Posted on 10/13/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Eurotwit
Women who put off getting pregnant until past their mid-thirties are ‘defying nature and risk the heartbreak of infertility, miscarriage or other complications,’ began an article in my morning paper a week or so ago. I put down my toast and read on with the grim fascination of someone who turned 30 this summer and is beginning to feel the first twinges of anxiety about the vigour of her own ovaries.
The piece quoted a woman called Susan Bewley, a consultant obstetrician and one of the authors of a report on fertility in the British Medical Journal. ‘Women want to “have it all” but biology is unchanged,’ said Bewley. ‘The best time to have a baby is up to 35. It always was and it always will be. Paradoxically, the availability of IVF may lull women into infertility.’
Bewley went on to talk about the whopping cost that older women having less healthy babies is putting on the National Health Service, and concluded that women must be persuaded to have babies younger. ‘I don’t want to blame women or make them feel anxious or frightened,’ she said. ‘The reasons for these difficulties lie not with women but with a distorted and uninformed view from society, employers and health planners.’
How nice of Dr Bewley not to blame us for what she calls ‘the epidemic of delayed pregnancy’, but I think she has the wrong end of the stick. Women of my age have not been lulled into a false sense of fertility. We aren’t yet frightened — I hear outright fear kicks in at 40 — but we are well aware of the dangers of trying to have children once we’re past our reproductive prime. We’re informed and beginning to be concerned.
We’re also pretty clued up about why our generation is delaying having children — and it has nothing to do with being failed by employers or health planners. Nor, despite endless newspaper features on the subject, does it have much to do with business women putting careers before babies. In my experience, the root cause of the epidemic lies with a collective failure of nerve among men our age.
How many young women do you know, happily married or the equivalent, who are wilfully refusing to have children now at the risk of running the gauntlet of IVF in five years time? Quite.
Dr Bewley accuses women of ‘playing Russian roulette’ with nature, but the point is we’re only interested in having babies if they are fathered by men we love and who are going to stick around and enjoy bringing the little brutes up. By the time they hit their mid-thirties even the most dedicated career women are ready to do some nesting — even if that means grudgingly accepting that our careers are more likely to suffer than our mate’s and that we’ll probably end up changing most of the nappies. The trouble is that very few of our male contemporaries are what you might call twig in beak.
There’s many a slip betwixt having an amusing, attractive boyfriend and the pair of you committing to the long haul of marriage and children. I know dozens of delightful men of my age and considerably older who say they want to get married one day. They will even go as far as talking about how comparatively young their own fathers were when they sired them, and fret about how geriatric they’ll be by the time they have a son of their own to kick a ball about with. Yet they are careful to preserve the idea of getting married and/or settling down as purely hypothetical and entirely out of their control — as though a meteorite might hit the earth one day and when they come to they’ll be at the altar. In the meantime they concentrate on having as much immediate fun as they can and dodge thinking about next month or next year for as long as possible.
And who can blame them? If our biological clocks didn’t jump-start us into wanting babies, I think many women would do the same. Ours is a generation that has grown up with the luxury of being able to pretty much please ourselves — especially when it comes to our romantic lives. The power of parental pressure and societal disapproval has all but evaporated. Nobody is made an honest woman of anymore. These days the only reason to marry or commit to anyone is because you really, really want to and you think you’re going to carry on really wanting to. Yet the whole art of pleasing oneself is remaining free to do just that — something to which the arrival of a small child could prove an obstacle.
No one ever said biology was fair. I have accepted that in real terms I am suddenly much older than my male friends. When a great friend who turned 30 within weeks of me came round to discuss our shared milestone, it emerged that I was already bracing myself for my 40th birthday. He, needless to say, still thought of himself as being in his early twenties and claimed to have never considered a future with his girlfriend of two years’ standing because he ‘wasn’t ready for all that’. Of course not every man his age is in a state of prolonged adolescence, but a critical mass of them are. I recently went to a wedding where the presiding vicar actually congratulated the groom on having enough ‘backbone’ to commit to marriage while his spineless contemporaries squirmed in their pews.
I don’t know a woman of my age whose version of living happily ever after fundamentally hinges on becoming editor, or senior partner, or surgeon, or leading counsel. But faced with a generation of emotionally immature men who seem to view marriage as the last thing they’ll do before they die, we have little option but to wait, busy ourselves with making the most of our careers and hope that Mr Non-Phobic Right eventually makes himself known to us before our ovaries pack up completely.
As I finished my breakfast and contemplated my chances of a decade of heartbreak, I wondered whether women will be the only losers in this epidemic of delayed pregnancies. Isn’t it possible that, just as I have no interest in a relationship with someone significantly older than me, when the men of my generation get to the dark side of 40 they’ll tire of dating girls who are now revising for their GCSEs? They’ll still have a fighting chance of producing a few nippers, of course — but will they do it by settling for a much younger companion who falls far short of the intellectually equal but by now hopelessly barren soulmate they went out with in their thirties?
What can Dr Bewley and co. do to get them ready for fatherhood before their mid-forties? I fear that even Jane Austen wouldn’t have the answer to this one.
You are reading way more into it. I took it no different than any other little cutesy-pie name. I know people who use the term "poop" or "poopy" as a love-name. My son was "little dude" to my brother and also "pal." I always thought "pal" was so cute. Brits are big on nick-names and the like....
You don't understand. A man has to give up his life for the marriage. That means he doesn't buy a bass boat instead of school supplies just because he wants a bass boat. He doesn't spend nights and weekends working on his race car instead of spending time with his wife and family. He doesn't hang out with his crumb bachelor friends so they won't accuse him of being "whipped". That's what we did as bachelors. That behavior has to die.
Men have a VERY hard time with this. They think their pride should come before the marriage. The man should emulate what Christ did for the church. Jesus didn't exactly give up a night of bowling for the church.
Well, yes, but it won't work unless all women close their legs. As long as a lot of women are willing to have sex without marriage, the nice women who say "No" will hear their dates say "Bye," in response.
A hundred years ago almost all women said "No" until they had a ring. If a man wanted to have regular sex, he had to get married. His only alternative would be to pay for sex, which meant he stood a good chance of contracting incurable syphilis, with certain insanity and death. If he wanted his own house, a decent lifestyle, AND regular sex, he got married. Consequently the average man got married early.
Today it's different. Women stopped saying "Not until we're married" or "Not until we're engaged" in the 1960s. As long as there's all that available sex out there, men have no motivation to get married. And the woman who says no may find herself alone for good. So abstaining is not going to work as a way of luring men back to marriage until everyone agrees to it, which would require a return to Judeo-Christian values large segments of our society have pretty much abandoned.
Gee can I still be a candidate for a FReeper match even if its too late for the chillin's?
Yes, I understand there are cultural differences. Nonetheless, my impression from the article (only source of information available) is that the writer does not really wish to care for children.
I think it's just a British way of writing. The Brits say all kinds of awful things like that as a form of humor but they're still very loving parents.
BTW, just wait 'til James is three, you'll be thrilled to have thirty minutes of peace while he naps! ;-)
That's the avian flu pandemic.
I'm sure there are other FReepers in your situation ... you just need to find the right ones!
Very well said
Oh this SOUNDS so easy but in practice.......
She seems charming. She's also attractive in a dark, mysterious way. I like the fact that she chucked city living to go live in a cottage in the country with her sister. If she has trouble finding men she ought to come to the USA, she'd knock 'em dead with that accent of hers.
The sad repercussions of feminism....broken hearts, broken dreams, abortion, single-parent households
I know ... we're doing 3 for the 6th time. But when James is 3, his younger brother will be Perfect :-).
I see your point.
But I have seen a repeated pattern among my peers of wives dominating a marriage. They behave one way, then when the ring goes on, they turn and suddenly think they are wearing a crown. This isn't just the old fashioned "whipped" complaint.
The level of domineering I've witnessed in younger brides, time and again, dwarves that of years gone by. I've seen it too many times for it to just be coincidence. I think its a byproduct of entitled feminism coupled with inequitible divorce laws.
Too many women abuse the trust given by the liability incurred by a marriage license. And when a man just can't take anymore, she gets the golden parachute. Then she repeates the process. Why shouldn't she? It was profitible the first time...
This doesn't apply to all women of course. But it is a notable trend.
Those are heroic thoughts, indeed. But unfortunately, what we are witnessing is not misbehavior of females who have been improperly raised and inadequately counselled.
What we have unleashed is all of the destructive traits of the female, which in fact are buried deeply within her genes, and which are the product of her evolution as the weaker sex in need of sustenance and protection. We cannot "unprogram" the female as she has been hot-wired for myopic destruction.
The only answer is to put the clamps back on before total destruction overwhelms us.
DA740
Yes, theory is one thing, and reality another.
There is truth in what you say, but it isn't a truth Western society is prepared to face. So, as I said, for myself I prefer to focus on the individual and not worry about unsolvable problems like "the female" in the larger sense.
I think on that front, it's too late for the West.
"Shrill as a harpie" indeed. I cannot tell you the number of married women I know who announce, "I do not cook for my husband. He is on his own." I just think if you are going to be a partnership, you divide the jobs and HAVE a homelife.
Call me old-fashioned, but ... if you don't bother with making a home and you don't bother with cooking and you don't bother with laundry and you don't bother with child-raising and you don't bother with time together and you focus on yourself and your career ... why are you married?
"No men want to marry me and get me pregnant. What's wrong with all of them?"
Almost agree... A man has to give up his life for the kids. Slight difference. A marriage can be fine and you can keep the boat and toys and you and the wife hit the town at night and run off for the weekend to the beach and she's your partner, lover and drinking buddy. But, when the kids arrive, she becomes your wife and you become her husband and she is the mother and you are the father. Now, the toys are sold in favor of college funds and baby room furniture, school supplies, etc...
But, there is good news... The kids grow up (take plenty of pictures because it goes by fast) and will soon be moving out and the weekend runs to the beach will start anew. AAAAND (if your lucky).... Just between me, you and the lamp post.....the wife still harbors a little guilt about you selling your boat years ago...
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