Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Conception

When's the best time to get pregnant? Use our interactive ovulation calculator to work out when you're most fertile and most likely to conceive.

Original poster

how ever did people get pregnant 30 years ago and beyond?

36 replies

wannaBe1974 · 28/07/2006 11:14

it always amazes me when people talk about ttc how you should drink this, and take that, and have sex in this position, and lie like that for ex minutes, and watch your temperature, and assess your cervical fluid ..... that I can't help wondering how people ever got pregnant before all this sort of thing was public knowledge.

Years ago people got married, had sex and had babies. It was never scientific, they did the deed and ivariably they got pregnant. and yet today with all this knowledge the birth rate has gone down and the infertility rate has gone up (with one in six couples struggling to conceive).

So are we taking it all a bit far now? should we maybe just lie back and relax and let nature take its course? after all if we have sex regularly then chances are if we're fertile we'll fall pregnant?

OP posts:
morningpaper · 28/07/2006 11:15

They didn't shove hormones to suppress their fertility down their throats for 20 years before trying to conceive though

So that gave them a wider window of opportunity

hunkermunker · 28/07/2006 11:15

Lots of people didn't have children though. There are a lot of elderly childless couples.

Kelly1978 · 28/07/2006 11:16

not invariably though did they, I knwo quite a few old coupels who didn't have children because it didn't happen. People jsut accepted it mroe then I gues, since there was nothing that could be done.

foxinsocks · 28/07/2006 11:16

we leave it later and our fertility decreases as we get older

foxinsocks · 28/07/2006 11:17

we know a few childless older couples - also dh's parents could not conceive more than one child. As Kelly said, as nothing could be done in those days, people had to accept their lot.

NotQuiteWanky · 28/07/2006 11:17

I think a lot of it is the fact we leave it later. Oh, and also the expectation that we can always fix problems of this sort.

Beccy1974 · 28/07/2006 11:18

maybe they just had better sex then. more doggie style going on :-)

schneebly · 28/07/2006 11:18

I think it is too easy to get stressed out while ttc (understandably) but it is counter-productive to the whole process. You hear so many stories about couples who have been ttc for a long time without success and give up or go on holiday and bang it happens. I think relaxing is a big factor but also agree with morningpaper!

FrannyandZooey · 28/07/2006 11:19

I think fertility is being majorly affected by chemicals in our food, things like mobile phones, pollutants in the atmosphere and hormonal disrupting chemicals in toiletries etc. Apparently men currently aged 30 to 40 are a better bet if you are trying to conceive now, then men aged 20 to 30. I think in the latter age group something like 1 in 4 will have fertility problems.

FrannyandZ0oey · 28/07/2006 11:21

Apparently the water is full of hormones, as well.

Alcohol and cigarettes are also not a great boon to fertility.

FrannyandZooey · 28/07/2006 11:22

STOP IT

MrsMcJnr · 28/07/2006 11:23

Wannabe, I agree with the point you are making, it should happen for us that way but then again I get a niggling feeling that as I am older than my mother's generation were, have taken far more hormones then she ever did and as a result know so little about my body that I need all the info I can get.

I also think that there were those 30 years ago that it just didn't happen for and if they had known what we know now, things could have been different. I guess there is a balance to be struck between being informed and being obsessive about it isn't there.

It is a very interesting topic for debate though

morningpaper · 28/07/2006 11:24

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

acnebride · 28/07/2006 11:30

Quote (roughly) from In the Mink by Anne James, a lightly fictionalised account of editing a fashion magazine, 30s to 40s:

'I came to the conclusion that half the married women of my acquaintance were trying and failing to have a baby. "How on earth do you do it, Liza?" said one in despair. "I presume you've tried the normal methods?" "Yes, like anything. But we don't seem to get results." "Never mind, love, don't despair. You must try my doctor - he could grow a baby from an apple pip." And I gave her the name of the distinguished gynaecologist who brought James into the world.'

So not that different, maybe. But certainly the age thing is a big factor. My mum had my brother after 2 years of trying at the ancient age of 27 -she'd been fending off nasty comments for a year. Then it took her 6 years to conceive me.

Reading Jessica mitford (sorry, I always quote this) she was told she was MAD to have a fourth child at [gasp] thirty - 'imagine, you'll be 45 when it's a teenager!'. That again was in the late 40s.

F&Z, sorry, but I would say pollution was if anything worse, at least for urban dwellers, 50, 60, 70 years ago.

acnebride · 28/07/2006 11:33

Oh yes, and another - '"K says that if you put your legs up afterwards, you're more likely to get pregnant. That's a good tip". [long soliloquy about the 19-year-old heroine not wanting to get pregnant].' From Confusion, which is even more lightly fictionalised account of, inter alia, Elizabeth Jane Howard's marriage to Peter Scott at 19 in the late 30s.

FrannyandZooey · 28/07/2006 12:04

Yes I suppose you are right about the pollution acnebride. I think a lot of the environmental "pollutants" peculiar to modern society must take a lot of the blame though - mobile phones, possibly pc usage ?, paraben preservatives, pesticides etc

acnebride · 28/07/2006 12:08

yes fair enough. and there's less and less completely unpolluted space left.

expatinscotland · 28/07/2006 12:09

'they did the deed and ivariably they got pregnant'

Plenty of people never did.

My mum has plenty of friends - now in their mid-60s - who were never able to have a baby.

Just that back then, w/few to no fertility treatments available, people unfortunately had to look to adoption or remaining childfree.

KathyMCMLXXII · 28/07/2006 12:11

But lots of people these days don't take any notice of all that ttc stuff either, and there have always been old wives' tales. I know there is evidence that fertility has fallen, but I don't believe it impacts on how the majority of people go about having babies.

Twiglett · 28/07/2006 12:13

people didn't discuss it ad nauseum back then either .. you either got pregnant or you didn't

now you have the internet

as someone who would only have had one child if I'd been ttc 30 years back I'm very grateful that I could take a pill that cost 70p and end up with DD too ..

I was totally obsessed with being pregnant a 2nd time .. I lurched from one period to the next ... I understand the total absorption that makes those who conceive easily (or have conceived easily as I did first time round) cross / narked / bored ,.... experience of infertility is a wonderful teacher of patience

VeniVidiVickiQV · 28/07/2006 12:16

Agree expat. It probably wasnt recorded much either - was more a "fact of life".

My nan was HIGHLY unusual in starting her family in her mid thirties. She was also, apparently unusually - a single parent family shortly after.

I think the hormones in plastic products etc are certainly a factor. I wonder whether STD's are more common these days because people have more sexual partners? (Just guessing on that last one obv)

cataloguequeen · 28/07/2006 12:19

They had more black outs (for all you 70's babies) & less T.V ie more time to get jiggy

but seriously they were probably not pumping their bodies and enviroment with chemicals either.

Original poster
wannaBe1974 · 28/07/2006 12:19

agree re polution, esp smoking and alcohol as people were less aware of the impact these had on the body (although it always amazes me how anyone couldn't be aware that inhaling smoke into one's lungs wasn't healthy).

So with all the treatments available now, is it harder to accept childlessness than it was back then? after all back then if you couldn't have children, you knew that nothing could be done, and you knew that anyone else who didn't fall pg was in the same position as you, but now we have IVF/Chlomid/IUI/anything else I've forgotten, if these treatments don't work, does this have potential to build a kind of resentment for those for whom they have worked?

OP posts:
motherinferior · 28/07/2006 12:19

Also, one of the reasons the birth rate (as opposed to the fertility rate) has dropped is that more women decide not to have children.
My DP's mother was talking about how in her youth, you met a man and assumed that you'd have children together; and for how my generation, that was different (she was talking in terms of the difficulties of making active choices. Very nice woman, she was).

KathyMCMLXXII · 28/07/2006 12:20

LOL at CQ on blackouts and tv!

Would love to know if people had more or less sex in the past.