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?

haven't read all of thread but very interesting.

I've been very very lucky, albeit by chance rather than planning, met dh when 25 had 6 years of extended hedonistic adolescence and carrer building with him until fallling pregnant by a contraceptive accicent at 31. My dd is the most beautiful and precious gift to me. If it hadn't happened I'd still be using contraception (albeit somewhat haphazardly ) now waiting for the "right time".

I much prefer my life post dd despite the obvious restrictions and huge changes, and now after 1 early mc last september I'm 6 months pg with number 2 at age 34 after 3 months of "trying". But saying that, I'm young in my cohort of mothers to have had kids and have even been told this, pre 30 where we are is unheard of post 35 far more the norm and this has been pointed out to me on more than one ocassion "aren't you young for a xxxx mum"!!

Many of my peers are sruglling in their 30s with herat breaking fertilioty issues, failed rounds of IVF and so on, some of my other friend are in denial that this is a reality for some women and think they'll fall pg when they choose. Still other single friends same age as me are panicking and thinking about other options to have a child (sperm donation, gay friends and such like).

Its an issue that needs t be talked about, from as young as school, contraceptions great, but fertility problems can destroy people. And they are common, the women I konw who've NOT had mc are in a minority.

Although finances are a consideration I also think as a generatiom we get stuck in a period of extended adolescent where we want to have fun and freedom but with cash to spend this time. This is certainly true of my friends in the capital and having children would interfere with that. Thsi cash fuelled fredom becomes addictive and is hard to give up, but then they might wake up one day and relaise those things are transient and it's too late.

Re materialism, I think it was easier having children before we had any money (not that we do now) because there wasn't much to give up. DH was doing post-graduate studies, all our friends were doing the same, no one had any money and our babies lived in hand-me-downs. If we had had to give up wonderful holidays and great careers it may have been harder to adjust.

I remember thinking how much fun we were having just being the two of us (dashing off to the cinema or the beach at a moment's notice) and deciding that we should try to have kids soon before we got too used to that lifestyle.

In the interests of full disclosure, neither DH or I will ever have a high-earning career or even own our own house so there was never the expectation of financial security before having kids.

no swedes it's not bad (that you are a little envious of the personal space that one child might bring) it's nice to hear an upside tbh.

Can I just add that I am really enjoying this thread. It's an interesting debate and mumsnet at its best I think.

Wow this thread has grown since I last checked in..have read some of the later posts.

A few posters have wondered whether women are choosier than were women in the 50s/60s and also that women didn't seem to have any problems in getting young men to marry and have kids in times past.

Rather than being choosier nowadays, I think our expectations have increased due to being better educated, succeeding in many formerly male-dominated industries, travelling abroad, being able to access birth-control, etc. Years ago, women generally lived in one place all their lives which would have limited the pool of available men.

But more than this, the culture of 50yrs ago was such that people really only expected to have sex within marriage, even that sex was inextricably linked to being married...cue, lots of eager, young men keen to get married so that they could experience sex.

Sophable - And much of the time, I'm positively green with envy, of those who have no children at all. How elegant my life would be.

That's a really good point Whips. I remember being about 23 and a friend saying that her mum had asked her "aren't you horribly frustrated at the lack of sex?" (I would have died re: her not having had a partner for a couple of years, and her mum having married and therefore started being sexually active (at least more frequently ) at 20.

I think the whole point about materialism is misguided.

I'm sure people think that about alot of families where both parents work full time.

In our case, it has nothing to do with materialism but all to do with financial security and the fact that dh's job is not secure and if his job does happen to go, I would need to be working full time to cover all the bills. It also has helped (both of us) in terms of sharing the financial burden, which I prefer to do tbh.

We know several couples in this position now.

I can only speak from our POV Foxinsocks, but if we moved to a bigger house, then we wouldn't cover the bills and I would have to work more hours and all that that entails.
I currently pay all of our bills on my wage.
I take your point about the loss of a salary, if Dh lost his job I would be able to go f-time and the roles would be reversed. I negotiated it as part of my terms and conditions when I went p-time.

This was my point about friends of ours wanting another child, but also a bigger house in a more affluent area, which would require her to work f-time and then pay for someone else to look after her children.
OR she could've stayed in her very nice, but smaller house and gone p-time, looked after her own kids for some of the time and quite possibly had another.
Now she faces a 4 year wait until her son goes to school so she'll only have one lot of Nursery to pay for . She'll be 36 then.
It is, of course, her choice entirely. She acknowledges that it could be different but she wants to have the lifestyle more atm. I hope sincerely she has no difficulties later on.

Same here, foxinsocks.

We had DD before we were financially ready (lived in dodgy area in small one-bed, no garden, no savings and DH's job is frequently under threat of redundancy). I had to go back full-time so we could move out of London and afford a house, not big just more than one bedroom and a small yard for DD to run about in.

Those are material things, sure, but not the huge pile in the suburbs or the glamorous holidays that are often touted as the reason both parents work FT.

really interesting thread. i conceived ds at 35 after about five minutes of trying and am still glad i waited, given that if i'd become a mother in my 20s the man who would have been his father is an idiot, i wouldn't have been ready (wasnt broody til my 30s) and i was senior enough when i got pregnant that my charmingly sexist employers didn't quite dare treat me as badly as they usually treat pregnant women. i also earned enough to pay for decent childcare, and that to me isnt so much materialistic as practical.
BUT of course i have had my comeuppance as we are now ttc no 2 at the age of 37 and not succeeding.
like many of you i do think there's not enough said about secondary infertility. i couldnt face being pregnant again when ds was tiny but now i wish i'd just made myself get on with it - thinking that i may have denied ds a sibling tortures me. i see how much he enjoys playing with other kids and feel i've been horribly selfish.
the other thing i wish id known is that while fertility declines from 35, apparently there is a sharp dip at 37 (and another one at 40) - so people should be aware that even if they're fine at 35 that's no guarantee of anything.

Bumper - am not mortally wounded - you put in too many caveats in your posts for that

But I don't see that it's any more selfish to have a child on your own - lots of children are in childcare when they have two parents (and please god, let's not turn this into a SAHM vs WOHM debate) and as for being selfish to deny your child a dad, hmmm. I see so many threads on here where dads are worse than useless that I'm not sure those kids are better off. And a biological urge to reproduce doesn't go away (sadly) just because you haven't met the man of your dreams.

I think WhipsandFurs point is very pertinent re people having sex in marriage in the past - sure that was a major contributory factor. My nan (who turns 99 next week!) told me that she was miserable with her husband for the entirety of their 50 year marriage but never had the financial independence to be on her own. Now that's sad. I'd hate to go back to a time where more women felt like that than they do now.

I've found it really interesting thinking about the messages you get at school about starting families - my education was all about preventing pregnancy. I honestly don't remember anyone telling me about declining fertility overtly until I was having dinner with some girlfriends who I'd been to uni with when we were in our early 30s and one of them (a nurse) told us in no uncertain terms that we'd better get a wriggle on.

If you want to make the affordability of a nanny calculation, you need to take the average take home pay of a woman of childbearing age (not average income of all people) and the total costs of a nanny.

Add to that you own transport costs to work and additional work expenses (clothing and lunches, mostly) and not many women at all will have a lot over, even if working full time and hardly seeing their children.

arghhh at huge dip in fertility aged 37...am...37! and due on sat. with massive pmt (god help dh).

arghhhhhhhh.

I conceived DD aged 37. She was totally unplanned!

I haven't read the whole thread but in response to some of the latter comments and my own experience, I suppose the things that statistics don't tell you are a) your individual fertility chances and b) what will happen in the future. I buried myself in statistics when we were ttc after our first baby died (aged 36 at the time) and found them extremely depressing. I found it more helpful to focus on what I could actually do to improve our chances eg supplements galore, acupuncture etc.

rosebud i'm so so sorry

Agree rosebud. Sorry to hear of your loss.

Smallchange, interesting food for thought from your earlier posts about whether heeding the calls to procreate young would mean settling for a less desirable mate or having a baby before one is ready. In other words, potentially sacrificing happiness for greater certainty of a biological child.

My take on this is that too many women stick around with blokes who are never going to commit to them. Sometimes, these men give mixed messages, other times they are explicit about not wanting to settle down.

Why not if it looks that way, then just have the courage to get rid of him and find another. Don't waste years and years of one's life on the 'what ifs' or 'maybes'. It is also about self-esteem to demand and expect commitment and security from a bloke and to be treated well.

Mind you, having married at 33, I have had my flings and mr in-betweens. But for that potential life-long partner, just tuff them out if they don't step up.

That's my philosophy. Having many relationships helps to prune expectations so that if one were fussy, it is a self-awareness journey which allows you to recognise the keeper when you meet him, even if he does not tick all the boxes.

Thing is also - I know this will sound trite and it isn't meant to - but you only need one of those good eggs after 35 or 40 or whenever.

I genuinely thought - after DS1 at 30, and 5 years later no DS2 - that we were secondarily infertile. We were almost at the stage of paying for IVF as you can't get any NHS treatment if you already have a child. Turned out in the end we were trying too hard (being tired and busy and overthinking and all) and going for, ahem, a magic bullet approach instead of the, ahem, machine gun approach we had used in the days when we had time to have lots of sex. And more to the point the 'aim' was wrong as it turned out I ovulated much earlier than I realised.

I don't say this to undermine the awful struggle and sometimes failure many women over 35 have in trying to get pregnant but just that as well as for many 'trying' and failing there are many (more? I dunno?) trying and eventually succeeding.

In the circumstance - almost all possible testing, prodding, poking, timetabling, mucus monitoring and ending up convinced DS2 was an absolute bonus, DS3 - conceived at 40 - was an absolute shock surprise

Now I'm not being thick, or light, or even smug, as I do know, with many friends in the position of it just not happening, that we clearly were fertile enough and that just isn't going to be the case for everyone.

But wanted to make the point that the 'cliff face' of fertility is an aggregate figure too, not to be applied to everyone in all circs. And amongst that figure, there are many many women hoping for a, or another, baby for whom it will happen.

The cost perhaps though is that you have to add 'eventually' to that sentence and that means, for my sister, for friends, at the cost of many lost babies and some prodding and a lot of distress and devastation.

Having children younger isn't always sunshine and roses. I got pregnant with my eldest dd when I was 23 and not long out of university. None of my friends had kids till they were much older. I can assure you that there are disadvantages as well as advantages to doing this. Many a time, I would be in tears, stuck on my own (dh was in the forces) with young children, no money and a dead-end job while my friends were living it up, building their careers and having wonderful holidays.
Thing is, life isn't fair. It's full of choices and risks. You might delay having children till you're 35+ and it might work out wonderfully well with you having a great career and then managing to have 2 or 3 kids afterwards. Or you might have fertility problems, have years of heartache and IVF and still not have any.
The risks associated with having children late have been known for years. Some women might choose to ignore them and put them out of their minds, but they aren't new.
One thing I do find a bit rich is people complaining about how we are given too much choice and how contraception is a curse as well as a blessing. It's not a curse. It has transformed women's lives and we're bloody lucky to have it.

Bogwobbit, I think the most important message is that no time is the 'ideal' time to have children. As with any decision there are pros and cons no matter which way you decide to go.

I think we've had a fair period of time where there has been an orthodoxy, and that has been that waiting until the time is 'right' is the smart choice. The flip side of that message is that not waiting until the time is 'right' is a bad, unthinking choice.

We shouldn't pretend it's all sunshine and roses at any age and we're doing everyone a disservice if we assume there's an ideal time.

Blueshoes, I don't think assumptions about settling for an inferior mate in your twenties works as a generalisation. Some women will look back at their partner from that time and be thankful they didn't start a family. Others, like me, will still be very, very happy with the same partner. We've been together since I was 21 - whether we'd had kids in our twenties, as we did, or waited until now I would have had my family with the same man.

The other thing is, and apologies if anyone has already said this, time just creeps up on you doesn't it? One minute you're having a fab 30th birthday and next, seemingly only a few months later, you're thinking 'fucking hell how did I get to be 34?'