Posted on 09/16/2005 5:14:37 PM PDT by Crackingham
Women should have a family first - before they are 35 - and leave their career until later, a group of leading doctors said yesterday. The obstetricians and gynaecologists said the increasing number of women delaying having children were defying nature and risking heartbreak. Writing in the British Medical Journal, they recommended that if women wanted families and a career, they should have children earlier, and called for more support for younger mothers. Women's groups voiced caution over putting a deadline on childbirth but agreed on the need for more support.
Susan Bewley, consultant obstetrician at St Thomas' Hospital in London, said the doctors were motivated by the number of older women they saw experiencing problems in childbirth. She said: "It is us in the clinic who see the heartbreak, and we cannot help these people when they are running out of time. That is what motivated me to write [the report] and ask the authorities what can be done to help women to do it at a time that suits them."
In Scotland the most common age for giving birth is now 30 to 34. There has also been a steady rise in the proportion of mothers aged 35-plus, from 6 per cent in 1976 to 18.8 per cent last year.
But Dr Bewley said the optimum age to have a child remained between the ages of 20 and 35. She said: "Each woman finds her own solution but we cannot kid ourselves having children at 35 is easy. It is not. It goes wrong for lots of people."
The strongly worded editorial, co-authored by Melanie Davies, a consultant obstetrician from University College hospital, and Peter Braude, head of the department of women's health at St Thomas', pointed out age-related fertility problems increased after the age of 35, and dramatically so after 40.
The editorial claimed employers and health planners were to blame for encouraging women to delay motherhood to focus on careers and financial stability. It called for government and companies to make it easier for women to choose to have children at a younger age, and said: "Free choices cannot be made with partial knowledge, economic disadvantage for mothers, and unsupportive workplaces.
"Doctors and healthcare planners need to grasp this threat to public health and support women to achieve biologically optimal childbearing."
The experts listed a number of complications linked to later motherhood, including pre-eclampsia and increased risk of miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies.
They also said that older fathers had decreased fertility, while children of older men had an increased risk of schizophrenia and several genetic disorders.
They wrote: "Women want to 'have it all' but biology is unchanged, deferring defies nature and risks heartbreak. If women want room for manoeuvre they are unwise to wait till their thirties."
Dr Bewley added: "You cannot suddenly emerge at 45 and say, 'Now I want children'. I appreciate we want it all and some will get it. But there is a window for reproduction where there isn't for work."
It is also sad for many women that have to be on welfare, food stamps, and other government programs because they have no skills enabling them a job to take care of there children.
I hear what you are saying - it's tough out there to make a go of it. However, if it isn't working, something else has to change. If the kids aren't getting a job out of university, then why are we encouraging them to go there? If one can't make ends meet in California, why live there? Not teaching the kids to be independent while they are young and putting up with decisions that are dead end streets instead of opportunities seems to me to be the approach that Russia took to economics under communism - no correlation between supply and demand and a population that was conditioned to not think for themselves. It also sounds like a ticket to disaster and the perpetuation of something that isn't working now.
Yes and we need to encourage men that they need to make over 6 figures so they can take care of large families be able to pay kids college tuitions etc.
When Mel Gibson was asked why he had such a large family he said because I can afford it...
later pingout.
Something else has to change comes from society, economics and in 2005 we will never go back to the economics of our parents. My dad made 45K when I was growing up we had 5 kids in the family my mother did not work when we were real young but it was difficult we did own our home but my dad struggled alot to give us what he could it affected his health as he grew older...
Many kids cannot be out on there own because of the expense bottom line nothing else, car payments car insurance gas, sheesh it's hard for everyone anymore..
I make my own bigger parking spaces. The VAN is too long to go in a single space. I find a place where I can leave the back of the van hanging in the slot behind me. The bonus is that I don't have to back out. I really hate to back up The Van. (otherwise known as The Bus)
Good for you for not letting anyone dictate your family size.
MONEY dictates that issue..
Do you really think so? I don't automatically assume it is "better" for a woman to have a child. I have more respect for a woman who devotes herself to her career, recognizes that her lifestyle is inconsistent with having a child, and remains childless than I do for what I consider a spoiled career woman who has a child because she thinks she "should," then parks the child with a nanny or in daycare to resume her own life and pursuits. Certainly that wouldn't be my choice, but I have to respect a woman who elects not to sacrifice a child's well being for her own interests.
AMEN!
Thank you.
This thread was starting to worry me...I have never read so many posts of people encouraging women with no education
or a career to start having kids?
My Doctor Ob/Gyn had 3 of her children after age 35 she works her own schedule is there for her kids is married also to a physician and is a well adjusted human being with alot to offer in life...
Wrong, expenses are all relative .... they are living at home because they don't have to worry about being hungry there - and they never were trained to learn how to be independent so what should be viable options become closed. Bottom line is that the kids were raised by parents who didn't have an exit strategy to kid-rearing and a school system that has pushed the concept of 'the social safety net' and simply getting an off the shelf job - instead of thinking critically and in an entrepreneurial manner. Understand that an enormous jobs that are available now weren't even on the radar screen 5 or 10 years ago. The sad news is that a kid that that isn't mature enough to be on their own at 25 is unlikely to be mature enough to be on their own at 45.
You are wrong, if you want you're kids not to struggle you will help them financially until they are secure in a job.
You are living in the past and have no clue about the finances of a person living in a metropolitan city..
However, if my children run into problems, will I help them out? Sure ... but rest assured, it won't be in a way that has the potential to create permanent dependency status.
Exactly.
That's all true to an extent, of course. My remarks were in the context of the article (and similar ones) about women deciding to wait until 40 or 45 to marry and have children, and then blaming the world for the circumstances they find.
LOL - I do that with the 747, too. You don't want to be in the same county when I have to back up! On the other hand, my husband's new truck is only a few inches shorter; plenty of people parking huge vehicles don't need all seats we have.
Absolutely. I think if you go back and read I said if mothers absolutely have to work that is a totally different story. I'm not talking about those women and I am glad there are agencies out there to help them. They need it and they deserve the help.
I am talking about women who put careers first and foremost and all the feminists who think working is more important than rasing a family.
Only if you let it.
Understand..
I just think we are lucky today that women have more options than they did years before...
Well if you are not able to pay for children's college tuition or you cannot pay for them to explore activities that costs money or you are not able to provide adequate housing medical insurance etc, I would hope that would be a lesson that more kids are not advisable.
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