to be really annoyed at people constantly assuming I've delayed having kids til my early forties because I have chosen a career 'instead'

[hairytriangle]

when nothing could be further from the truth?

it really grinds my gears when the assumption is that if you don't yet have kids, you've 'sacrificed' it to be a 'career woman'.

and

when people ask you why you haven't had kids - like it's not really personal and it's any of their business?

Well, am I?

I suppose because it's so difficult to say 'I'm trying to have children you insensitive shit, but I can't get pregnant / keep miscarrying / my husband won't have sex with me etc etc', that we just smile tightly instead and say 'we'll see', or similar, leaving the more hard-of-thinking assuming that it's because we'd rather climb the greasy corporate pole instead.

Maybe it's our duty to put the record straight!

Herbaceous

I have thought about saying something along the lines of,

"Well we wanted them but I didn't want to take the time off work so we got the cat instead - so much cheaper" just to see the reaction.

Then go to loo and cry again!

Pedro - whilst I have sympathy for your situation, I don't think that you should feel so smug at seeing a 16 year old girl in tears. She obviously didn't really think about what she was saying and certainly didn't know your circumstances and was simply a mouthy little girl. How perceptive were you at that age?

I find it outrageous that anyone would ever ask a woman why she doesn't have children, or make any sort of public assumption about why that may be. Nosy and downright rude.

YANBU.

I still can't believe the number of people in my office who have asked "are you pregnant yet? You don't want to leave it much longer" So inappropriate!! What are they expecting, a daily bulletin on the condition of my uterus?

Although I must confess, as a young 'un I probably did ask people if they were going to have kids without thinking. But then I was fed the idea that you have sex ONCE and you are pregnant just like that (and probably with any number of STIs).

I am feeling increasingly irritated and worried about comments I have read in the press about older mums. My pregnancy is an IVF pregnancy and I am 40. I want to be open with people about my IVF but worry that they will all assume I am one of these women who 'left it too late' and had a career while always thinking I could fall back on IVF.

I was very lucky to get IVF which worked first time but I didn't seek it. I have a job not a career and the only blame I can really put on myself is that I stayed with an idiot for years and tried to make my relationship work instead of leaving and finding someone who wanted kids.

DF - I am not an older mum, but have many friends in my 30s who would love children but for various reasons haven't done it yet (most of them because they haven't met the right guy, which is nobody's 'fault'!).

Some sections of the media are utterly vile about women full stop, and this issue is a perfect way to vent a good old fashioned bit of woman hating!

In RL, I am pretty sure most decent people do not think like this. At any rate, what woman would actually define herself or anyone else as a 'career woman'? It's a totally media-manufactured concept. Women work and want to do well. Ooh, big wow! .

It works the other way too. I was 17 when I fell pg (on the pill), found out about before my A level exams started. People spent about 10 years asking me why I wanted to waste my life, didn't I want a career etc. I told them that i hadn't wanted a baby but one was on the way so I made a decision based on that. Not one single regret. Hoping to go to Uni next year aged 40!

The age you have your babies is the red book weight chart of women's lives. There's a whole range of normal from teenage to 50 and everything in between. But The Daily Mail people will keep insisting on some optimum perfect time somewhere in the middle.

My sister had 2 kids - at 16 and at 19 - and she is a great mum and she has a good career as well.

My aunt had one kid at 42, and is not a 'career woman' - whatever the fuck that is - some stereotype out of a 1950s doris day film.

One of my great bugbears is the myth that NO WOMAN ever worked outside the home until the 1970s. Serious bollocks. Staying at home to look after your children full time is a mid-20th century notion.

What a prick!@MadamDeathstare

Lorililee

'Smug' is the very last emotion I felt that day - perceptivenes (or lack of) in a sixteen year wasn't the problem. It is a shocking thing to say to any childless woman.

Someone else in my office thought so too and obviously told her so

Lorililee - are you for real?

Why are you sticking up for some socially inept, big mouth, clearly saying something incredibly hurtful just to be provocative? Are you her?!

There was no need for the 16yo to say such a thing, and every reason for pedro to be completely upset and, in a way, vindicated (but definitely not smug) when another caring person put the girl right.

This makes me mad as hell too.
I would have loved to have kids in my 20s but was with a guy who wouldn't commit so I dumped him then spent four years in rubbish relationships until i met my lovely DH. We didn't get married til i was 34, had a miscarriage last year and am now due in six weeks at the age of 36.
I have had a really good career - but the only reason I didn't have kids earlier was because I wanted to be in a stable relationship to have them.

On the whole people who have them earlier - are either hugely lucky that they met someone they wanted to have kids with earlier, or they had accidents and decided to go it alone.

I have let to meet a woman who chose her career over having children. Men don't have to make a choice of course.

I understand what you are saying OP (I had secondary infertility and am sure lots of people thought I only wanted one child due to career) - I think the problem is that when people are going through problems like infertility they often keep it to themselves because it is very personal and private but people will wonder and possibly put their foot in it. I have witnessed many potentially hurtful comments which would never have been made if the person in question had known the true facts.

It can apply to other things besides infertility - I know someone whose middle child sadly died as a baby. I'm sure lots of people who don't know about it assume she has a large gap either because of infertility or because of her high-powered career.

Obv hopefully most people will be thinking things rather than saying them out loud. I myself was guilty of thinking a sibling was ambivalent about having children - it turns out there were infertility problems that they didn't tell anyone about until they started IVF

Hear hear. We should pat ourselves on the backs for being so responsible - waiting until we are in a lasting stable relationship, are more financially secure, and are happy enough with ourselves to bring children into the World.

When I was 16 I wouldnt have dreamt of saying something like that. I agree that 16 year olds are not very sensitive but IMO that translates into selfishness rather than spouting Daily Mailisms your first day into a new job!

I really dont think her behaviour falls into the normal range of stroppy 16 year olds (and I have one of the stroppiest)

YANBU at all! It is personal.

I have the opposite at the moment... am in my 20s and pregnant in a very career focussed, professional job (in an office wheer no women ever have children until well into their thirties for career reasons)... and everyone thinks it must be a big mistake! No - I just met my lovely DH 8 years ago when I was 20, have been married for 5 years and now is right for me. Sigh. (Actually, some idiot at work even asked me if I was sure the baby was my DH's as we can't possibly have planned to be pregant now... wtf??!!!)

That said, I have a step sister who is 39 and, without prompting, she often says that she doesn't want children becasue she and her DH are "too selfish, want their money to be theirs, want exotic holidays and are career focussed, not family focussed". Fair enough, but she's not helping the stereotype!

I had mine at 38 and 41, and nothing to do with career. I think the real reason women are having children later is an unintended consequence of the sexual revolution! Since men have had the opportunity to have sex without needing to commit themselves to even a relationship, let alone marriage and children, women have had to spend years weeding out the commitmentphobes before they can find a good 'un.

My first baby was born premature and died at 4 days later when I was 33 I tried with the same partner for the next 5 years but no pregnancy survived. So after a redundancy, me and my partner spliting up I started on a new life studying and fell pregnant at 39 after a 6 month relationship something totally unexpected but a miracle. so it wasn't my career it was just life and how things happen. The news this week assumes we all have had careers and are financially sound etc nowhere did it say that people may just have been trying all that time or only just met someone they want children with. Its not the good old days when women got to a certain age and settled with someone thinking their biological clock was ticking. I am unemployed and going to be a single mum at 40 so not what the newspapers have described at all.

legallyblonde it could also be that your stepsister did want children but had some problems. I have to admit that I got so fed up with colleagues asking about when I was going to start a family that I started telling them that I didn´t want children - so much easier than saying that we were trying but nothing was happening and then having to face their sympathy/"useful" advice. I´m wondering when they are going to notice that I am expanding - 17 weeks so far and no comments.

I think it´s perfectly natural to be curious about other people, I know I am; but it´s not very polite to ask such private questions.

YANBU. I don't understand who's business it is what age anyone has a child nor whether they have/want children at all. I think it is just an extension of certain sections of the media's love of women bashing. We're damned if we do, damned if we don't. I also wonder why men's choices are never ripped apart in the way women's are.

I had my first at 18 and spent quite a few years being made to feel like crap for having a child young. Mostly along the lines of Blondemumma's assumptions about what every older mother obviously has over a younger one .

I wouldn't dream of passing comment on anyone's situation when it comes to something so personal.

Wish I'd had a career, it all went pairshaped when the building recession hit in the early ninties and had to change my path from technical drawing to admin...God admin..bore...bore...bore was stuck in admin till I managed to find a second husband in my early thirties. (didnt have a penny with my first hubby so children were not an option). Luckily got pregnant and had my first at 34 didnt have to go back to admin -phew! Just had another boy last year at 38.

Lets face it some of us look fab! compared to some of the youngsters who have lost the will to live! 40 these days is nothing. Strangly I know plenty of women who have caught later in their thirties, no health problems at all, making amazing parents, good income, settled, time, worldly wise- The formula works doesnt it?

No one has ever mentioned my age even in hospital so I must be getting away with it.

Sorry, I also realise that often there is no choice in these situations, and that must make it all the more hurtful when people pass ill-informed and judgemental comments.