do you think that it's possible to have a sensible conversation about awareness re falling fertility in the light of the other thread....

[Heathcliffscathy]

sorry about the humungous thread title...

but do you think we could talk about the question of putting off career to have babies/being aware of falling fertility as you age without resort to handbags at dawn?

i know it is a terribly emotional thing for all of us (me included massively). but is there room for discussing whether there should be a cultural seachange back to having your children younger...to avoid the pain and heartache of waiting til you're in your forties to start and struggling?

What does that really mean though mslucy? Not being funny, just curious. I thought I was emotionally ready, I was desperately broody but I have still found having DD really hard in terms of mourning a life lost (not even a very exciting life, just the freedom - and sleep!). Are we ever really ready? Do some people think they are ready and realise that in actual fact they weren't (e.g. me) and consequently can it also be the case that people think they aren't ready but when it came down to it they get on brilliantly? My point is, is it crucial to wait until you are emotionally ready?

I don't think that we're all too fussy, actually. I know of quite a few women where we have secretly all gone "how was he lucky enough to end up with her!", and my Dad has a theory that there are just more decent lovely women out there than decent lovely blokes, as he has female friends in their thirties who are single or divorced and he doesn't think very highly of the men available to them! I can't think of a way to make men in their twenties (or even early thirties in some cases) less keen on frequent sex and complete freedom.

It's interesting that the feeling on this thread that maybe we're being too fussy, maybe we should have just stuck to whomever we were with in our 20s and had the babies contradicts much of the feeling you see on the Relationship threads.

Really? Should we just settle at 22 because that's what people do? Not sure that you love the guy, but hey you're turning 25 and don't want to waste those fertile years? Not engaged at 27 - oh my god it's a disaster and I'm on the shelf/my life is over?

Because annecdotally, that's what women did in the past. Settled. Married their first boyfriend and it might not have been that great, might have resented each other, hated each other, got beaten up every Friday night but that's what life was like.

Talking to my grandmother and my mother there were a lot of unhappy people when you stuck together no matter what, but they had children.

Or have we swapped the potential for unhappiness (a bad marriage that you can't get out of) for another kind (that you won't have children). Is one better than the other?

Early marriage/ motherhood was (and still is) seen as an option for thickos by the educational establishment and the middle classes.
At my all girls' school in the 80s, we were prepared for careers and nothing else. I don't think relationships with men were ever discussed, or kids, or anything like that.
Only one of my peer group had a child early - he is now 18!
I was chatting to her the other day and she wishes she had more of a career.
I wonder why I ever gave a S**t about mine - though I'm glad I got on the property ladder young, which is very important in London.
What I'm trying to say is that no one ever feels 100 per cent sure about their life choices.

Another q. Should people have children when they don't really want them just because they might not be able to in their 30s/40s? I'm talking about expecting men to get a grip on the fact that their partners may be wasting their childbearing years. (Again, this goes against the usual Relationship advice)

Maybe a lot of it comes down to having children being an expectation. Maybe we need to really think about the perfectly valid option of not having children at all.

bumperlicioso
I had a lot of therapy in my late 20s that made me a much less angry and hot headed person. I became much more open and found it easier to relate to people. I think I became a lot less selfish and a lot more tolerant - I am 1,000 times nicer to DH than I was to any of my exes, because I actually bothered to think about his feelings.

I was emotionally ready for motherhood at the age of 34 - took me a couple of years to work out that I couldn't "have it all" and work full time like a single person with no kids.

Maybe I would have grown up faster if I'd had my kids younger, but I genuinely feel I would have found it more difficult than I do now.

Smallchange, of course not having children is perfectly valid if that is what you choose, but to not have children when you want to have children must be soul destroying, having children is after all our most base desire, it must be hard to overcome that.

I think you make a good point about staying in unhappy marriages though. But I guess the question should also be what makes an unhappy marriage? Have we changed our expectations of what we should expect from a life long relationship? Of course a violent or emotionally abusive relationship is unacceptable, but do we sometimes throw it all away for the (unrealistic?)hope of something or someone better? I guess it all comes down to your priorities, children, career, relationship but the unfortunate fact is that many people don't realise how much they want children till they can't have them, then the relationship and career pale into insignificance.

The relationship I had in my 20s was crap because I always had major doubts about him - he was a perfectly nice bloke (much nicer than me or DH!). However, there was very little "chemistry". I look at his status updates on facebook sometimes and think wtf?

Should I have married him purely because it might have been a little bit easier to have kids?

I really don't think so. I know I would have been divorced within a few years and/or cheating on him and that's hardly great for kids now is it?

My friend was told by her PILs that it would be irresponsible to have children until they could afford a house. She and her dh had both done PhDs so were only just starting to earn at 30ish - they worked out she would almost certainly be infertile by the time they could afford the deposit. Your point about house prices is a good one Riven.

Well maybe a good start would be to present our own children, both girls and boys, with a pros and cons list for both early and late parenthood? There's no right and wrong answer but we can certainly make them aware that there are consequences to whatever choices they make?

Thanks so much for starting this thread sophable - MN at its best

spot on flasharriet
also don't beat yourself up about what you didn't do 15 years ago, just try and make the best of what you've got now.

Thanks for replying to my q's mslucy, I think they are completely fair answers.

Riven I think you are right and it has been said on this thread before, we are equal in that we have the same rights as men in a men's world, what we need for true equality is to be able to do all the things that men do and have the same choices/opportunities and still have children. I try and explain to people who say 'well, it's your choice to have children' () yes it is my choice, but it was not my choice to be a woman and the only sex who could have children, and having children is one of the most basic desires so why should I be penalised for that.

Instead I should just be grateful I am allowed to have children and have a part time career that might slowly progress. It's all a load of bollocks!

I think that financially and career wise it's detrimental to have kids early, even when you take stock at the end of it all, because you take time off and often work part time for several years. If you wait for promotions and raises at least you are doing that at a higher level. I expect that many of my peers who have been promoted will have kids later and by then I will be done and mine will be older but I think I will always be worse of than them because I have the next 18 years or so of my kids coming first and I will be doing that on a lower salary. I don't know if that make sense at all, what I mean in a nutshell is that I don't think it evens out in the end, I really think that careerwise and finance wise you are better off waiting. Off course, that, as we are discussing, comes at a price, the risk of not having kids at all.

The house thing is a big one. So many of my friends have said 'when we have bought a house we'll think about trying' which makes me a bit as we manage fine in a rented house. It makes me feel a bit offended actually, as if we are being irresponsible by having children when we don't own a house, which of course is ridiculous, but why is it so important to my friends. Surely not just because of the risk of crayon on a landlord's wall !

Kathy - don't delude yourself - there really never is an easy time to combine career and children! You might, with a better career position, be able to afford the nanny - but at the same time you might never actually see your children...

No no Anna, you're wrong.... If we had a nanny my life would be perfect and everything would be wonderful

The unpalatable truth is that the kind of nanny that maternal, overeducated and/or professional women are able to entrust their children with cost ££££££ and are only financially viable to those that work mega hours and are prepared to see very little of their children during the working week.

{waves at everyone from the vantage point of being about to get period, aged 37, desperate for a baby with a husband aged 43 with probably old and crap sperm }

this a fantastic thread but god almighty it is upsetting me so much....[watches fertility go down plughole]

Anyone seen the Daily Mail today? Another article on women leaving it late/too late. Some of the points are very familiar... What a boon MN is for journalists!

Oh sophable

aww sophable me too - 37 and period due tomorrow and imminent. I'm sorry your thread upset you but it was a good one. Hoping for you for next month.

it is a great thread though...intelligent and warm. challenging and calm. lovely

fircone this is clarly where I have gone wrong - I never read the DM

sophable, sophable, sophable
Please don't be sad. Most people I know have had their kids older and yes it is harder and you may need medical assistance but it can and does happen.
Please don't despair.
And please stop obsessing over horrid articles in the Daily Mail (which also attacks women for having their kids too young!!!!)

BonsoirAnna - when I had my 1st 2 children I worked 3 days a week, fixed hours (9 - 5, with 1.5 hours commute each end of the day) and employed a highly qualified (NNEB) nanny who worked 7.30am - 7pm. I was earning a good wage (solicitor in the City but not magic circle, with discounted salary because of the fixed hours and not bringing in fee income) but certainly not megabucks. I agree that it wouldn't be affordable for everyone but I think it's misleading to give impression that it's an option only for the Nicola Horlicks of the world.