Why does barely anyone my age have kids?

[Quietterry]

I’m 25 and had my first young so she’s 9 now and yes I was very young having her but I’m no longer a spring chicken and looking at my cohort who went to school with me out of 200+ people I can count on one hand who’s had kids.

Im not judging them for it I’m just curious on what changed when my mother was my age practically everyone she knew had kids by 25!

I know there’s different theories on this and they probably all have some merit but I’m leaning towards thinking it’s phones. I heard recently some people spend 8 hours a day on their phones.

I’m 38 and just had a baby and I go out with friends and my husband and my kids aren’t clingy . I didn’t find it hard to adjust when I had my older kid at 33 either . But whatever makes you feel better I guess !

You keep talking about the past - basically you are assuming that anything pre 2000 was the dark ages. That’s far odder than people choosing not to have kids young.

What trains looked like before mobiles: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-people-reading-newspapers-on-tube-carriage-london-underground-london-43215057.html

Newspapers, books, headphones, often a newspaper and headphones. Not a social mixer with all the passengers getting to know each other.

Yes when your child was born you were also a child, in fact.

Perhaps the mums and dads of the other children in your year gave them very good contraception advice once they realised they didn't want to be grandparents at 40. Maybe it worked really well on your school friends!

My youngest DC is 25, so presumably I am of you parents' generation. We didn't have phones when we were young, but none of my peers (I am counting colleagues and friends as well as siblings) had had any DC by the time they were 25. It just simply isn't true. The main factor indicating the age you have your DC is how long you stay in education.

Tbh it’s probably hard to understand that they are able to make a choice that isn’t available to you.

I was from a family with 'lots of kids in a small house' but I'm 43 and my mum still had her eldest at 25.

Didn't they recently say that the brain only reaches maturity at 25?

Really? That surprises me, most of my peers left school/college and were working by the time they were 18 and yet they had children in their 30s or not at all.

People are explaining to you why it is. What about that is problematic for you?

She quite literally never suggested it was problematic.

OTOH, why is everyone so hostile to OP and other posters who had children young?

That may be true but I think it’s over simplified and used on MN as an excuse for some people to infantilise their adult (usually
male) ‘children’

The human body doesn’t work like that. Why else would puberty start as young teens.

Because it can ruin your life. Your independence, your career, your freedom, your health, your finances, your relationship, your friendships, your spontaneity, your hedonism, your energy, your figure, your choices, your sanity.

It's a large tax to pay on the joy of motherhood.

HTH.

Nobody cares when someone has their children. But OP seems to think that someone in their 40s was born in the days when contraception wasn’t available and people had lots of kids in one room.

People are getting pissed off because they are getting sick of explaining to the OP that her idea of the timeline is incorrect yet she keeps doubling down and trying to find something to ‘blame’ for the lack of young parents.

If you have a child young then you don’t have the chance to do the settling down in a more relaxed timeframe

It's honestly not that, it's that's she's gon 'why do I know so few 25 yr olds with children when I am 25 with a 9 yr old' people have responded that it's always been unusual to have children very young and if that's not the case in her experience it may be the demographic she comes from and the fact she feels older due to having a baby as a teen.

She's quite unwilling to accept this though and therefore has wild theories that teens aren't shagging because of mobile phones. That women aren't having babies for some weird lack of dating availability. Rather than increased education, greater aspirations and more contraception options.

Also her perception of life for women in their 49s is way off for most of us in our 49s lives experiences. We're simply pointing that out.

All of this!

It is down to choice. The OP chose to have a baby at a very young age. Her peers have chosen to wait or in fact not bother becuse they can

but I’m no longer a spring chicken

Get a grip your 25 FFS. This is NAUSEATING.

And she refuses to listen. It has to stem from some (possibly subconscious) feeling of jealousy that other people have the option not to have babies young.

Possibly that’s why she is painting anyone 40+ as something out of the servants hall in Downton Abbey 🙄

Posts like this scream insecurity more than op. Op just sounds 25.

I had my first child 46 years ago when I was 31.

Every one of my friends that were having their babies at the same time were in their very late 20s or in their 30s. My sister in law was 41 when she had her first around 50 years ago.

My own mother was 25 when she had her first child in 1933.

It's not just recent generations that are having their children quite late.

Or a desparation to feel more in common with her own peer group, which I think is very very normal. It's worth being aware of though so she doesn't alienated people in real life with these theories.

Op your friends will catch up with your current life stage. You'll eventually be the friend who already knows a lot of stuff they'll be finding hard. In my experience younger mums are more laid back parents in that they've not developed the anxieties that come with age and there's something to be said for that.

I am mid-40s like your parents. I had my only child at 40 because unfortunately I didn't meet DH until later in life.

I assure you that it was extremely rare 30 years ago to have children in your early 20s in my part of the country. I went to a very academic school and nearly all the girls went to uni and wanted a career first. I only know two who had kids before they were 25.

I now live in an affluent and educated part of the country and the majority of first time Mums here are over 30. As a ftm at 40 I didn't stand out.

I don't actually think it's better to have kids older - I wish I'd had them younger and many friends struggled with infertility. I also think people spend too much time on phones. But the decision to delay kids for my generation had absolutely nothing to do with phones and the two things aren't linked.

There are many well publicised reasons for the declining birth rate. I myself was on the fence for a long time about having kids because everyone I knew spoke so negatively of the experience. Which is sad, and luckily not my experience at all.

It's been starting younger and younger which is probably connected to environmental factors. You can't seriously think that a 9 year old should be having kids if they are having periods!

Insecurity about what exactly? Please elaborate.