Fertility warning to women

[Bumperslucious]

Thought this article was interesting give the very long debate we had on here a while ago.

[kickassangel]

i can;t help thinking that the cost of living has something to do with it. there's an increasing number of 20 somethings who live with parents/shared housing etc who can't afford to set up home. there's alos quite a number who think that 28 is not much older than 18 & that they still have time to party their lives away. and, sex-ed throughout teenage years, is very much geared up towards putting people off having kids.
all these things mean that people are taking longer to grow up & take on real adult responsibility.

sure, it's great to have your 20s as a time to party & build a career, then think about settling down later, but that just evades the issue of having kids.

i also think that some people have managed to 'divorce' the relationship between sex & babies. they are so used to the idea of recreational sex, that they forget that primarily, sex is for the purpose of procreation.

it is a fact of nature, that if you want to be married & have kids, particularly if you want some time as a couple, then have 3 or 4 kids, you pretty much need to marry in your early 20s. sadly, much of society seems to think that it is almost taboo to marry before 30. if people know they don't want kids, then that's ok, but if they think they may want them, they need to prioritise.

after all, a career, the fantastic house, nightlife etc, can all be enjoyed in your 40s & 50s, but it's much harder to have kids then.

in 'the good old days' people had kids younger, then life began at 40.

[MrsTittleMouse]

Hm, that's interesting. I do think that it must have been much easier to settle down and have children when you could buy a house with 3.5x a normal salary and your job was probably for life.

It's perfectly possible to have children while renting or moving around or with an uncertain income (and I know that a lot of people on MN cope with all of these - including us ). But it is more daunting.

[edam]

My parents were 23 when they had me. They had a house, a car and a middle class lifestyle on one income - mother at home, father a junior manager. Impossible today.

(Well, actually they didn't have the car and 4 bed house when they were 23, but they did by the time they were 26.)

[HolyGuacamole]

Totally agree with the argument about men letting women go and not hanging them on a line until it is too late but I also think surely it is equally up to the woman. If you are with someone and children are really important, then I think the woman has as much responsibility to give a time limit and walk if it's not happening. Either way it's a risk?

I'm 34 and thank God I never had kids with any of my ex's I never wanted kids with them and thought I was a person who just didn't want children ever. It is only now I am with DH that we have decided that hopefully it can happen for us.

[HolyGuacamole]

"If you are with someone and children are really important, then I think the woman has as much responsibility to give a time limit and walk if it's not happening."

Just to clarify - I mean if the man isn't making moves towards the commitment of having children.

[mollymawk]

Agree with MrsTM.

Thus quote in particular is telling:

'Ledger argued that it would be about more than a blood test. "Maybe doing the test is less important than making them sit down as a couple and talk it through ? the test is just a hook to hang it on."'

That's the problem isn't it? How many people at 30 have a relationship in which it is appropriate to sit down as a couple and discuss future children?

[monkeytrousers]

Womens biology is fab. I know it has limits, but its much better than the males. The males biology means much more of them die beofre they get the chance to be parents!

[monkeytrousers]

You know, the only reason men can indulge this fantasy (that they have always had since the dawn of time admittedly) that they can affored to 'play the field' is bacuase there as so many of us. Once upon a time, if a man was lucky enought to get a healthy girlfriend, it was he who would do all the running. In historical terms, it's never been hard for women to find a commited mate - for men they were the lucky ones.

[Petsville]

Mollymawk - agreed, but even if you are in that sort of relationship, you've got trouble if you're only prepared to have children if the man is the one to stay at home / let his career take a back seat for a while. I've got to get to a place where I can afford to support myself, DH and a child before we can think about having a baby, because he hasn't got the option of taking a year off work and having a guarantee of a job to go back to, and neither of us feels comfortable with handing a tiny baby over to a nanny. As someone said earlier on this thread, it's pretty difficult to pay for a roof over your head and dependents on one salary in your twenties!

[monkeytrousers]

ANS still even today, even though alpha males still harp on about playing the field (how the fuck did Rob Liddle ever become part of this group??) it's women who have more real sexual partners. Howzat for a big mind fuck.

[Petsville]

How are you defining "real", monkeytrousers?

[monkeytrousers]

as in imaginary - like porn or erotica or simnply women on the street that they get off on - masturbation faciliators

[monkeytrousers]

I know it sounds odd, but many fellas actually mix 'real' and 'imagined' up

[Petsville]

Oh, I see - more sex with a partner as opposed to solo! Thanks.

[funtimewincies]

We can't win can we?

I was encouraged to go to university, so that took me to 23. I was working to establish a work history and pay off student debt and met dh at the same time. I was made redundant and retrained, which took me to 26, when dh and I also married. Had to start establishing myself in a different type of workplace until we finally decided to try having children at 30. At no earlier point would it have been reasonable for anyone to deliberately start a family and we wouldn't have been able to afford a home for any children we produced.

I've also had an ectopic and 3 unexplainable mcs (and am now pg with my second). Fertility wasn't the issue.

So is the medical profession advocating a choice between children and further education . I have a feeling we're back to the old 'nasty selfish women choosing a career over their 'proper' function of dropping sprogs' issue.

[spongebrainmaternitypants]

funtimes, I don't think 30 is considered too old in fertility terms to start ttc - I think the concern is more about women who think it is ok to leave child bearing until their late 30s despite being in a committed relationship because they don't feel 'ready'. I have at least 3 friends who fall into this category .

It is, of course, an entirely personal choice, but they all seemed so blase about their chances of conceiving when they wanted to, despite knowing the agony we had been through and we started at 30 . As I said before, there are so many stories in the paper now of older mums having kids that it is beginning to being seen as the norm, and sadly it isn't.

[CloudDragon]

It is so very frustrating the way it is portrayed as career women wanting it all. When in fact it is just people not necessarily being in a relationship that should have children.

But some couples do wait until the 'right time'which is some uptopian financial future when in reality sometimes you've just got to get down to it.

as it is undeniable that we are having children later and that biologically that will cause lots mroe fertility problems and therefore the more aware people are of that potentially the better.

But why blame women for this ffs it takes two to tango

[spongebrainmaternitypants]

Clouddragon, I agree with you about it being as much about men as women, when it comes to making the decision as to when to start ttc. However, women bear the brunt of the problem because their fertility declines far more catastophically at a younger age than men. We all know the stories of men still fathering kids well into their 70s . Sadly this is not something that women can do .

[CloudDragon]

too true spongebrain

[Sheeta]

spongebrain Sorry, I didn't mean unsubstantiated - I meant scaremongering. Didn't think before posting.

Of course it's true!! I just used the wrong word..

[spongebrainmaternitypants]

sheeta, no need to apologise!

I suppose it could come across as scaremongering, but no matter how often this message is put across in the media I still find myself having conversations with very educated, well-read friends of mine who seem to think that our fertility is somehow extended just because we want it to be, or that, if all else fails IVF is the answer . One 41 year old friend said to me the other day that if they don't get pg by Christmas they'll have IVF in the New Year so they can have a baby next year . IVF at her age has a shockingly low five per cent success rate .

[Sheeta]

The BBC etc seemingly reports a different trial/discovery/random medic's opinion almost every day that the really important stuff (like this) gets lost in a sea of 'tea gives you cancer/tea cures cancer' type reporting.

There's a story today about the rise in mouth and throat cancer's due to alcohol intake, but it'll get largly ignored.

I'm not explaining myself very well, but you hopefully know what I mean.

I'm quite shocked that there are so many women who don't know about the fertility decline in their 30's. It's just something I've always known - we had DS before we got married, as I was 30 and didn't feel comfortable waiting.

[Sheeta]

sorry, got very off topic there.

[Upwind]

No, Sheeta, I agree. Science does not work well as a news topic. The latest research is reported out of context, often in a misleading way, by news reporters who don't even have a basic grasp of statistics.

The really important stuff just doesn't really get covered. I think the 24 hour news reportage makes it even harder for them to properly explore any topic.