It’s one thing to accept those risks, and another thing entirely to force them on your hypothetical children. I think the single and fabulous crowd just needs to stay single and fabulous and childless until they die. Trying to have it all and then bring human beings into your ancient, worn-out, old people world is just… selfish. And old people pushing strollers look ridiculous.
I’m 30. Any children would be happening before I’m 35.
Yeah, that’s super old. My dad went to college and had a strong business before he decided to have kids. I was born when he was 36. It’s SO awful that I missed out on so much of my childhood because my dad was too decre - - - wait, I didn’t miss out on anything.
Hey, if you can get it done before you’re 35, more power to you. The way you were talking upthread made it seem like you didn’t care how old you got as long as medical science (the real science, not msmith’s penis) could save the day.
I would be willing to bet even at 39, my world is a bit more awesome than yours. And it’s not like at 24 you are bring kids into awesome young people world. THEY are bringing YOU into exhausting taking care of children all day for the next 18 years world.
What I would agree on is that once you reach a certain age, what’s the point? If you are waiting until the end of your life to have a family, clearly you don’t really want one.
Well, I have no doubt that your world is “more awesome,” but we’re getting into IMHO territory. I had my first kid at 26, and she got 100% daddy time when I wasn’t working. I never felt like I was giving up super awesome things in order to sit down and play monsters for an hour, I rarely dumped the kids off with someone in order to go do fabulous things, and I always had plenty of energy to entertain them in manic ways.
The older I get, the more life is pulling me in multiple directions; my time is more valuable, and I think that’s all kids really want from their parents – time. I’m less able to give that to them at 32 than I was at 26.
Every career is different, every parent is different, every child is different, YMMV, standard disclaimers yada yada yada. I’m not saying every older parent is going to coldly foist their kids onto an au pair while they go to black tie dinners every other night, but 18 years of exhaustion is exhausting, and I’m sure as hack glad I started that road when I had the energy of a 26 year old.
One of them married an electrical engineer. One of them married an IT security specialist. I have no idea who the third guy married. They married “up, but within their peer range.”
Men typically get turned down by so many women we hardly keep track. But the point is that men aren’t kvetching about the lack of their ideal women out there. Is it because they “settle” for someone who will be a good partner but who isn’t as rich as they are? In my generation I could say it might be because they kept trying for women who matched what they wanted instead of waiting to get asked, but that might be different today. Maybe because those who complain that women don’t like nice guys get some degree of scorn. Also, as I said, the pool is bigger except for those on the very bottom.
That actually was my point. I wasn’t saying that women should settle for jerks who live in the basement, but that those who see anyone who isn’t buff and relatively rich as being jerks who live in the basement are going to be fishing from a very shallow pool. I also don’t remember anyone saying or even implying that people do or should latch on to anyone with money, no matter what. That is golddigger behavior.
All those things you mentioned are perfectly reasonable filters - but the question is do you apply them to everyone, or to just a subset of available men after you toss a batch out for not being fit enough or whatever.
BTW I don’t object to anyone staying single. It’s not just choice - not everyone can get lucky, and it seems harder and harder the older you get. My objection is to people who reject lots of good candidates and then whine about being single. If you gave any impression that you fall into this category in this thread, I must have missed it, since I don’t remember any.
Being basically an electrical engineer now, if anyone decided we were a highly sexy population I missed the memo. Or are little girls these days putting pinups of the Woz on their walls and sighing "I want to marry someone like him.
I’ve been right through this (starting at 29) and it isn’t exhausting for 18 years. By the time they’re 15 you’ve pretty much stopped the 2 am feeding and diaper changing.
Actually many of the awesome experiences I’ve had in the past 30 years are directly the result of my kids.
My metric for age at birth is where the kids will be when you turn 65. If you have a kid at 35, that kid will be 30, long gone. 47, the kid will be 18 ready for college money. Big, big difference.
This reply says so much more about you than it does about me.
Man, that’s a lot of scratch coming out of grad school. Guess I chose the wrong field.
Why the insinuation that having a baby at 47 means that you are poor and will remain poor?
At 47, someone has worked for probably 25 years plus of her life. Maybe climbing the corporate ladder. Maybe having a nest egg of over a million dollars. Can afford maids, nannies, fertility drugs.
Mariska Hargitay, Nancy Grace, Kelly Preston, all moms at post-45.
“Settling” for men is based on different factors than it is for women (although it ultimately just boils down to attraction levels). Honestly, I’ve said this so many times, in only slight different ways, that you should already know how I’m going to answer this question.
In general, a guy who marries a woman that he isn’t all that physically attracted to–who is “low status” in the looks department–will feel like he’s settling. A woman’s wealth has little to do with his interest in her, so he’s less likely to feel like settling if she’s not as rich as him.
A woman who marries a man who is not her intellectual and socioeconomic peer–who is “low status” in the accomplishment department–will feel like she’s settling. Women are less focused on looks and more focused on how successful he is in the game of life.
You may not hear men kvetching about how hard it is to find the kind of woman they want, but I hear them do this all the time. Some of them post on this board. That said, I do think men have lower standards than women. This may sound really biased, so take this with a grain, but it’s easier for a woman to bring value to a man’s life than the other way around. Men can’t have and raise kids on their own as easily as women can. They also have higher sex drives and are probably willing to suffer through more crap just to get it on the regular.
The latter. A guy who just got out of the federal pen after 10 years might have the nicest personality on the planet, is physically attractive, the whole nine…but he hasn’t a chance with me so the filter is irrelevant for him. Neither does the guy who smokes weed every night, the guy who is a devout Muslim, the guy who dropped out of high school, the guy who still lives with his parents, the guy who has $80,000 worth of credit card debt, or the guy who bags groceries for living.
Would you expect a man to consider dating an ugly woman just as long as she was nice? Even if that man was far from ugly himself, and in fact look just like George Clooney? Of course you wouldn’t. So why would we expect women–high status ones by any reasonable metric–to be any less discriminating? This is not unreasonable at all.
My objection is when it seems as if the criteria for being considered a “good candidate” is simply being a man with a pulse and a steady paycheck. I’m looking for a bit more than that, and so are other women. Whining in general annoys me, so I won’t argue with you on that point. You usualy don’t hear this whining from women who’ve decided that being single is a viable option, though. And no, I don’t think you’re saying anything specific about me.
You misunderstand Dangerosa, I think. The engineer is the woman the guy married. So is the IT specialist.
Yep.
I certainly hope so!
Maybe I should rethink this. I could use a compatable organ doner after all.