Kirsty Allsopp says ditch university and have baby by 27

[Prettyinbeige]

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/02/kirstie-allsop-young-women-ditch-university-baby-by-27

I know it's different for everyone but I completely agree with this article.

For me having my son at 22 was the best thing I ever did. It made me a much stronger and more confident person, which then in turn has helped me in pursuing a career and building a life for us.
I think I would have found things a lot harder if I had built a career and a life to then have to sacrifice it in order to have a baby.

I also understand in some cases it isn't possible for people to have children before a certain age. But I guess what I'm saying is I see some sense in what Kirsty is saying

All the women that I know who have their lives truly sorted had their children by the time they were 27 at the oldest. By the time they were in their early 30's their careers and lives were going full steam ahead.

On my own not with thieving flat mates

I was able to do voluntary work which got me a well paid career job a year later.

I would have been miserable in a shared flat doing a menial job on min wage with no time for voluntary work or money to travel.

I think it depends on if you know that you really relaly want to have children.

I always knew I wanted children, being childless was never an option I considered.

I went to university directly from school, graduated when I was 20, my degree and subsequent career was something I loved and enjoyed. I worked in different countries in my choosen career, so although I never took a gap to go backpacking I still saw different cultures and lived in different countries.

Me and dp started ttc when I was 25, we had fertility issues and it took us 2 years to get pregnant. Dc1 was born when I was 27, I am now 29 and I am pregnant with dc2 (probably our last :( ).

I am so glad that we started ttc relatively young, my fertility issues were not apparent before we started ttc, I fear that if we had waited until I was 35 I would not have ever become pregnant.

I think my advice to young women would be to choose a career that will work whilst young but also to think about how that career would work when you have a young family. My career unfortunately isn't really compatible with mothering small children so once baby#2 is born I am going to retrain in something much more family friendly.

I think if you know you really want children then ttc as soon as possible is a good idea, I don't think ttc with unsuitable men or in a situation where you can't finacially support a child but I personally would put having a baby before my career, travel, having a big house/pash car/exotic holidays.

My mother advised me and my sisters (but not my brother, oh no ) to go into careers which could be put on hold for many years and then done on a part time/pin money basis whilst we 'mothered' because obviously that's the most important thing for any woman (and irrelevant for any man). It was very irritating, and no I didn't follow her advice. In fact as life has it I didn't go into any of the things I was interested in doing as a teen/young adult because by the time I graduated getting any job was a bit of a triumph and my career has been a bit organic since then.

I do think that there are some very family unfriendly careers/jobs where there is very little flexibility and if you know that family is important to you and you don't want to be having to quit/retrain/start again then they might need to be avoided, or at least taken into account, but all my 'lets think about what you might like to do after university' conversations with my son and daughter are the same, I don't tell my son one thing and my daughter another (but then their dad has taken far more time out to parent than me so it would be pretty odd to do anything else).

I wonder how men would play things if their fertility 'dropped off a cliff' after mid 30's?

9% student loan repayments do not help it's true.

Having had a kid young with the wrong guy I now find myself wanting kids with the right guy and the worst of all worlds wrt timing - just starting to have fun and independence again now my kid is 9, career taking off, and I'm nearing 30...

Would not advise having kids younger than 28 really given the career and maturity factors (high chance of dad being mr wrong)

Suzanne I often wonder this. I believe the world would be a very different place if we were on a level fertility playing field from the human evolution!

but fertility does decline with age and as motherhood looks like an increasingly bad option more and more women will have one or no children, eventually govts will start worrying that population will drop below some critical threshold and there will be a need to make early motherhood an attractive option for women.

Or perhaps we will end up with some dystopian handmaids tale scenario.

Well OK speculating wildly there but birth rates drop as womens educational attainment rises, Kirsty is a tool of the patriarchy conspiring to keep us pregnant in the kitchen and out of public life

Yes I do, and as his dad took four years out to stay at home and then went back to work he's got a role model too, which is probably more influential than anything we might say. At the moment ds wants to join an industry that is notorious for using people up and spitting them out so I don't know how much he is listening mind, but then hes also seen us both working for a company we found enormously irritating so I can see why he might want something different for himself.

It's funny though, when dh was at home the reaction from guys was along the lines of 'good on you mate', it was the women who were less welcoming, perhaps they felt he was stepping on their territory (although that might be dh, he can be a bit intimidating sometimes even though he tries very hard not to dominate).

Right now dh and I are very clear that the next few years are about being in the best place for our children, and us both having very much 9-5 jobs with flexibility (not much overtime, working from home no problem, family first ethos etc) means that we can both prioritize their needs fairly easily.

Once they are off to university we'll do something different, probably in a new country.

Its not impossible to have a baby at 27 and get a degree.I went straight to university, and a pretty good one at that, which has stood me in good stead, having that name on my CV has definitely helped .Qualified as an accountant plus an extra sector specific qualification with one of the top 3 accountancy firms and was pregnant at 27.Wasn't necessarily planned like that but in the end I think has worked out well.I was promoted to senior manager whilst on maternity leave (in the early 90s) and finally left practice for the charity sector when ds3 was 2 .

However without a doubt my career is less steller than dh's who has one of those all encompassing jobs which made it impossible in my opinion for us to have duel careers plus we have one with SN who has needed more support.I have found the teenage years the most difficult to combine with work and sometimes feel too drained to give work as much energy as I should but I would hate to be dealing with teens in my 60s (though /I know some can do it) so it turned out best for me .