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've always thought if they gave nice tax breaks to people under the age of 25 or whatever to settle down and have kids, it might tempt some people towards younger parenthood and associated avoidance of the trauma of later infertility. Is that a totally mad idea?

YANBU

I do have a career (as opposed to a job), but would have jacked it in to have found Mr Right & had kids earlier. As it is we didn't get together until I was 31 & married at 34.

Thankfully DD turned up when I was 35 so I only had to endure a year of comments about being a "career woman" whilst going through traumas with chromosome tests & irregular periods, but now she's 18months old the comments about having a second are starting - the common assumption seeming to be that two children would be too much of an interference with my career plans.

One can only assume that these stupid nosey people have no idea how difficult & distressing TTC can be.

Wonderful idea. Because no one over 25 can conceive easily.

YANBU at all. we started trying for a baby when I was 27. Ten years later after my first IVF attempt we finally conceived DS, now 5.
I didn't choose to become a first time mum just before my 38th birthday. Luckily, the fact we were completely open about our fertility treatment with friends and family meant we avoided most of the 'when are you going to have children' questions.

It doesn't end when they're born though. I'm 43 now and I still get people asking me 'when am I going to give DS a brother or sister' and it sometimes upsets me as I really would love to have tried for another, but money, age and circumstances didn't really allow for it.

I worry a lot about him being an 'only'. A particularly stupid woman (who knows I can't conceive without IVF) asked the other day if I was going to have more. When I muttered 'probably not' (I didn't really want to talk about it in the middle of the Co-op) she said 'Oh, but you're not going to be around for him for ever-who's he going to have when you're gone?'

Well, gee, thanks a lot,that made me feel really great about poor DS being an only child through no fault of my own. Stupid cow. I actually had a little cry about it when I got home.

Stable ignore the silly, silly cow. Since the dawn of time there have been only children and they are not deprived of the milk of human kindness and companionship because they have no siblings. And many people can't stand their siblings anyway. Does this mean he won't have friends? Cousins? PLease don't be upset by such ill-thought-out comments. Easy for me to say I know.

Stable What a truly silly, never mind, awful thing to say, what a thoughtless witch. What a doom monger apart from anything else!

I think your DS sounds like a very lucky little boy to have such a loving, thoughtful mother.

Stable that woman is thoughtless beyond belief, don't let people like that make you cry.

I do consider myself to have a "career", a professional and interesting job that means a lot to me and that I would never want to stop doing. However, I didn't have to put babies on hold for it and could have had them anytime as far as work was concerned.

The reason I didn't have my DC until 35 and 40 was waiting for DP to come round to the idea and be ready to start TCC - and that is with a mature, solvent, responsible man who said he did want kids, but was just putting it off. A lot of men are complete commitment-phobes/dickwads/misogynist twats who string women along through their childbearing years then dump them for someone younger. I know men like this - even if they are nice blokes, they're basically overgrown children who don't realise that it's time to grow up and don't really care about how women feel.

The Daily Mail et al should be asking men why they are not hurrying up and why they are making women delay childbearing.

btw Stable, so sorry for what that woman said to you - she sounds exactly like my mum. (Maybe she was! )

Thank you, I know deep down he'll be fine. I actually have a link in 'my favourites' to an MN thread called 'in praise of only children'. I often have a read if I think I'm getting too mopey about it.

It was just that she hit straight on my only real worry...that when DH & I are old and decrepit and need help with all sorts of stuff, he won't have anyone to share the burden with.

It's probably at the forefront of my mind because I'm at that stage now with my elderly parents...hospital visits, looking for nursing homes, sorting out finances etc...and if I hadn't had my sister to help it would be so much harder. I'll just have to picture him with a loving partner to help him instead

Of course it is not fair or reasonable for other people to pry or make assumptions about when you choose to have (or are able to have) children

But I do hope that no-one on this thread is viewing the term career woman as being pejorative in any way

Actually, I should be pleased she thought I was young enough to conceive...i have also had the experience of a complete stranger assuming I was my son's grandmother!

I am amazed at the age of 49 that people are still asking when I might have another. I had my first with IVF at 40 and this was after 12 years of trying and failed attempts.

Oh yes it would of been lovely to give my ds a brother or a sister but it wasn't possible.

You can forget any attempts for a sibling now, blow that. I have enough keeping my one and only busy. Trust me to sire a busy one!

I never had a career but am a forty year old with a 3 year old. Lack of career because I never really found or wanted one, my mum would say due to being too bl**dy lazy! I think having children is very much to do with when and if you you can. If you can do it well at 18 go for it but if you feel you can do it better at forty go for it. You bring the best you can to being a parent and if your best is being older then so be it. I wanted to try at 30, DHs job went so we had delays and then four years of trying led to IVF, age and experience. I know I am a better mum for being older (if a bit creakier!). Anybody who has a go, I tell them in full gory detail, soons shuts them up!! Or makes them want to chat, which ever way I feel better ;-).

If nothing else this thread shows how insensitive people can be generally, and how it's the woman about whom the assumtions are made.
When you have a child can be down to any number of reasons - finding the right partner, maturity, fertility, luck, accident - yet parenthood does seem to be one thing people feel they can comment on without compunction.
I can't believe some of the crap comments some of you have had to hear.
What I don't like about the "Career woman" assumption is that it's seen as the only reason why you would have a child after your twenties. So if you hadn't had a career you'd have settled down with the first herbert who came along and had children immediately?
I was lucky - I had short hair and wore DMS for a lot of my 20s, so my family assumed I was a lesbian and everyone KNOWS they can't have children

I get the comments about having another too, have decided not to has I had a lot of problems from DD's birth and she has quite severe SN. Actually stopped going to my hairdresser as she TOLD me I should have another child, which i felt was intrusive. my boss also said to me "only children are crap"!?

Boffinmum, I think that's a really good idea. Women's fertility declines as they age, so their twenties are the best time for women to TTC. Social obstacles prevent them.

I agree that it works the other way too.

I was 23 when I got married, and 24 when I had DS1. All my friends from school and uni (I had graduated a year before I got married, we actually got engaged the week of my graduation ceremony) thought that I was insane. I was buying a house and then planning a wedding while they were planning gap years before settling down to a "serious" career, which obviously I wouldn't have now that I was having children...

I'm now 32, and most of my school and uni friends are just thinking about getting married and having children. But my youngest has just started school and so I am getting my life back past the sleepless nights stage and so can laugh at empathise with my friends who are just starting out

I'm coming to this thread very late but I just hate the term 'career woman' in general. I'm just a woman, thank you very much!

I got married at 22. When I was 23 I went to a cousin's birthday party, and her relations on her dad's side were there who I don't know very well. I overheard one of them saying to my mum 'she's been married 18 months? Isn't she pregnant yet?' and my mum actually sighed and said 'no, she's a career woman really'. I WAS 23!! I was still a student!

If anybody calls me a career woman again I'm going to say 'yes, I am a career woman. Which variety of woman are you? Baby lady? Husband woman? Jobbing woman? Good time girl?'

Boffinmum, I'm afraid I don't like your idea.

People don't need any more incentives to reproduce young. The key is that children must be raised in a stable home environment (I appreciate that young parents can be good parents) not be popped out early per se without proper planning.

Perhaps an idea for the Tories to offer tax incentives for early reproduction to married couples? Wonder how that will go down.

On the flip side it is also annoying when just because I'm young and unmarried people assume my dd was unplanned!

PS - trying for my first at 27 and have already had family members saying it's wrong that I would leave my children with 'strangers' (a nursery), commute with children, 'put my career first', etc. My DH is a teacher so he finishes at 3 and has great holidays, and I have a good job but with flexible hours so I can work partly from home. It feels right for us now - we're emotionally ready, we've built up a little home, we've done the things we were burning to do - but we need both our incomes and we both love our jobs and feel they bring us stability and security and that work can be part of a strong family life (maybe I'll end up dead on my knees and laughing at my naive self in a couple of years' time).

Makes me that bloody nosey parkers think they know best or that what worked for them will work for you. Especially my mum - at 25 she was divorced with two children, no career or qualifications, no money, and she had to put up with people's stupid judgments about her being a single mother. She just did what was right for her at the time. As I will. And if anybody tells me different, I'll just give them the finger. (Well, in my head at least).

All this talk of the things people say reminded me of something my mum told me. She had children very young and already had me and my sister by the time she was about 21. One day she had me in a pram and my sister on the pram seat and an older woman came up to her and said 'it must be very nice looking after children dear but shouldn't you be in school?'

'A lot of men are complete commitment-phobes/dickwads/misogynist twats who string women along through their childbearing years then dump them for someone younger. I know men like this - even if they are nice blokes, they're basically overgrown children who don't realise that it's time to grow up and don't really care about how women feel.'

This is why I always tell women who want children or commitment and the guy won't to leave. No matter how much you love him, if you don't love yourself enough to respect what you want when it is a perfectly normal thing to want, then it's never going to work.

And there are billions of men out there, literally.

Where's one's a dickwad, another is not.

There's no such thing as 'the one' or 'soulmates'. If you let go of inane, manufactured ideas like that and embrace who you are, life goes a lot better in general.

It also usually requires letting go of a lot of archaic, intrinsically patriarchal and patronising ideas, like that the man you need to be with has to have a certain income, certain age, etc. Being open-minded isn't just about being politically correct.

I left a marriage because he didn't want children.

It was incredibly hard.

But I'd have wound up hating myself.

If I hadn't been open to anything, though, I wouldn't have wound up halfway across the world from where I started, with an amazing man and three beautiful children, in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

The best way to get the fairytale is to go out there and earn it/create it yourself, create whatever variation of it that suits you.

Then it belongs to you and you are beholden to no one for it.

I never wanted a fairy tale and bought a house with someone I had been with for several years. We had a happy enough life for a long time and I was determined to make our relationship work for a very long time but when I started talking about kids at about 33 years old I always got the 'next year maybe' response. Some men are decent enough but don't see the biological urgency for women.

In the end I met and fell in love with someone else and left my partner to start a new life which I hoped would include children but knew might be a bit tricky as by then I was 37. First thing my EX said to me when I told him it was over was 'we can have children'. It was too late.