[QUOTE=NightRabbit]
I’m not having kids at 25, I don’t care how fertile I am! And I also don’t consider 25 to be “old”. I just got my first apartment. I’m single and I’m enjoying myself. Just the IDEA that she’s telling 25-year olds to hurry up and decide about children is disgusting. Let’s everyone rush into decisions based on aging anxiety- especially something as permanant and life-altering as children. That’s not a decision to make for any reason other than, “I really want to be a parent”. Not, “I might not have another chance, guess I should try it out.”
[/QUOTE]
I don’t read Dangerosa as saying “decide and HAVE children” at 25, she’s saying “25 is a good age to think about whether you would like to have children in the future because it gives you enough time to plan your life accordingly.”
I have some relatives who put off the child question for years and then suddenly decided at the last minute (in terms of her fertility) to go for it. They actually ended up with two kids, then they got divorced. Both children are genetically blessed with incredible intellect and athletic skill, both have everything they could possibly want, but the oldest is ten, they’re being raised by a sixty-year old, and they’ve both been in therapy since before they started kindergarten.
Of course, plural of anecdote is not data, etc., but I think this illustrates some of Dangerosa’s points and it also references some of the points made by F.U. Shakespeare. In the case of my relatives, since they were both loaded, they thought that they were set because addressing money concerns was the only “preparation” needed to have children. There’s a lot of psychological preparation involved as well. I’m a college professor, and while the vast majority of kids I see with older parents are no more screwed up than your average college kid, some of these kids are fucked up beyond belief by their crazy parents. One particular student, who owes her existence to science as much as anything else, has had a few breakdowns because her parents have let her know that because they waited until the eleventh hour, she is their one shot and she had better not screw things up and make them look bad. (Her mother actually said this to the mother of another one of my students who is also an only child, thinking the second student’s mother would understand!).
Granted, there are a lot of causal factors at work here, but I don’t see how sitting down as a 25 year-old and saying to oneself, “Self, in six years, statistically, there will be a slight decline in your ability to have chlidren. However, in about ten years, your ability to have children naturally will decline precipitously and that health risks also increase for women who have babies after age 35. Given these things, Self, it would seem that you have about a decade to decide whether or not to have children naturally. Do you want children now? When do you want them? At 30? What do you have to do in the next five years? Do you want to have children as part of a family? How will finding the man you want to start a family with affect your career path, your ability to pursue your favorite hobbies and your ability to live where you choose? Is there a point where you will consider single motherhood if you do not find a suitable partner? If you have a child when you are 32, you will be fifty when the child goes to college and fifty-four when s/he graduates (theoretically). How does that fit in with your vision of where you want to be in your early fifties? Are you willing to consider the medical procedures often necessary to have a child in your forties? How will that decision affect your vision of what your sixties would be like?”
I’m 26 and I’ve had to force myself to have the preceding talk with myself, even though right now I’m convinced that I don’t want children (big children are OK, but small children are not my cup of tea…the mileage of others may vary and I have nothing but the highest respect for those who consciously and carefully raise children). Still, and this is always in the back of my mind, what if do a 180? Am I doing things now that will affect my ability to be a good parent in five or ten years? If the answer to that question is yes (which it is), when do I re-evaluate things? At 28? 30? Will there be a point in my life where I have to say to myself, “Even if you wake up tomorrow and want kids more than anything you’ve ever wanted before, the choices you’ve made in your life and your declining window of fertility are going to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to conceive and properly raise a child, so natural children are no longer a go”?
I really don’t see anyone as saying “have kids now!” I think all that Dangerosa is saying is that imagining yourself as a new parent at 30 or 35, even if you’re not 100% sure about whether or not you want children, will help you answer a lot of questions, make important decisions and begin plans that will benefit you, your child, and your family, should you choose to have a child within the context of a family.
