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?

no, it is not the only driver, but it is a bit of a faux pas to say it is.

i don;t think women do realyl have true socio economic freedom

it is better than it was, an awful lot better, but it is not true freedom, which is borne out by plenty of cases of discrimination

and a woman leaving early for sports day/sick child is seen as a problem, when a man does it, he is a hero and wonderful father

I'm 38 now. I'd guess that a lot of women my age had Mums who pushed them into careers rather than motherghood, because "You have chances that I never had".

Are there any links anywhere to declining fertility stats? It's all quite interesting.

I have a friend who would love a baby, his wife is not ready, she wants to lots of other things first. Of course, at 30 I think that when she is ready in 5 or more years, it might come as a shock that it's not that easy. Of course, this is absolutely none of my business but I think it all centers back to this idea of not so much "having it all" but having exactly what you want, and having it the way you want it, when you want it. Sadly for many, it's not like that.

Male fertlity also declines with age, and there are higher incidences of mc with older male partners, according to this article

Orm, I agree that it's very much down to the individual. I don't think, however, that having children young is incompatible with economic or social independence. The idea that your future grinds to a halt in the delivery room can create a lot of fear around the idea of having a family.

I missed out on building my career during my late twenties because I was busy having babies but in my late thirties I am economically secure and socially independent.

There's also an element of unacknowledged economic risk involved in having babies in your late thirties and early forties. In many ways these really are the peak career-building years, the ones in which you can consolidate experience and step up another level. They can also be vital years in terms of paying off debt and consolidating assets.

In some ways, and for some women, it can be harder to rebuild a career or begin a new one at 44 than at 28. Not for every woman, obviously, but that's why the generalisations don't work either way.

ROFL at arts degree.

'you can do anything you want with an arts degree.' my fucking ARSE.

This is v interesting.
At 35, expecting dc2, I now wish we had started earlier, to have retained the option of having a bigger family, to avoid struggling with a mid career break and in the long term, to be younger when the children are teenagers and later maybe parents themselves.
But when I look back to the person I was at 25, I was not mature enough to have a long term partner or children.
So I suppose I will be encouraging my children to be ready for adult responsibilities, whether that's career, family or both, and not to have as protracted an adolescence as I did.

whoisasking - not sure what your point is? I realise that male fertility is not as age-dependent as female fertility?

At the end of the day, men can relax a bit more about their fertility than can women and perhaps that little bit of leeway makes a big difference to their thinking about the right age to commit to having kids. Of course, men don't have to take the same type of career break than do women but this isn't the issue here - rather, it's one of ownership and responsibility. Men can allow themselves to relax for that bit longer and this in turn allows for more personal freedom. You can't change biological facts, unfair though they may be.

Very interesting, it is SO wrapped up in pretty much everything women face in life.

So much I could waffle on with this, but will say

I will still advise a dd if I have one to study and work hard and go for an interesting and successful career - after all it is usually where people meet their partner and I would want her to be around men that work hard etc etc

Mothers, mothers are great for banging on the do NOT WAIT too long. My mother does this will all three of her dds.

In hindsight I was very lucky to have get pregnant with dh, not because we planned it, at 29 as with my career on the mad upward trajectory it was I could have happily ignored starting a family to god knows when.

I have 2 close friends who are recently pregnant with doner sperm, 43 and 42 respectively. I see them as really lucky. They have careers but neither are the careerist type...they just didnt meet the right man in time....obviuosly never met him at all. I am really delighted for them. Looks from this thread that the advice is go for it in late 20s early 30s at latest...if you have a man. But I doubt my firnds would have gone the solo route at 29 or even 35 alone.

There was huge pressure around when I was in my twenties not to have children young. I moved to London as a young graduate and I knew what I was doing would not combine happily with children. For a while I remembered that and then I fell prey to the pervading work work work culture, and a work social life which precluded mothers of small children. I had one - single, early 40s female -boss who regularly told me how I surely didn't want to have children and how they spoil everything. Looking back, I can see she must have been in the process of coming to terms with her own single life, but it didn't fill me with confidence at the time. I didn't feel it was a company where having babies would be worked around.

At around 28 I started looking for a new job, in a place with better Ts&Cs (mat leave was three or four months at the time) and found what seemed like a suitable job for breeding. It was a disaster. The people were vile.

Then so much life intervened and I didn't actually start TTC until I was 36. Luckily for me I conceived straight away and then again with my DS2.

I'm still surprised that someone who started thinking about starting at family at 28 didn't start until 36.

I knew there were risks but I suppose I didn't think they would apply to me. Tbh, the pressures from society were far more the other way. I wish I'd had mine earlier. Not at 25 but 30.

'my DH had a child at 26 and one at 30 (young for a man)'

General question here about that bit in parentheses: why should 30yrs be considered young for a man to have kids? Is it conditioning? Or is it biological (men just taking longer to mature)?

There is a division of interests between the sexes - which is why you find older men being married to much younger women in 'traditional' cultures.

Society as a whole needs an attitude shift:

I got married at 23 and had the following comments when we told people we were engaged:
-why are you getting married?
-is it a joke?
-I don't think it's a good idea.

The awful negativity was all due to our AGE (both 23)! We were the first out of any of our friends to get married, most were horrified so we decided to have a small reg office wedding and not invite anyone apart from close family. Nobody understood why we would want to get married so young and people actively tried to dissuade us. At a party (I wasn't there), DH was approached by a girl - she was coming on to him and he said "no thanks I'm married" and she looked at him as though he had said that he was a murderer! Now that we are in our 30s, engagements are congratulated and weddings celebrated! I sometimes wonder if these same people think back to their behaviour when we got married.

Then we had DS when we were 27 and DD when we were 29. Again, people were suprised when we had DS. People who already had children congratulated us but our friends the same age were feeling SORRY for us!!!!!!! I think 27 is the average age to have a first baby (not sure) but the statistics are a bit funny as most people are a few years older or a few years younger than 27 so the actual number of 27 year olds having their first baby is small considering it is actually the average age.

When I was a child, my aunt and uncle suffered infertility and they never had any children - it was not age related infertility, but still it was infertility and I knew it was causing them monstrous pain. I always knew that I wanted children and I did it as soon as I could because I was terrified of infertility. I also knew that MIL and FIL had spent 3 years trying to conceive DH with fertility clinic help. MIL warned me about this loads and loads of times.

Things are different if you meet your partner a bit later on, obviously that can't be avoided. But the negativity assoicated with getting married and having kids in your 20s is astonishing.

I'll be encouraging both my DCs to have children in their 20s if they want to have children at all.

People still make comments about my career but quite honestly I don't think it is possible to "have it all"!

I think I'm as guilty as anyone of having my head in the sand about the whole issue, but it's just not part of discussions / plans / understanding for a lot of women.

My parents were 24 and 26 when I was born.. I had my first at 34, my second at 37. DH was 37/41. I only knew one person of my generation who had kids in her 20's - it was seen as such a low-achieving thing to do.

I wish I'd started earlier. DH and I have been together since I was 23, so no finding the right man issues there. Just a lot of building a not terribly exciting career, which is now falling off the tracks.

By BEAUTlFUL Tue 16-Jun-09 15:41:54 "I'm 38 now. I'd guess that a lot of women my age had Mums who pushed them into careers rather than motherghood, because "You have chances that I never had".

Absolutely true in mine/most of my friend's cases.

Also completely agree with the post (was it MrsTM? who said that men who want DCs in 20's are like hen's teeth.

I think some men are also conditioned into playing the field later and longer and not to settle for the first suitable girlfriend who comes along, unlike my parents' generation where it was blimming unusual NOT to have married and had one kid by your mid-20's.

Also, in a parallel universe I would have probably married my ex-ex boyfriend if he'd asked me, in my mid 20's, and had DCs before I was 30. He didn't ask me to marry him, nor did he want DCs and for mainly this reason we split up. I went out with a few undesirables until meeting my current DH and now have a DC in my mid 30's.

Obviously I am pleased that I didn't marry/have DCs with ex-ex because I wouldn't now be with DH whom I love dearly, or have our gorgeous baby, however not knowing him back then I would have been very happy to do that with ex-ex.

Interestingly ex-ex is nearly 40 and has been in a long-term relationship for 7 years now but no sign of marriage or DCs. His GF is now late 30's and (so I hear) would be really quite happy to get married and have DCs but nothing doing from him.

I got out when I realised he meant what he said about not wanting to get married or have kids, hard as it was. It seems that my instinct was correct as I'd no doubt still be waiting for him to change his mind had I stayed.

I have tried to broach this subject with 2 friends recently

The first said that she would like children but if it didn't/couldn't happen she wouldn't mind but you only know it isn't going to be easier until you start trying and by then you are emotionally (and often financially invested) so obviously by that stage you will be bothered

the second was offended so I decided to leave it, they read the newspapers, they are well informed educated women so I wasn't telling them anything they didn't already know

I knew I had to get started on TTC by the age of 30 tops, and had it drummed into DH's head.
He however would have waited for ever
Now, aged 36, 2 DCs and FTC a third, he says 'oh, why didn't we start earlier'

I have a very successful part-time career, but I would have liked to have started having babies at 25.
Couldn't get DH down the aisle or even thinking about it then
What can you do?