hard for mothers to progress in their careers.

Yes.
I think the OP would have got a different discussion if she'd just had her title and 'if that's what they want'. Well, maybe not much of a discussion at all - would anyone disagree with that?

YABU. I had DD when I was 25 and it took us nearly 18 months to conceive, she was back to back and it was anything but easy. I never once had any comment from anyone, family, friend or professional, that I might be too young.

It has not affected my career in any way, I hold a senior position on a par with most of my older colleagues.

Mind you, I was in a rush and always have been - clubbing at age 14 onwards, backpacking at age 18, qualified nurse at age 22, married at 23. I felt I had done a lot of living already. We still travel, I still have a demanding career, I'm still a good mum. It has nothing to do with my age or gender!

I love the expression of keeping your eyes on your own knitting!

Good post married

Agree maddening you are made to feel pants whatever your age.

I wouldn't say that 26 was a young mother op, not in the least. V average. I was born 2 wks before moms 21st birthday, she was a fab mom, v inspiring, so were my aunties who waited until their 30s to have dc. My db was the only child with any sort of affliction, born when dm was 23.

I have 4 children

DS1 at 26 he has ASD
DS2 at 27 he is being investigated for ASD
DD1 at 29 she is being investigated for ASD
DD2 at 31 she had abnormalities incompatible with life.

I certainly think DH and I are a crap genetic mix, this has far more to do with genes than age.

having had my eldest child at 17 and my youngest child so far at well lets just say nearer 40 than 35. i was able to have a career and i dont think at any time i required anybody other than myself to support me.

if you feel you need the support of society before you have children then perhaps you shouldnt have them untill such time as the only encouragement you need is from the babies dad

I was 25 when I had DD and if I remember rightly that was bang on average for the time (1992).
I am amazed that a HV would bang on about a 26 year old mother being really young. She sounds bonkers.

I suspect that very young mums have a hard time. I have never understood why people feel the need to be unpleasant to young mothers. Being horrible is hardly going to unpregnant them is it?
So why punish them by being nasty?

Do they think that if they are mean now it will stop them having anymore children? I dont think that works does it?

I hate to think of a 16 year old being treated like crap by HCPs. Surely they need extra care and kindness, not less?

I have had children at a young age and two considerably older. I had more energy when I was a young parent. I have more resources and patience as an older mum. Having children at any age is a crapshoot.

Well said Mrs De Vere. I am going to remember that phrase "well, tearing your hair out, isn't going to unpregnant his girlfried, your daughter, let's have a wine or three and start celebrating this little life" .

Makes note to have a chat with dd about long term loving relationships and contraception.

Thank Christ I didn't have a baby with any of the idiots I went out with prior to meeting DP. I had our little Pebble at 40 because I waited to meet the right person, nothing to do with career. I didn't plan on being that old but I'm glad it worked out like that in the end cos I had a blast in my Pre-Pebble years

Noquontrol: "What would i have done with my children though gathering when i buggered off round the world being free and having the time of my life?"

good question. but perhaps the question we should ask is "What could" be done?" because it looks to me like a lot^ of women are actually not rip-roaringly joyous about the current situation.

We need to think bigger: a politics that insists on fashioning lives that seize joy - not simply that save us from the workhouse.

N: "Should i have inflicted my irresponsibility on to them,"

I think the word "irresponsibility" and its opposite "responsibility" is interesting here. In a weird way, it's acting as a substitute for "freedom" and "autonomy" - but with a punitive judgment attached. I think it's pointing to a strange place where "autonomy" and "subjectivity" is actually male-modelled, and commercialised, and that this has been normalised in modern, Western society.
I think this has been very unthought-out and has a real place in the whole "older mothers" debate.
I just think it's interesting, that's all.

N: "[should I have] left them at home with someone else, not gone myself, or just not had them until i was in a more settled place and emotionally more ready to have children?"

Again, I think this points to the degree to which the privatised model of child-rearing has really bound us, and impeded our political demands.

Noquontrol - I'm looking at your post in detail because it really interests me, not because I think you're necessarily wrong. I just find it fascinating that the whole model of autonomy is so very antipathetic to women-with-children. Not just in its conceptual model, but also in the absence of all the things one might require in order to facilitate it to be possible for women-with-children to be free to be irresponsible and yet still good mothers.

HCPs are vile to teenage mothers, I remember all sorts of gems.

Toughened me up though

YABU. What a terrible idea.

Thank heavens I spent my 20s and early 30s living for me. I can't imagine many scenarios that would have made me more miserable than going straight from school to motherhood.

marriedinwhite - I like your closing conclusion of your long post: "Women should be free and independent enough and secure enough to have babies when they want them and when it is right for them and this is something that should never be dictated."

But I think I mildly disagree with your earlier implied statement, that the state should not intervene to alter current parenting/work arrangements, and that all it takes for women-with-children to secure a satisfying, professional, and well-paid career in later life is ability and commitment ("As far as work goes OP, I was very successful in my 20s and early 30s; I had 8 years off and could afford to and then started again in my early 40s and after five years in a different career was successful again. Not earning mega bucks but have a professional job and a very comfortable salary - not because society made allowances for me but because of the choices I made and my determination and hard work.")

I think the majority of women find that it is harder than that, and there are gendered impediments in the current set-up.

"Gendered" is perhaps the wrong word. It's often down to the fact of having primary responsibility for children, which is statistically gendered. so, while it is gendered, it's a serpentine relationship, rather than old-fashioned, easily recognisable, sexism.

I think the state has a role to play in changing that.

"I just find it fascinating that the whole model of autonomy is so very antipathetic to women-with-children"

All those fancy words to say what we all know: Once you have a baby, your life is over for a good number of years. Then you have another, and you have no life for some more years.

I'm just so glad that I didn't do this in my 20s.

I think you're right, gathering.

I was a single girl in my 20s/30s gathering and started as a secretary not even on but adjacent to a trading floor in the City. I don't think I ended up selling eurobonds because of gender impediments. I think I did it because I was sharp, hard working, relatively numerate, self disciplined and managed to fit into a very male dominated environment. Think 50 men and two women. I didn't need the state to help me, I helped myself; likewise in my early 40s I went back to work and started at the bottom again because I wasn't too proud to do the photocopying - my peers and the other mums at the school gate sneered and said they wouldn't lower themselves. I might be greying and 50+ but I'm greying and 50+ with my own money in my pocket and a career ahead of me rather than an empty nest looming.

I simply don't see what part the state has to play in any of that.

CoteDAzur I think it's an awful sentiment to say that once you have children your life is over for a good number of years. I adored my life with my DC as a SAHM - it was rewarding and happy and fabulous and I am so glad I shared it with them for 8 years. I just needed a bit more when DD started full time school. I certainly didn't feel that my/our children meant I had no life - I felt the best part of my life had begun.

My friend once said to me " mothering is the only job, where you have to show up whether you are sick or injured, and if you don't, you get taken in by the police." I knew exactly what she meant. Mothers don't leave their children ( except under very unusual circumstances) Fathers can seemingly walk out with no looking back. That is how I see the issue of gender inequality.

oh do fuck off OP, im sorry, but that is all i really have to say about that

marriedinwhite - so in your case the state has very little role to play, but for many women taking the time out of work mid career isn't really an option, nor is 'starting again' at a low paid level. They simply don't have the financial backing to do this.

erm... if i'd had my children at 21 when i finished uni i would still be required for daily 'childcare' until i was around 35/36 and to some extent up to 39ish - no way could i work the way i worked in my 20s with that kind of responsibilities.
if i had those children (say two) at 21 and 23 (tight timing) then i'd be 'free' to work stupidly long hours and devote myself to scaling the career ladder when i turned 50.. giving me about 10-15yrs of career building.

nope, sorry, it's just not going to work.

not to mention the fact that we're all living till we're 80-odd these days and still aspire to one happy marriage in that time, marrying while at university in order to conceive young is unlikely (though not impossible) in my experience to lead to a 60yr happy marriage.

Yanbu.
I could've done this as I married young but we prefered to be clubbing and travelling in our early 20s and having a baby 'young' if you have an education is sadly looked down on.
If you take the partying element out of uni life, having a baby and studying at the same time is 2 birds with 1 stone career-wise. Though bloody hard work I should imagine, even for a youngster.

But Cote a. factually, it isn't: you are still very much alive, it just doesn't fit with certain modern conceptions and b. I wonder how much there is in "having children" that really is inimical to "having a life". What could we do differently? If we really put our minds to it?

Humans flew to the moon! Imagine putting all that effort into changing society to be more women-with-children shaped.

And isn't it interesting that all that thought and effort (and limited resources) was put into flying to the moon rather than changing-society-to-be-more-women-with-children-shaped?