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 really don't know why some women look down on people that choose to have their babies early...its never too late to get a job/vocation {ok.....80 might be a stretch but you get the gist...}but there is a time limit on your fertility...my daughter loves the fact that i am the youngest mummy in her class. i had her by choice at 21...most of her peers mums are early forties now where i am just turned 31. I had my son at 25 and did a degree whilst he was little and have just returned to full time work in a very rewarding job for the local council. I am TTC my third child - me and DH's 1st together and most of my friends are still considering whether or not to conceive their first.....am really glad that {fingers crossed} all the babymaking and getting them all out of nappies will be over in the next few years and i that DH and i will be able to sit back and let the grandkids roll....

their not there, I'm crap today.

boodlebot - good points, especially about grandchildren. If my DS waited as long as I did to have kids, I'll be 76. Whereas my mother is seeing her grandchildren reach adulthood (my brother started young with his brood). she also had a very successful career that she didn't start until she was divorced at 34.

Well sorky, I think things have changed, but not enough. And who knows what will happen after the next election and in a recession.

I just can't get over people I know in the States who only get 6 weeks maternity leave! 6 weeks in one of the richest, most advanced countries in the world!

Well, typically as others have said, it is the middle classes who delay childbearing. One reason for this - and this is connected to the question about jobs - is that they often go to university and then enter jobs in which more training is required and further qualifications/experience to 'make the grade'.

It isn't always easy to fund this later on in life, although interestingly, I note a slight (anecdotal - would need to check if this is a trend) increase in numbers of mature students. I wonder if this is since the introduction of delayed fee-payments? In other words, if you don't have to pay back fees until you earn a certain amount, there is now less disincentive to go into higher education later. When students had to rely on parental support entirely (and many still do) in the last few years after grants and free HE were abolished, the numbers of mature students plummeted.

We may, now, see more women delaying university and having earlier kids because of this? Just a thought.

There is some shift, as I said, towards a slight increase in fertility in the last 5 years, and this particularly in the 30-34 range, but evident across all ages except for teenagers (which is in slight decline). But this is a crude measure of fertility since you need to know how many children and when over a whole fertile life.

bumperlicioso - yeah it's nuts but the upside (or downside) is that the cost of living is typically cheaper and many more women choose to be SAHM.

sorky - thinking on what you said, i actually agree that for many people it is a matter of materialism. (it's just not my personal experience.) so many people could get by with less but don't want to downscale their lifestyle and/or feel an obligation to provide their kids with everything they had themselves, or wanted to have.

LeninGrad, it's true you can't have kids expecting them to have kids, but there are other aspects to the multi-generational thing.

There are a growing number of women, and while it shouldn't be just women, it often is, who are finding themselves caring for young children and elderly parents simultaneously. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence, but there's also social policy research being conducted into the issue. I know that illness and death can strike at any time, but there are illnesses and conditions largely associated with old age, dementia in particular. While this isn't an argument against delaying a family, it's something that is a problem for an increasing number of people.

Sorry to be blunt here but where is the evidence that these decisions are made out of materialistic concerns? Ones own personal experience clearly isn't enough to make the case, nor is the experience of a self-selected group of friends.

What do women, people in general do to make decisions about fertility?

Bumperlicioso - that post did offend me actually

I think having children is really selfish, whether you're single or in a couple. It's bad enough having failed to have find a decent long lasting relationship but to be condemned to childlessness too seems too cruel.

leningrad - if the grandkids turn out the two little cavalier king charles spaniels {which i am not allowed til we retire...boo} then that is also something to very much look forward too IMO.....also i love the idea that DH and i may be able to travel to places that we cannot afford/the kids don't want to when we are only in our fifties....my point i guess is that i will onlybe early middle aged and not nearing retirement...of course anything could happen between now and then.....for example my 4yr old niece has been diagnosed with leukaemia and we never saw that coming....but i am HOPING for nice things like, grandkids, puppies and adventures

Look, here: free evidence on fertility decline and fertility decisions

I'm sorry to offend you spicemonster, and you are absolutely right, their is a certain selfishness to anyone having kids. I don't really think those things on the whole, I was just debating really.

I would imagine it's a rare occurrence where a family has a child without being concerned about the financial implications these days.
Not just working patterns, but how much holidays cost from then on, childcare costs, change of car etc.
I say imagine because obv I don't have figures, but they are questions that arise on MN quite regularly.
They sound like materialistic concerns to me.

boodleboot we intend to do exactly the same thing.

When we hit 50 we're tootling off to see all the places we can't go to now, providing those places are still there of course

Yes, sorky, but do those things actually impact upon a whole cohort of women's decisions to have or not have a first child for example?

Individual women/couples might well worry about the financial impact of having children, some might well delay it until they are in a secure job, or have a house to live in, or feel they can afford certain standards. But these things are not - alone - the kinds of decisions that large groups of women make in determining whether to have children early, late or at the 'average' time in their life.

Are we lulled into a false sense of security then, that modern medicine will prevail?
That we can simply freeze our eggs until it's more convenient only to find we're sold up the river and it's all too late?

It's not really security though is it? It's a back up plan but not a guarantee.

Really great thread. I'm saving it for future reference - for friends and younger sister...

It's much better, more interesting and more articulate a debate than any newspaper or magazine article I've read on this topic.

I think, as other posters have said, this problem of family planning and falling fertility rates is symptomatic of the ongoing feminist bid for equality. Ie we don't yet have it. Society, and even the family (in the UK) is still constructed on patriarchal grounds.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could openly discuss with our employers our plans for family, and how it will fit in with our jobs? Who would dare, upon starting a new job, or even a few years into it, breath a word to their boss that they were ttc? Yet men can happily chat about plans to start a family without it affecting their job.

And the case of so many men wasting a woman's fertile years, making her wait while they live out an extended adolescene/DINKY lifestyle, makes me quite angry. (I know a few of these men).

I think the Dep of Ed should have a look at their PPE curriculum, and alongside sex education should teach family planning, fertility rates for both sexes, consequences of leaving it too late, and above all, ethics and values.

Because I think those men who make women wait for children, or worse, leave them after spending her fertile years together, are behaving unethically.

My own situation - met DH at uni. I was 21, he was 20. Spent our twenties having a great time as DINKYs in London, careers going great, bought a flat etc, travelled the world, partied every night. Married at 28, had dd at 29, four months ago. I'm now 30. I would like 3 or 4 kids. I wish we'd done it a little earlier - we could have managed to support children at any time, our careers would have waited. I'm now putting my career on hold for a few years (besides a little freelancing to keep it ticking over), as since having dd, I feel that having children is the most important and fullfilling thing I've ever done. I wish I'd known how I'd feel earlier! DH is willing to be the main childcarer in the future, when and if I want to swap roles. We're really lucky that I can afford not to work for now (albeit with downgraded 'lifestyle'!)

Some of my female friends (early 30s) think I'm nuts, and have lost all my drive, and thrown away everything I worked for in my 20s. I feel that I'll probably be working until I'm 70, and so a few years, or even a decade, out of the career rat race isn't a problem.

Haven't read the whole thread so probably repeating..... but I think that of the part of the reason that the middle classes, and particularly career high flyers, leave it so late is that they are so used to being good at doing what they set their minds to that it hasn't ocurred to them that they might not be good at getting pregnant.

My best friend is cheerfully thinking that she might have a baby when she's 40, both her and her husband's mothers had them in their 40's and she thinks she'll probably be able to do that too. She was about to try for a baby at 37 then got a shiny new job and is putting it off. I think that having children isn't very important to her but I really hope it doesn't become more important if she's not able to have them. I've given her an 'if you want them you need to do it now' peptalk but we are not on the same wavelength, I don't understand her ambivalence.