Greetings…

At an age when many women are becoming grandmothers, many women are
choosing to have children at an age that, thanks to fertility clincs,
have pushed it later and later…

I’ll be using a lot of “we’s” in this column to refer to those of us
who had children when we were young, or at least, under 40 when having
children…

I’m sure you’ll have an opinion one way or another regarding this topic
and of course, I already do. I’m interested in hearing what you have
to say about it…

There are various reasons for this trend. Some women choose to wait
to have children until they are financially stable, something that most
of us didn’t really think about “back in the day”. We were told not to
have children over 40 years of age because of the increased chances of
birth defects, Down’s Syndrome in particular. The term “Biological
clock” didn’t come into play until the 90’s…

As women entered the workforce more and more and women became more and
more successful in positions once offered to men only, the family,
having children in particular was something put on the back burner
for the financial reasons I mentioned as well as other reasons. No
matter how much a woman wants to scream the equality card, having a
baby is something she can’t be on equal ground with a man…

Whether a couple decide mutually to wait to have children, or a woman
decides it on her own, it is she that has the biological clock because
a man can father a child into his 70’s or older…

I’ve always wondered about a man in his 60’s or older becoming a father
and also wondered if it was fair to the child to be that old of a father.
Like it or not, double standards are, and always will be around and I
wonder more if it’s fair for a woman to decide to have a child or children
in her late 40’s or older. The main care of that child always falls on
the woman and if a woman is single and decides to have a child when she
is older, it falls squarely on her shoulders…

Last year there were more than 7500 births in the U.S. by women between
the ages of 45 and 54. Metropolitan cities are the leaders for late-life
pregnancies because urban women are more likely to put off family planning.
They also have better access to high tech fertility options…

The science of it can’t be argued. Each year, after the age of 30,
fertility starts to drop and by the age of 40, the average woman has
about 12 percent of her eggs left. The success of fertility treatments
is about 50 percent…

While I know how heartbreaking wanting a child or children can be and
I, myself had three miscarriages before having my two sons, the one
thing that was always said to me after a miscarriage is, “you’re young
honey.”

If I had waited until I was 40+ to have kids, I imagine that wouldn’t
be said and the heartbreak would be intensified. I also wonder if
the guilt of waiting until a career, money, “stuff”, would be easy to
accept…

As I said, I’m sure everyone has some opinion about this. Having children
is an exhausting job for moms that are young. I can’t imagine just
getting started in my late 40s or 50’s. Sometimes decisions are made
that you have to live with and indulging your wishes to become a mother
late in life almost seems selfish to me. Most of my generation struggled
financially when we had families and I believe if you wait until all
the things you want “right” in your life happen to have a kid, it will
either not happen at all, or you and your kid will be in diapers at the
same time!

Go into any OB/Gyne office waiting room and I swear you can’t tell the
moms from the grandmothers! You can’t tell the menopausal belly fat from
a pregnant belly…

Teens that have babies are told they are too young to have kids and
discouraged, don’t you think the other end of the spectrum should be
counseled against?

I guess the way I’m seeing it is that for some women,  money is the
reason not to have children when most women usually have children and
money is the reason women, who might not be able to have children when
they are older can have children…

Looks like all the savings through the years is being spent on very
expensive fertility treatments…