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."
I agree. My general point was that mature people choose among the available options, and then don't whine about missing out on what they didn't choose.
In California you cannot buy a home under 450K and that is the bottom of the barrell in housing, apartments are no less than 1000.00 for a 1 Br.
If you think a 25 year old with a decent job can care for a wife and children you are mistaken.
Today, thirty year old women usually look younger than 18 year olds did, 50 years ago. Don't believe me? Look at old movies, where the ultra glamorous, wonderfully dressed, madeup, and coiffed 19 year old look older than today's 40 year old nobodies.
There was and is a LOT wrong with feminism, but the early Suffragists were right, when they wanted girls to have equality in education !
If a woman has little to no education, children when she is very young, there is no way, NO POSSIBLE WAY, for her to have a career,` after her children are grown up.
Female fertility does NOT, FYI, rapidly decline after 30. It declines, but rapidly is a great exaggeration!
Forget about talking about brains/grey matter, pet. Of course there are differences between men and women, but intelligence isn't one of them. There are intelligent boys/men and stupid one; just as there are intelligent girls/women and stupid ones.
Very true! I think some parents want to be needed. The mark of good parenting is raising kids NOT to need you because they're free to earn their own life.
Exactly if a woman chooses not to have children when she financially and emotionally can she should not whine, plus many kids are in the world that need to be adopted and women can always go that route....
It's interesting that you lump in options, like college and "activities," with necessities like housing and medical care. And throw in the adjective "adequate" with housing, although that has only a subjective meaning.
Each of us decides what we consider an acceptable standard of living, what mix of "goods," including intangibles such as charity, will bring us happiness. If we let the media, or "society," or any other opinion outside our own tell us what we "need," we are sacrificing our moral freedom.
DO YOU HOPE THAT YOUR CHILDREN MARRY WHEN THEY ARE 14 AND IF NOT, WHY NOT ?
I just feel that there are to many children dependent on government programs because parents will not realize they should not keep having kids they cannot afford, IMO it is usually educated people that are aware of how many kids they can give a good life too, the ones that are un-educated don't care because they depend on the federal government to help raise there kids.
Back in the 1950s, Seventeen magazine used to run ads for washers & dryers, vacuums, and other household appliances because most of their teenage female readers were thinking about marriage and starting families.
That is true. Being a responsible parent, in my opinion, is less about the number of children you have, than about being married, and having a working father. The majority of children in poverty/on welfare have never-married parents.
Well that is true...I am married but if I was single I would proably stay that as the nightmare stories I hear from single women about the men that they meet now a days.
If the men on this thread that speak about teenagers capable of being parents are single, is a reflection of what is out there for single women all I can say is *Yikes*!
So what's your point? If you can't afford to raise a family there, move somewhere where it can be afforded. Your problem is that you want the best of all possible worlds and refuse to acknowledge the fact that life is all about priorities and give and take and sometimes, you can't get there from here.
I am un-sure where you think that might be, but I think any metropolitan city warrants a 2 working parent family
unless one person is capable of making a living for the entire family and IMO a 25 yr old cannot unless he is being helped by his parents.
I think those comments are sociological, rather than personal. There's no question that even young teens are capable of giving birth - because we all know they do - and also that in many cultures, past and present, the average age of childbirth was younger than it is today. There are many factors involved, most of which aren't in effect in our culture.
"Coastal" city folk consider those places as barely above Hooterville, I guess, but it was more than "metropolitan" enough for us!
It's a good thing California isn't the only place on earth. Or even in the United States. Choose to live elsewhere.
I lived here my entire life I know how great this state was and still is in many ways, my entire family is here so I cannot move.
Please.
Stop condemning people to hell because they won't have children (or anything else you disapprove of).
That's your second post on 15-year-old girls.
They aren't looking to get married.
Especially to anybody older than 17.
Trust me on this, there are tons of people all over the United States proving you wrong right now. As a matter of fact, my niece and her hubby moved to Santa Barbara 3 years ago when they had just got married (they were both 22). No support from parents other than one of them holding a mortgage - as a matter of fact, both set of parents are thousands of miles away. Sure things are tight, but they are moving ahead.
Now I will grant you one thing - a precipitous drop in lifestyle expectations has not accompanied the rise in real estate or things like gas prices and wages have not kept pace. That generally means that debt is building and that is not good news any couple starting out.
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