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's not drivel it's reality. Median age is an immaterial statistic for this discussion. What's the youngest acceptable age, that's what I'm talking about. The very poor and royalty covers just about everybody in that time period, that's who the world was made up of until the industrial revolution was well underway.
Depends on the section of America. Easterns urban American was already well on the path to over extended immaturity we're living in today. Western America had a slightly more difficult life and didn't have the extra energy to fool around with prolonged pointless immaturity.
The reason 15 year olds are immature is because we RAISE them to be. They aren't naturally immature, naturally they're quite mature, all the physical parts are there and funtioning, but we've retarded their minds and not given them the chance to catch up to their body.
If a kid CAN and WANTS to work why shouldn't they work. And if said "kid" at age 15 is skilled at cooking then why shouldn't they be allowed a job where they cook? They shouldn't be parents now because we MAKE them not mature enough. The reality is we raise teenagers to be emotional cripples and morons, decry the symptoms all you want the actual problem is a society that MADE those symptoms. 15 year olds don't HAVE to be immature, there immaturity is the result of a decade and a half in our screwed up society.
I'm not saying anybody of any age should be parents. I'm saying the reason it's a bad idea right now in current western society for 15 year olds is because our current western society makes them too stupid for it.
Responsibility and being responsible for my actions, was drummed into me, from the age of three, that I can remember. I was an exceedingly responsible 15 year old, but I wasn't an adult and should NEVER have married nor had a child then. But, by the time I turned 22 and was out of college, going to grad school and working, I was a full fledged responsible ADULT!
I raised my daughter the same way I was and she was no more ready, at 15, to vote ( though she would have done okay with that ), marry, have a child, drink, whatever else you think a 15 year old should be allowed to do, than I had been. But when she was 21 and graduated from college, she was a responsible ADULT !
You don't have any children, do you?
bump
bump
Thanks ! :-)
It's about love. That's why people want kids. It's about ensuring that the human race continues. It's about raising the next generation with your values and expectations. Life does go on after we die.
Good for you mom. And....when you are old and gray and weak your children will be there for you as you have been there for them. The feminists? They won't have anyone but their plain miserable selves. I'd take your shoes any day of the week. God bless you and your family. You have more than any career woman in this whole world and your legacy will go on forever.
Good for you mom. And....when you are old and gray and weak your children will be there for you as you have been there for them. The feminists? They won't have anyone but their plain miserable selves. I'd take your shoes any day of the week. God bless you and your family. You have more than any career woman in this whole world and your legacy will go on forever.
No I'm not. All you have to do is look at the body, if the body can create a child by 15 there's no possible physical explanation for why the mind can't do it. So if the mind can't do it (which I agree it can't) it's because of how the mind was filled. Who fills our kids minds while they're growing up? Our society fills it. So if the mind isn't ready when the body is ready it's because the society that was supposed to make it ready screwed up.
Great by the time YOU were 22 YOU were a fully resonsible adult, congradulations on being one of the exceptions to the rule. I was out of the house by 20, probably wasn't ready but I learned to be ready the hard way. Meanwhile we have a generation that's staying in their parents basement into their late 20s and even 30s. Now why is it you and I could manage to pay bills in our early 20s and we've got a whole section of society that's too chicken to even try until they're 30+? Differences in how we were raised.
Things are slowing down even further, we're adding a 3rd stage of teenagehood. It used to be you were a teenager then you entered the adult world. Then in the 60s we added the college years as a 2nd teenage era only with less adult supervision. Now we're learning that at some point in the 90s we added a post college era of more partying and silliness and even less adult supervision. At the rate we're adding ages of acceptable immaturity pretty soon we're going to have to ammend the constitution because 35 year olds will simply not be emotionally mature enough for things like elected office.
Well according to the law your kid was supposed to be a resonponsible adult by 18. Of course according to modern society she's still good to 25 or so. But according to her body you should have had her mind ready by 15. Don't take it up with me, I didn't decide when puberty should happen, take it up with God, He's the one that decided adulthood should start around 15 or so, I'm just pointing out what should be the painfully obvious.
>>> Funny, I thought it was the Feminazis who told women to hold off on having children and pursue their careers.
Nah, it was Bush's fault.
;)
BUMP!
The body can create a baby at 45, but like at age 15 there is a higher risk of miscarriage and other problems. The optimal time physically is 20-35. 15 is too young, both physically and mentally.
No, in 18th century England and American, girls didn't marry at 13,14,15, or even 16, with all that much regularity. Look it up!
And many of the girls who did marry young, lived in extended families and their mothers or mothers-in-law took over raising their children.
You not only know less than nothing about when people used to marry and factual history, but you don't know anything at all about "class" and who was in what when.
Here's something to chew on, pet........The middle class was made up of the aristocracy, wealthy land owners, lawyers, doctors,the upper eschelons of the military and navy, those in politics, and once into the Industrial Revolution, merchants of all kinds, brewers/distillers, and the owners of mines, manufacturing plants., etc.
The youngest marriageable age, of any era, is the exception to the rule.
I'm 36, I'm glad my mother kicked my father out because he was a scumbag who had nothing to teach me but immorality, I was able to cook and clean and do various level of physical labor and when I wanted to make some money in my teenage years found out I couldn't because the law wouldn't allow anyone to pay me to do the things I knew how to do and had well established that I could do repeatedly and often without getting hurt.
But they DID marry at those ages, you admit it yourself.
Here's something to chew on, interesting how you turned to insults instantly. Very immature behavior, maybe you still aren't ready to raise a kid, too bad you already did.
Exception to the rule yes, but still possible, because kids then were raised without having their maturity constantly postponed.
15 eh? So pedophilia is OK by you?
bump!!!
That's where I saw it going too.
I wonder why God made the fertile?
Are you pining away after a 15 year old; is that it?
No, looking at a body, tells you NOTHING whatsoever about the emotional state of a person. Hormones and physical capabilities, have little to do with the ability and maturity to be a capable parent.
I am willing to bet that I am quite a bit older than you are and quite frankly, no matter how old you are, physically, emotionally and knowledgewise, you appear to be 14 at the most. Did "society" and our "culture" do that to you?
With better diets, children now become able to procreate at earlier ages. That doesn't mean that they are ready to be parent physically ( youngsters have as difficult pregnancies as rather OLDER women do and just as high, if not a higher incidence of having something VERY wrong with their children,as well ! ) or emotionally.
Let me guess, you never took biology in high school, or you went to a lousy school. ;^)
Why are some children coddled into their 30s? Because their parents cousin them. And though that is happening more and more now, it was a USUAL/NORMAL way of life, for 100s of years, before the 20th century ! And even well into the 20th century ( into the early '70s ), girls lived at home, until they married and so did many boys; no matter HOW old they were.
I really wish that you would stop talking about things you know less than NOTHING about! *sigh*
Into the 1960s, once you graduated from high school, you were more or less an adult. Most kids still did NOT go to college, but went out into the widey world and got a for real job. And yes, it was somewhat normal, for kids to marry a year out of high school; even in the '60s, in many sections of this country. But they didn't marry at 15.
High school girls wore dresses, suites, or nice skirts and sweaters, with high heels to class, well into the 1940s. Boys worse suits and ties, or dress pants, shirts, ties and good sweaters.
It really isn't society, which holds back maturity; it's stupid people, who refuse to grow up. Look at Slick Willie!
My daughter is almost 32 and a responsible, intelligent, capable adult. When she was 20, she was awarded a paid grant for the summer and live 1/2 a continent away from us, on her own, and did quite well.
No, according to her body, I should have had her a full functioning adult at 11, by your lights; which is insane!
No, you are NOT "pointing out the painfully obvious" at all. You're proving, with each post, just how ill educated, uninformed, and immature you are.
reading between the lines in your post sounds like you want the 15 yro's to start breeding.....
of course, if you consider a 15 yro an adult, then I guess they can drive, drink, drug, and abort just like other adults.....
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