Panorama - older women and pregnancy

[speedymama]

Did anybody see this last night. I was glued to it because I realised how lucky I was not to have had problems falling pregnant at age 38yo with my DTS.

The issues affecting older mothers really had a profound effect on the presenter because she realised that at age 35yo, if she wanted children, then her window of opportunity was diminishing with each passing year. She reflected on a good point that we always focus on the successful high profile older mothers like Cherie Blair and Madonna but forget that far more older women are unsuccessful.

I feel that women like myself who have invested a great deal into our careers face a huge dilemma with regard to our lifestyle choices. If you have children in your 20s, you forfeit the opportunity to establish your career without any hindrance. If you leave it until you are older, who run the risk of having fertility problems due to age plus you have to decide on the type of balance you want to achieve with your family and career.

I feel truly bless that I had no problems conceiving my boys.

I think that a lot of women, and I include myself in this, focus on the high profile women who gave birth when they older.

When I was younger, I remember reading about Ursual Andress giving birth to her first child at age 45yo and I remember thinking that it was possible to have a baby in later life. I am a scientist (chemistry) and I used anecdotal evidence like that rather than scientific facts to inform my choices.

This generation of potential mothers are exposed to the likes of Cherie Blair, Madonna, Mariella Forstrup, Meera Syal and Mrs Gordon Brown who are having children and still maintaining the careers they have established (easier because they are high earners I know) but they do act as role models and women think, if they can, so can I. I know I did and I feel truly bless that I did not have problems conceiving because of my age.

I think a lot of it is to do with the sheer wealth of opportunity available to middle-and high-earners. There is so much to do before having kids: travel the world, do up a house, weekends in Barcelona, take up surfing... The lifestyle is addictive. I wonder if it was always the same but I think cheap travel and technology have made life seem more fun, like there's more to give up for having a child.

Very true Pruni. DH and I were together 6 years before we married and then waited 2 years before we decided to try for a baby. We were too busy with our careers, travelling, sport and just generally being free from the shackles of responsibility that goes with parenting. Despite me being 8years older, he was not worried about me having problems falling pregnant but to be honest, we did not think about it like that, we believed it would happen. However, he did want me to have at least one child before I hit 40 and as it it happened, I had 2!

Pruni - I think you're absolutely right. Also think that many of us are living the lives our mums never had, as the tradition then was to marry/have children quite young. It was certainly transmitted to me that Mum felt trapped in the domestic grind, and that she felt envious of all the life choices that were available to younger women.

That's interesting, since I never grew up experiencing that divide. My mother and all her sisters/cousins each had children early-ish (mid 20s), worked as well, though not in high-flying careers, and managed to have a fair amount of fun as well, with the kids muddling through in a 1970s kind of way. My childhood memories tend to feature hordes of cousins running wild in my aunt and uncle's tumbledown house, 6 kids stuffed in the back of a VW beetle, that kind of thing. It was a lot of fun, and that was very much the kind of image floating around in my head when dh and I found I was preg. with dd1.

And that's pretty much how it has been -- before we had children we were skint students, so never really had the yuppie high income no kids lifestyle. We've all muddled through somehow, I think the children are having a happy childhood, and dh and I are managing to have reasonable careers, though neither of us are poised to take over the world any time soon.

To me it feels very normal, and I find programmes/articles like the Panorama one slightly annoying (interesting, though) because they really don't represent my experience or those of lots of my friends.

haven't read whole thread but I think there is always a load of stuff about women "waiting" to have a baby til they're in their 30s - what about those of us (surely I am not the only one?) that didn't meet anyone they wanted to have babies with until they were in their 30s?
Having babies late (34 and 36) wasn't a plan or particularly a choice for me - it was just the way it happened

I'm 44 and pg with 2nd child. For meand DH it was all about being emotionally mature enough to feel capable of raising a family. If we had waited for the career/financial stuff to be right, we'd still be childless.

The programme was very tabloid - no depth to it at all. Usual cliches about women putting off babies while they have too much fun at work or 'forgetting' to have children when it's more complicated than that. Women pursuing careers is one factor, but the big issue is nature of communities and relationships today and whether women AND men feel emotionally ready for a caring role towards each other, let alone children as well. And how involvement with extended families and neighbourhoods has changed: you can get away with living in a city like London and avoiding the domestic sphere completely. The presenter looked like she'd never encountered a tiny baby before, and maybe she hasn't (let alone gone to Mothercare and seen any baby products). She still talked about 'achieving a family' like it was a goal-oriented thing (not a commitment that changes the rest of your life) - that grated on me. It just could have been a better programme even with the same conclusions. It's not just about women's choices.

However, the programme was about the best time to have a baby and in that context, I thought it was very good.

From the trailer I was expecting some more flash graphics with charts showing what happens to fertility after 35 or even what hormonal changes are still happening to teenagers as this is a risk factor too. And how it relates to menopause (I've heard up to 10 years before menopause is your window).

I'm researching my family history and it seems that a huge number of my ancestors had their last child 20+ years after the first. Having one two or more children after 40 seems to have been normal, rather than unusual.

/link{http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2006/06/silvertonPA010606_228x328.jpg&imgrefurl=www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html%3Fin_article_id%3D388662%26in_page_id%3D1773&h=328&w=228&sz=35&tbnid=-jQOia0NGiBCgM:&tbnh=114&tbnw=79&hl=en&start=16&prev=/images%3Fq%3DKATE%2BSILVERTON%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG\funny article when i looked her up!}

odd article when i looked her up!
Sorry!

Muminlondon, I totally agree with you. This was a very strange programme.

It just followed the tabloid view that the reason so many women "put off" having children is that they are just plain selfish and havn't added this to their to-do list yet. At the end of the programme the presenter looked like she regretted not picking up a new baby while she was shopping for the latest lip colour.

Is it just me, or does there seem to be a backlash against women having an education, career, choice?
The statistics tell us that we used to have babies younger, but were we happier?