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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Women 'delaying' having families

37 replies

Msfickle · 21/07/2012 09:40

Is anyone else sick to the back teeth of this expression?

Why is it that just because I've chosen to have a child at 35 rather than 25 I've been 'delaying'. Not really no - didn't feel ready to have a child at 25. Infact didn't have a decent job, a house, any money or a partner.

The media love to make out that all women who have children post 30 spent their entire 20's in power suits climbing some career ladder and saying "no, no, must get rich and successful before I can possibly conceive a child".

It's bloody infuriating!

OP posts:
peoplesrepublicofmeow · 21/07/2012 09:51

tow people make a baby, unless the men are all toy-boys then men are also 'delaying' perenting untill later.
i think it's just used to describe a trend.

peoplesrepublicofmeow · 21/07/2012 09:51

two*

GotMyGoat · 21/07/2012 09:56

There are a few couples who delay ttc for practical reasons, but most people have children when they, and their partners, want to. I think waiting for the right partner has more to do with it than career!

Trills · 21/07/2012 10:10

Everyone who ever uses contraception is delaying having children.

I don't see that there's anything wrong with the word.

If you don't do it because you don't feel ready, that's delaying just as much as if you don't do it because you .

The point is that it's perfectly reasonable to want to have babies later on. There is nothing wrong with delaying having babies, and if nobody did any delaying at all then there would be a lot more of the "single mothers on benefits" that the media love to complain about.

NameGames · 21/07/2012 14:20

Some people aren't delaying, they're avoiding. I dislike the use of delaying because it suggest the inevitability of women having children. And I dislike it be ause it's always women who are said to be delaying, when the average age of fatherhood has gone up too.

TeiTetua · 21/07/2012 15:05

Most of us won't get "rich and successful" at any age. But we certainly can have a concept of getting on our own feet as self-supporting adults, and we might say that we'll be in our 30s before we really feel that way. I'm not sure if the media exaggerate that into "rich and successful".

Xenia · 21/07/2012 15:11

First of all as said above plenty of men and women choose not to have children so it is not necessarily delay. They may actively choose not to have them.

Secondly it is fairly sexist as it is a phrase and debate always around women (although of course their fertility does diminish more than men's with age although that of men does too at 40).

I wanted lots of children and a full time career so I started early with both and it worked out very well but not everyone wants all that.

People often did delay. My grandfather delayed marriage as he could not afford it until about 38. My parents married in their 20s but did not have babies for about 8 years as they wanted to qualify, work, save, buy a house and afford school fees (and then had a few fertility issues before I was born). People have alwys had to wait. A good few of my grandfather's siblings had no children. 2 of the women never married and one ran a haberdashery shop and their sister moved to London for her career in the 1920s and was quite a senior sister in a hospital. 3 of the brothers moved o Canada and did very badly (hardly were able to eat/find work) and never married. This was the 20s and 30s. I don't think it's a new thing that people have not been able to marry young and have babies.

Leftwingharpie · 21/07/2012 16:24

I'm not too bothered about the expression "delaying" but I share your exasperation of this image of women dashing around in power suits obsessed with their own importance, recklessly putting their fertility on the line so that they can run global companies, flying about in business class with briefcases indulging their vanity.

fruitybread · 21/07/2012 21:56

It is just nonsense to lay the timing of babies solely at women's feet. Where are the dads in all this? IME there are women who are happy or keen even to think about having children, but their male
partners of similar age want to wait. I know far more
women in their early 30s keen to have children than I do
men in their early forties who are keen.

I think common knowledge about fertility doesn't help. When I was in
my mid 30s and thinking about children, I told my intelligent Oxbridge educated partner that of course he could take his time to work out what he wanted - but there was no point turning round when I was 45 years old and saying 'ok, I think I'm ready for children now.'

He l

fruitybread · 21/07/2012 21:59
  • sorry posted too soon -

he looked at me, baffled, and said 'why not?'

That's right - he thought he could basically delay for ever. No basic knowledge of fertility til I put him right.

Original poster
Msfickle · 21/07/2012 23:43

Totally with you all on the men front. It's like only women have children - no wonder so many men think children aren't their responsibility!

True, there are some people who actively delay but mostly the reason people don't have children is because they're simply not ready or they're not in the right relationship.

OP posts:
solidgoldbrass · 22/07/2012 01:43

From what I have heard, it's far more men who are 'delaying' having DC. It's men saying to their wives and girlfriends, of course I'd love to have children with you darling but not yet.

Xenia · 22/07/2012 08:34

Often that is so and some women are led on for so long by a false promise of future children by the time he comes clean about not really ever wanting them she has lost her fertility. Perhaps they need to say a baby by 30 or I am not sticking with you.

hairytale · 23/07/2012 23:01

I agree OP its a crock of shit. I didn't " delay " having children. I had my child later in life (43) and prior to that I had a career but the two were not related to each other. At no point did I decide early in my life that I'd wait til my forties. And anyway, it's bo-one else's business when, or why I decided to have a child. Sick to the back teeth of the media and it's mysoginism.

We are either too young, too old, too working, too bot working, too fat, too thin, too dim too clever.

TheSmallClanger · 24/07/2012 12:43

You never, ever hear about "childless men" either.

I know of far more women being strung along by male partners who "aren't ready", than of women deliberately conceiving at 40 (as if you can do such a thing anyway), after reaching a desired point in their career. The one woman I know who took this approach was 28 or 29 when she had her first baby.

kittyfishersknickers · 24/07/2012 12:50

Annoys me too - there also tends to be the subtle gleeful undertone that women CAN'T delay having children past a certain point and if they do they deserve to not be able to have any... slightly wagging finger thing of 'you shouldn't have bothered with a career, because now you're really sad that you can't have a baby AREN'T YOU? other women take note'

grr

Treats · 24/07/2012 12:52

I dislike it because the word implies that women "should" have done it an earlier age. You only "delay" something that had already been scheduled to happen at an earlier point.

It kind of assumes that since we ought to be having babies younger (and maybe from a biological, medical POV, that is true) it must only be because we made a conscious decision to put it off, that we're having them at an older age.

As so many people have written above, it's much more often the man who wants to put off the whole shebang of settling down and having children. It was in my case, but - fortunately - he did come round before it was too late. But my heart breaks for those women who wait and wait and wait and then finally discover - much too late - that their man isn't going to give them children after all.

kittyfishersknickers · 24/07/2012 12:57

I have had this discussion with a male friend. They are ttc but it's not really working. The thing is he doesn't really want kids, but likes the idea of it. She really wants them and he previously agreed to kids. He has talked to me about how he's not sure 'maybe later' (but probably not). I have told him in no uncertain terms that he's got to make a decision soon and if that's a no at least she knows so she can have a baby with someone else, rather than waiting 5 years and finding out she can't. But I do feel for him in that he obviously wants to stay in the relationship.

solidgoldbrass · 24/07/2012 12:57

. I didn't want children for my 20s and most of my 30s, I was too busy having a good time. OK I had a brief broody spell late 20s but it didn't last long.

Then I got pg by accident at 39; if not for that I might not have had any DC but that would have been OK. I have a DS I love very much now and that's fine, but it wouldn't have been the end of the world to be childfree, either.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 24/07/2012 14:38

kitty, that's so true about the gleeful undertone.

I suppose I am 'delaying' having children because DH doesn't want them yet. I find it bizarre the number of people who feel the need to warn me - in case I wasn't aware - that I can't 'put it off' forever, as if I'm somehow being stubborn or disobedient by not getting on with doing what they expect.

No-one is saying to DH 'are you not worried you might be infertile' or 'don't you think maybe if you wait around you'll no longer be able to impregnate your wife' - imagine the looks on people's faces if you said that in public! But it seems to be perfectly acceptable to say to me 'oh, you do know if you put it off too long you'll find it's too late' or 'I know a woman in her late 30s who can't have any, she just left it too long'. Grrr.

Leftwingharpie · 24/07/2012 18:18

Actually that was said to DH quite a lot after I took to telling everyone who wanted to counsel me to get my skates on that they were barking up the wrong potential parent. I don't think it made any difference though, he wasn't primed to hear the message like we are.

yellowraincoat · 25/07/2012 16:19

I am endlessly told on here that I can't have an opinion (such as on private schools) because I don't have children, so I can't possibly know. What a load of crap.

I have absolutely no desire for children. I'm not "delaying" anything, I just don't want them.

Trills · 26/07/2012 09:05

I am rarely told that I can't have an opinion on things because I don't have children.

duchesse · 26/07/2012 09:21

Thank christ that we are all able to "delay having a family"!! I have four children, could have had 12 in my fertile time if I hadn't "delayed" them. What would the hacks have us do- all have 12 children and die in childbed? How quaint.

rosabud · 26/07/2012 11:01

Really interesting thread that shows the power of language and individual words in particular. I agree, delay impiles so much - that the children should happen earlier, that they will happen rather than not at all, that there is an element of selfish choice etc etc and, interesting, that this language is not applied to men. This thread has made me think of all the words in the past which were identified as unhelpful or conveying a negative message and which we have since managed to change (eg handicaped to disabled, headmistress or master to headteacher, fireman to firefighter etc). Whenever language is identified as needing to change, it is seen as ridiculous or too politically correct by the majority, but after the change has come to pass, we look back and see clearly how much positive effect the change has brought about.