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?

I take the point that on reflection many say thet they would not have wanted kids with the person they were with in their 20's...but maybe we need a new approach -- dont waste your time with someone in your 20's if you cannot see them being the father of your children...move on...if you want the best possible chance of being a mother with Mr Right...dump Mr Wrong and look again.

Even if he is Mr Right but is Mr Not ReadyYet...then he is still Mr Wrong!

I have seen lot of my friends finish a long good relationship at the end of their 20s (some married some not) ...as the baby question has come up and he is not ready. They have moved on some have found happiness with someone else and managed to have a family, some have not met anyone else and others have gone it alone.

The men they were with were not bad boys...just having too much fun...to swap clubbing, holidays, designers clothes, for what they percieved as the drudgerey of parenthood. I think that the men have really missed out...a few have lost the loves of their lives and are in new amybe less satisfactory relationships...now doing what they could have done with someone else a couple of years earlier. All the men are now with children (late 30s) or undergoing the misery of IVF. I think we need to seriously talk to our young men about this...a lot of people are hurt (broken relationship) and suffer pain (infertility etc) because the pair is just a couple of years out of sync....all the men have come round to the idea of having children eventually.

Wonder if we should just advise our daugters to date older guys!

Think materialism is at the heart of this...we want to have it all or have had it all...career in place, house bought, power shower installed, trip to Africa done, wild social life etc...so this means waiting until it might be too late or hanging out for the Mr Right to get this out of his system. Think older men need to tell younger men that rockpooling in cornwall with your 2 year old will give you a million time more pleasure than a week end bender to Ibiza...

I think that we can "have it all" ... but not all at once...!...so whilst you are with young children you career/social life/material acquisition might be on hold...but this is such a short phase in our lives and we can get back to the crazy partying, career stuff a few years later (most of my friends are doing this now -- felt like they have been let out of jail)

Agree wholeheartedly, mp.

And what is it with these blokes who think it's alright to want an adolescent lifestyle into their 40s? I found that kind of man pretty unattractive even in my 20s - I always wanted to be with someone who was mature enough to look at what he might want long-term, even if the thought of kids terrified him. Who isn't scared of having children? (And rightly: you'd be a fool to go into parenthood without a little bit of fear.)

I feel really really sorry for my SIL - 37, only meets men with baggage and has a fair amount of baggage herself, but desperate for children. And she's not the sort of person who should even consider going it alone, although I know she has.

I agree that it's very hard if you love your job and your children and don't want to have to downscale either ambition.

I suppose that my point was that a lot of younger men and women don't really love their jobs as much as that, but buy into the crock of shit myth that if you have an ounce of intelligence that you must have a job that requires working long stressful hours and full-time commitment. We certainly did. And you know what? That myth was sold to us by older men who all had wives that SAH or had lower priority careers so that those men had the choice to only think of themselves and their careers. I know for certain that my boss had no input into the rearing of his first three children. In his case that might not have been such a bad thing! But that's not what I want for our DDs.

Interesting debate. Part of the issue is it is a social policy question. The state can stimulate/support earlier or late childbearing with its interventions, and there is a teeny bit of evidence emerging that fertility has risen recently, perhaps because of extensions to maternity leave, child/family benefits etc.

I think this is the bigger question. Most of us individualise the problem but there has been little alternative than for women to choose between early/limit career or late/build career. I strongly believe were there even better provision for working parents the question would be much less pertinent and women would have children earlier while building up work options.

I don't know what happens in countries where the Welfare State has more interventionise policies (Sweden? Norway? - will look later when I get time) but I imagine fertility patterns will be different than the UK with its low taxation and more limited support for family friendly interventions.

interventionist

But are there really lots of women out there who love their job so much that they wouldn't want to go part-time and shudder at the thought of SAHM?

Is it not more about being unwilling to give up a new car, a big house with a spare room and 3 holidays a year?
The women I know who won't go part-time yet beat themselves up over missing their kids don't want to change their lifestyle
They also question whether they can afford to have another child

Are we not better off teaching our girls not to be so materialistic?

The difficulty with choosing single motherhood is that you are restricting yours and ultimately your children's choices in that you are likely to be forced to put them into childcare from a young age in order to earn enough money to look after them, just so you can indulge your selfish need, i.e. to have a child at all costs. Obviously these things are sometimes unavoidable, and it's not to say that 2 parent families don't put their child in childcare anyway even though they could probably afford not to (DH and I manage to do it on medium incomes, childcare is almost as much as we earn).

I know what I am saying is contentious, and I'm not saying this is how I feel, I'm just expanding the debate. I come from a single parent family and I wouldn't chose it for myself or my children. If you chose to have a child on your own and you are not in a financial position to be able to work PT or not at all when that child is young isn't that putting your needs above the welfare of a child?

Or is having a child the ultimate selfish act anyway? Do we do it because of what we think we are going to get in return for it? A wrecked body and house Someone to love us and look after us in old age?

Just spitballing, not suggesting any of the above points are necessarily true so please don't anyone be offended.

I don't think wanting a job, a salary or a house is materialistic. I don't think many women making these choices are doing so just to buy stuff.

Most women who feel they have to choose for or against part time work for example, are grappling with the question of their own intellectual and citizenship ambitions, whether to be dependent on a partner or not, how to give enough to the children they have not yet conceived (and therefore cannot yet know what is required of them...)

but you still have a job and earn a salary if you work part-time, you just don't earn as much because you don't work as many hours.
So presumably, the issue must be about money & lifestyle.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't feel dependent on my DH at all. We pool all the money we earn and pay everything together.

Perhaps it's more to do with the value we place on motherhood then as I don't feel compromised intellectually because the majority of my time is spent with my children.

I really do believe this is the single most important job of my life, the other (paid one) pays my mortgage and I do happen to love my job.

fair point leningrad

Ah, this comes back to the point made earlier about the financial value of being a SAHP, which is intrinsically tied up to the moral value put on it. And I hadn't considered the point about being left high and dry after being a SAHM then left by your partner. But is that what women are really thinking about when they delay motherhood or is that a separate issue, more along the lines of the WOHM/SAHM debate, which no doubt is intrinsically linked to this one.

happened to my sister unfortunately
He hid everything about 6 months before he admitted his affair the bastard. Left her with 2 small kids and wanted half the house that she owned before she met him, the tosser.

sorky that is your choice, but other women's choice is to combine the two. Full-time work and childrearing is compatible and for some desirable, as is part-time, as is shared part-time work between two partners.

But the workplace, and lack of support from the state just does not yet make this fully possible in many jobs and careers.

Large numbers of women who would like to work part-time cannot. The choice is not just about lifestyle, it is about access to the kinds of jobs where it is possible or reasonable.

This is one of the reasons large numbers of women are in jobs they are over-qualified for: they want to work part-time but cannot do so in their chosen profession because it is not allowed or acceptable.

Well I don't know if they delay motherhood because of it, but I had to have a nervous breakdown before I realised I couldn't have the career and be the mother I wanted to be.

I have no doubt that there are women out there who can have it all, but for me there was a choice. Either my kids and my health or my career.
I will be able to resurrect it at some point which does make the decision easier.

Under law a parent can request flexible working, so what jobs are you not able to do this? I honestly can't think of any?

sorky - i am going back to work four days and would take three if i could, YET i do feel very conflicted because i honestly love my work and was just on the verge of achieving my highest professional goal when i was pregnant. (narrowly lost out on my dream job, almost certainly because of my pregnancy)

for me, it honestly has nothing to do with money and lifestyle. It would be no problem to live on my DH's salary, and we are not at all materialistic. BUT i would feel and would be very dependent on him if i gave up work completely. I also would not be able to count on any work in my field being there when i was ready to go back. (then being well into my 40s, in a very young industry)

And I do still have this burning ambition to achieve my professional goals, which are frankly going to be harder and harder to reach as i get older because of age-ism.

it's so hard to know what we should teach our daughters. i think it is so crucial to have professional ambitions and feel that you can achieve anything a man can - and not be financially dependent on one, yet the reality is that the tough choices on combining career and raising children are very much on the woman.

sorry, rogue question mark there

I actually do think materialism has a lot to do with it. Not just the stuff you have pre kids but all the stuff that the bunting cupcake manuals, gloss mags, sunday supplements, suggest that you need for your children when you have them, Cath Kidston changing bag and wall paper, trip trap high chairs, a fancy pushchair, Boden clothes, wooden toys (when we all know they prefer Happy Meal plastic tat!). The list goes on. I know it because I feel the pressure even now. When my friends babies are dressed up in cute John Lewis or JoJo clothes, or have nice wooden toys it makes me feel a bit and sad that DD is in Sainsbo's clothes if she's lucky, hand me downs or NCT seconds if she's not, even though I know it is ridiculous, and she doesn't care, but both DH (he is just as bad) and I do. DD is an extension of us and we want her to look cute and for people to marvel at how well turned out she is.

Anyway, that diatribe was just to make my point that this may contribute to the financial reasons why people delay parenthood.

Sorky my husband had to leave his last job as after a 3 month box ticking exercise 'trial' they would no longer left him work PT, and he didn't want to work full time while having young children.

It's very difficult to actually get flexible working, your company just has to pay a bit of lip-service to it.

Oh sorry to hear that Bumperlicioso.
I work in a female dominated profession, where that behaviour is less likely to happen. So I admit perhaps it's naive of me to hold that view.

We did discuss who would SAH as we both earned pretty much the same salary f-time, but in different fields.

Mine had much more scope for flexible working, so it was me who did it.
Incidentally, if I had climbed the ladder any further I probably wouldn't have had kids. The women above me either don't have a family or have had them and have returned to work to continue there career progression.