Well, there are the obvious problems - scar tissue from STDs, and bodies ravaged by years of chemical-abortifacient [birth control pill] use and surgical abortions. [Also there's this weird evidence which indicates that sperm counts might be declining.]
But I think that far and away the biggest problem here is that "professional" women buy into the myth that "you can have it all" and try to put off their childbearing into their mid-30s, which is when a woman's fertility tends to drop off a cliff as she heads towards menopause.
Best time for a woman to make babies is in her teens and twenties - in general, when looking at the population as a whole, fertility just plummets to more or less nothing at all after the age of about 35.
“...fertility just plummets to more or less nothing at all after the age of about 35.”
Can you guarantee that for me and my better half?
The problem with not waiting, though, is that most women (AND men) in their teens and twenties (at their most fertile) aren’t anywhere near financially stable enough (or often mentally/socially stable enough) to start a family.
And things cost so much now that unless you get REALLY lucky with your husband you will probably both have to work. The days of the one-income family are over for a lot of people, even those who would rather stay home.
These days, to get a decent job you usually need a college degree. You’ll get out at around age 21 or 22 LOADED with debt. Work 5-6 years to establish your career and try to pay off some of those student loads and now you’re suddenly 27 or 28.
You have a really small window at this point to have kids before your fertility starts to drop off.
A friend of mine once said that “we really need another decade of our twenties just to get the bills paid and the work life settled before having kids”.
Young fertility probably worked a lot better back when we lived in tribes, when the young had the kids and the oldsters brought them up.
LQ