To think 30 isn’t old to start a family

[Takemebackto]

My niece has recently announced her pregnancy. She’s just turned 30. She’s received a lot of comments saying she’s left it late. Aibu to think it’s a good age to start a family?

It depends on how large you would like your family to be I suppose but at thirty you could fit in two even three children with reasonable age gaps.

Thirty is definitely average, I was twenty two and considered young. To be frank I do actually like being a younger parent but its not for everyone.

Depends on your culture. My ex is from south east Asia and it would be considered late, however where I'm from, Denmark, I think 30 is the average.

That's normal where I'm from!

32 for me - DD2 is just turned 1 and I'll be 38 soon. 30 is just about right I'd say!! 😁

Nonsense - i had my first at 35 and second 2 years later.

@TheBusDriver 35 is now classed as older - well it is in my local health authority!

I'm 27 and none of my peers are even thinking about kids yet!

It’s considered just barely old enough in my social group

Young in my circle

Totally depends on the demographics and family "norms". In a family where everyone leaves school as soon as they can and has their first baby at 18, 19 or 20 then yes, 30 is old. In other families, where women go to uni, have a career of travel or whatever, 30 is bang on average.

Absolutely not! I'm 30 and pregnant with my first child currently. I spent the ages of 21-26 living with parents to save up to buy a house, then saved for my wedding (married at 28) and was ttc since the age of 28. DH and I have no debt (mortgage aside) and did not see a reason to rush and get ourselves in debt which would have happened if we'd considered children earlier. We've been together for 9 years.

Yeah depends really. I was 28 when pregnant with my oldest, the first of my friends to have a child and the youngest in my local NCT group. One of my colleagues finished having her kids before 30 and told me she felt really old with her last (she was 27 I think) because everyone in her town (she commutes about an hour) has kids very early 20s.

Isn't the average for first child now 31 or similar?

The number of women giving birth over 40 overtook the number of women under 2O relatively recently.

For most women it isn’t too old. Most of the women I know with young children had them in their thirties. I had mine at 36.

But, I know one woman who had her child at 27 and was unable to conceive again. Tests later showed that she’d gone through the menopause by 32. So not everyone can wait until their thirties, unfortunately.

I would have loved to have started at 30 but fertility problems meant I didn’t until 39. With the way life and health expectancy is moving 30-40 is probably smack bang where 20-30 used to be fifty years ago.

I'm pretty sure it's literally the average age people start families in the uk. I just had my first at 34. I must be fucking ancient. 😆

@TheBusDriver 35 is now classed as older - well it is in my local health authority!

In mine and most of the areas around the Midlands / South-East it is 40 that’s the magic number that gives you a consultant automatically. But 45 is the age at which the doctors genuinely start to be proactive and give you extra ultrasounds.

I had DS at 30 and DD at 32 - we were the youngest in our NCT group by far, and in fact we didn’t go back after the first session!

(Mainly because they all wanted to talk about natural home births, and epidurals were a crime punishable by death apparently - but that’s by the by!)

Our friends have all waited until they turned 30 to start having children too.

28 with my first and 30 with my second. I dont feel ive left anything late

I had my first at 30 and I feel like I might have hit the sweet spot!
Had my 20s to arse about, go some places, do some stuff, find DH etc.... not 40 and freaking out that my last eggs might not be up to it, which must be very stressful and upsetting for those who genuinely have left it too late.

Got married at 30, had first at 32 and second on the way at 36.

Part of me wishes I'd had kids 10 years ago but back then I didn't even know DH and was certainly not mentally mature enough.

No way is 30 too old to start a family.

I was 40 when I had my first, 42 when I had my second, 30 would have been really young in my social group. Only one couple in my NCT group of 8 were under 30. Don’t see the issue myself.

Nope I started my family at 32

The average age of a first time mother in the UK was 28.8 years (so probably very similar now). So it's not young or old to have a baby at 30. Most mums will be about 30, some having second babies but mostly first time mothers.