..to think that, except in very special circumstances....

[BertrandRussell]

....you should not have a baby with someone you have known for less than, say, 5 years? And you should both be at least, say, 2 years away from the relationship with the parent of your other children?

I have friends in their late thirties who settled down and had kids very quickly once they met the right person. They had a great deal of relationship experience and self-knowledge, and knew that time wasn't necessarily on their side.

I agree that, in an ideal world, knowing your partner well and being intentional about pregnancies would be optimal. But we don't always live in an ideal world and, even if we did, trying to reduce complex interpersonal relationships to time limits plucked from the air is patently ridiculous.

Your post comes across as absurdly judgemental.

I do think people should be more cautious. It does seem like quite a lot of folks jump into new 'relationships' with alarming haste, as if being with anybody is better than being on your own. Children deserve to be planned, in loving relationships.

@NoCauseRebel

I do see what you’re saying. However I think we can safely say that a relationship at any stage is never a certainty.

Yes I know I’m saying this from the position where it has/did work out. That ‘baby’ is now 16 and we have a 13 and 10 year old too, married for more than a decade. Even if we split up now I wouldn’t put it down to having a (yes planned) baby early in to our relationship.

I just feel it’s such a sweeping statement and a real personal decision.

@AussieBeauty like you I could only ever have sex in a committed i.e. longer term relationship and I think that that’s not unreasonable.

But tbh while I think there’s nothing wrong with the sentiment of wanting to wait until marriage to have sex I think that it’s an unwise move in principle. Because truth be told you never know whether you are going to be sexually compatible until you have sex, and if you wait until marriage to find that out then it’s a lot harder to walk away from a marriage than it is to walk out on a relationship.

When I was at school a teacher of mine said that she believed everyone should have sex with their partner before they got married. We were all quite shocked because this was a country with quite conservative views. But her reasoning was that the things couples argue/disagree most about are sex and money, and so both need to be on the table before making such a massive commitment to one another.

Looking back I totally understand what she meant.

I still think there’s nothing wrong with waiting to have sex, and a ONS or FWB relationship would absolutely not work for me, but neither would waiting until marriage.

FWIW DP’s ex very much believed in no sex before marriage. The result was that when they did actually get married it turned out she was a-sexual and it caused huge problems within the marriage pretty much from the outset.

Also, if you grow up in a mindset that sex is this thing which is to be waited for at all costs you end up in a situation where you potentially have expectations you cannot live up to.

@Thehouseintheforest

Well that’s just straight up misogyny. You think men can be better trusted with contraception than women? Why? Because they’re more intelligent? Better at remembering? Not so busy thinking about pointless women’s things?

What about if men started dealing with all the potential side effects that women deal with on hormonal contraception? Loss of libido? Weight gain? Mood swings? Having their hormonal state used to gaslight them? Do you think they’d all continue to steadfastly uphold their responsibility, knowing that they have the option to pass it back to women? Or do you think it would fall back to women to terminate the unwanted pregnancies?

Dh and I got married 18 months after we met, and had ds1 a year later - so we would have violated @BertrandRussell's rules. But we had our 27th wedding anniversary this year, and all three boys are now grown up, and two have degrees and jobs, so I don't think we made the wrong decisions all that time ago!

However, I do think that the OP is right to suggest that people should think carefully before having a baby.

Surely you mean ideally as emotionally and finacially as secure and stable as possible - rather than a specific time limit?

I have family who were with their DP for over 10 years - they fell pg - and the guy changed fiancially and emotionally abusive and then cheating right left and center. TBH there were behaviors before the pg that were in my view concerning but none so blind as will not see- but pg was a huge trigger for ramping it all up.

people obviously don’t want to hear that because they’ve met this new man and everything is amaaaazing and and and they just want to be a family in their own right. But the confusion it causes to existing children is immense, and I actually think that in twenty years time we’re going to have a generation of adults who resent the amounts of blended families they were forced to be a part of. Because let’s be honest here, for an adult it’s only about having children with one partner and then having children with another one, whereas for a child the possibilities are endless. One parent with their half siblings plus step siblings and the same on the other side - so they potentially have to be a part of two blended families who are each also a part of two or more blended families and so the cycle continues

yep, I didn't have another child because I wanted "my own family" as such, I already felt like we were one because we'd been together about 3.5 years by that point, but we had a child together because we wanted one. Our family does work, and everyone is involved is happy with it BUT its been very hard. There have been a lot of times where it could have gone horribly horribly wrong.

A lot of blended families just don't work. A lot do, don't get me wrong it can be successful if everyone puts the work in. However a lot of the time that doesn't happen. For instance me and dp have tried our absolute hardest to include DSS especially when I was pregnant but we couldn't always because dps ex was massively unhappy about it and stopped contact left right and centre, and told him his dad didn't love him, that he would love the baby more, that the baby wasn't going to be his half sibling etc etc. It was a horrible time for him, and we were almost powerless in stopping that.

In some scenarios the step parents aren't involved enough, or too involved, or the actual parents expect too much of the step parents and don't do enough themselves - I could go on. Its really really easy to fuck it all up.

To me, it was really, really hard and in hindsight if I knew then what I know now I wouldn't have even dated anyone who already had children. Its been traumatic and from a selfish POV ive been through a lot of shit I otherwise wouldn't have had to.

If I split up with DP I think ill remain single for all eternity because I don't want anyone who has kids, I don't want anyone who wants kids but I already have one so theyd have to be alright with that too!

I can agree with your sentiment but people will do as they please ultimately.

I’ve seen people get engaged in less than a year and married before actually being with one another for 2 years. I don’t understand it, you barely know each other as the dust hasn’t had time to settle.

It works for some, marriages still can go wrong after 10+ years.

Ultimately I think we should all just slow down a bit.

I did all that, but he still turned out to be an abusive arsehole. IME abusers will wait as long as necessary to show their true colours. Mine was certainly playing the long game.

OK- maybe 5 years is a bit extreme! I was reading a thread where a woman was being treated like shit after getting pregnant very quickly, and I find myself leaping to be defence of women being treated lime shit. But I stick to the 2 years out of a relationship when there are other children involved. @LolaSmiles excellent post applies.

I did things ‘perfectly’ - met DH at 27, bought house at thirty, married at 33, DS1 at 34, bigger house at 36, DS3 at 39.

I was determined to choose a good person to make my life with.

Why?

Because my childhood was a shit-show that I see described multiple times daily on threads on here.

It boiled down to being as sure as I reasonably could that the person I settled down with wasn’t going to turn out to be a cunt.

We did big, life-changing stuff together before the hint of kids. I was as sure as I could be that he wouldn’t turn into a cunt.

14 years on and he hasn’t yet.

The prevalence of unclear thinking and careless reproduction on this site is a fucking nightmare.

YABVU - surely you'd know that five years can make a huge difference in whether a woman is likely to conceive at all. It seems ridiculous to impose arbitrary rules like this.

Many relationships move quite quickly especially in the mid-30s onwards. Theres a huge difference between an accidental pregnancy 6 months in with a 19 year old and TTC after 2 and a half years with two 35 year olds.

I can agree with your sentiment but people will do as they please ultimately.

I think this as well - people do tend to think they will be different and some people really do think it will all be rainbows and butterflies despite every indication to the opposite and run full tilt through every red flag.

Rubbish. I was 33 when I met DH. We had DS1 when I was 35, got married when I was 36.

That was 20 years ago.

he'd been married before (no kids) i hadn't. It was right for us both. if we'd waited 5 years, having 2 kids would have been much harder.

so when i got pregnant at 17 despite being on the pill i should have told my other half to go away and not live together for another 3 years

I think it is wise to give yourself time to get to know someone. However I did choose to wait to have sex until I was married (age 30) and don’t regret it for a moment.

@GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat tbh I do think there’s a difference between having first children in a new relationship and having children early into a new relationship where there are other children in the mix.

It’s IMO never a good idea to have children early on not least because the future at that point will be uncertain. However it happens and for people like yourself and your DH it worked out, and the marriage would likely have happened even if you hadn’t had a baby early on am I right?

But when we think about couples who get together after a split and then have a baby early on while the children are still A, getting used to the split of their parents, and B, getting used to the fact that there is a new partner and possibly even other children with whom they might not even get on in the equation, then having a baby as well can only be a bad idea IMO.

I have even seen threads on here where an OP has posted that she has found out that she’s pregnant and the existing kids haven’t actually met the new partner yet.

Absolutely none of your business, what a goady, divisive thread. You'll need to clarify these points for me:

What if you fall pregnant accidentally? Do you have an abortion? What's the difference if it's 3 months in or 3 years? Both not allowed in your world.

What if you meet your DP when you're older? 5 years could be the difference between conceiving and not.

What do you do if you've known someone 5 years and your relationship is rocky and on/off? Because it's been 5 years it's okay?

What do you do if you want to be a lone parent and use a surrogate or donor sperm? Because you're not in a relationship you don't get to have children?

Please take your "morals" elsewhere.

I think we should leave it up to individuals to make those decisions, some couples who have been together 5 years may not be mature or ready enough, and some may feel that way after 2 or 3.

I agree with the principle behind it, and in theory it would be the best possible situation (although I agree 5 years is bit too much of a time and not possible for all).

I'd been with my DP for 3.5 years when my daughter was born, still happily unmarried after almost 19 years.

I dunno about the 5 years. One of my siblings met their now spouse, got engaged 1 year later, married 18m after that. First child a year later (so 3.5 yrs in) and 2nd child 2 years after (so 5.5 years in). Still happily married after 8 years.

I do think a bit more time is warranted where one or both partners have already got children/complicated situations with exes.

Just read too many threads about women having babies with arsehole men

I read a lot of threads started by arsehole posters. Horses for courses innit 🤷🏼‍♀️

I totally get what you are saying. Why women have children with successive deadbeat partners or already shit fathers with children from several different women I cannot fathom. Sometimes my knickers hurt my arse while I’m reading certain situations. This would not work well in Gilead. Blessed be the fruit.

Not really rock solid as a theory.

My mum's first husband was in residence for more than 5 years before kids. Still turned out to be an alcoholic wife and child beating git.

She married my dad after less than a year and he is a very gentle and kind man.