The problem is it is very difficult for a young person who also must take care of a child to accumulate the education and experience required to build a career; while one could go back to school at 40 and start over, very few would in practice have the energy, and they would likely face a somewhat uphill battle getting employers to accept them.
I think it depends a lot on the persons involved. Given, I’m only 21, but I have no doubts about being a dad. Never have, I just felt ready for it. It helps that my wife and I have been pretty much very close friends since I was 14, but we were not actually more than friends until 18 or so. She is older than I am, so that also plays into it. She’ll be 25 in a few days (the 27th).
We’ve both worked full-time jobs, her since she was 16, me since I was 15. We have a nice home, and are looking to buy our first house when we move back towards our hometown (it is so much nicer than where we live now).
I don’t know if there is a specific right age, but I know there are some people who should not be having kids while they are really young - for them I would suggest 27+, but there are some who I think do good, even if they are having babies at 20.
Brendon
Well, I’m in my late 20s and I still don’t think I’m ready. I doubt I will be for another 4 or 5 years (provided I get married, I think I’d have my first at about 32 to 33).
I want to travel to farflung destinations inhospitable to small children (#1 reason), accumulate more money (#2 reason), purchase real estate (#3 reason) and wait for my boobs to fall on their own, making the post-baby body moot (#4 reason).
Okay, I’m just kidding about #4 but it boils down to the fact that I don’t want to have a kid before I feel financially well-prepared and before I get a chance to see Ankwor Wat without having to bring juice boxes, teletubbies (and probably be the subject of a bitter pit thread).
With the way WE raise our children (this place and time in history) its the rare 24 year old who has the emotional maturity for kids - much less the 16-20 year olds. Granted there are 16-20 year old parents who do a great job, however, most of that doesn’t result in grandma enjoying being a grandmother, but grandma enjoying being a parent while her daughter does what 21 year old girls do.
There are other periods of time and social structures where its very appropriate for women to have their children as teenagers and it works well.
Unless, of course, your kids turn out to be a lot different than you. My mom’s 50, and still not a grandmother despite having her own kids at 20 and 26.
I think my mother would have been better off if she’d had kids later. 20 was way too young. (though I’m fairly well convinced she had kids because my dad wanted them, so maybe age wasn’t a huge factor) Mid-twenties to mid-thirties seems to work out pretty well for a lot of people. I think I’ll cast my vote there. If I end up deciding to procreate, it better be within the next five years.
We had ours at 29 and 34. We deliberately space them to have a year between college to let us save up again, and we were very happy we did. We started soon after I got out of grad school and got a real job, and that worked very well. The youngest will be out of college in time for us to add money for retirement, and be young enough to enjoy it. I’m sure starting a few years earlier wouldn’t have hurt if I hadn’t dawdled so much. We did have a bit over a year by ourselves with money - any more and we might have gotten too used to it.
Friends of ours have a big gap in their ages. He’s 70, and should be retiring, but they still have a kid to get through college. (He’s a professor so has a bit more freedom to stay.) I can see he has trouble keeping up now.
You are pretty well expressing what my wife and I were thinking when we were your age.
We did the travelling (indeed, our little monster was probably conceived at our hotel near Chichen Itza 
); we made our money; we got our house.
The drawback of all this is that by the time we got around to having a kid, we were nearly 40. Physically, it is more difficult to handle a kid at that age, no doubt about it.
On the other hand - it is in fact more difficult to make your career mark while at the same time juggling child-care responsibilities.
My regret is that we are now probably really pushing it age-wise if we wanted to have another.
I agree, but I’d add that a major part of the problem, even for the emotionally mature, is the simple fact that in order to gain employment beyond the subsistance level, a lengthy period of education and apprenticeship is typically required - which is one of the factors lengthening “adolescence” in our culture.
Believe me, the decline in fertility is the huge tipping point on the other side of that scale…the downsides you’ve listed are what go through my mind. I am a post-infertility baby myself so I completely understand that I am really pushing it at the moment. My sister and I joke that we’re on our last batch of “good eggs”.
The biggest issue of the moment, however, is that while I currently have someone in mind, I really can’t commit to having children without a spouse. I have a very strong relationship with my father and I would want any child I raise to have the same.
Oh, and I was just at Chichen Itza in April 
Great place. They no longer let you climb the pyramids, though, which was disappointing. I guess some twats have no sense of propriety and were ripping off pieces of the pyramid to take home as souveniers (as though the footpath full of hawkers didn’t provide souveniers to take home).
Age shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
The question is, “Do you own a home?” That is, “Did you already put down a down payment and are currently making your mortgage payments?”
If the answer is “Yes”, go ahead and have kids. If the answer is “No”, wait.
It doesn’t have to be a mansion. A condo is fine, but do you “own” it?
Trying to save up for a down payment while raising kids can be a nightmare that results in your just renting a place to live for the rest of your life.
Oh come on now. I understand where you are coming from with the financial responsibility angle but the priorities are crossed. A couple can rent and have kids in perfectly nice circumstances in their mid 20’s but a couple in their 50’s can’t have kids the regular way no matter how much equity they have in their house. I am a huge proponent of getting your shit together early on because the proper way takes years but nice, healthy, female eggs are irreplaceable and much more important than your mortgage deed when it comes to priority.
That type of thinking shuts many people out of traditional parenthood.
College graduate = age 22 + four years to establish career + 2 years of serious dating + one year of engagement = married + 2 years to buy a house = 31 years old to start a family and 32 years old before the first child is born.
Any little flaw in that plan leads to family planning disaster and I have witnessed it all to often.
I too am in academic research - don’t let these people fool you into believing science (in my case) can replace a family. Or materialism. I’ve seen way too many of my friends in science/medicine put off having families until after 30 (some are 30 and are nowhere near being married, let alone dating).
My own opinion is that too many people play Russian roulette with their eggs and sperm. Someone on the SDMB once wrote that women should have children when they are 20, and then go to college when their kids are in school. I’m not sure who said this, but I am beginning to believe they might be right. so IMHO the best age to have your children are from 20-30. Of course, this does not take into account the maturity level of most 20 year old women nowadays, so maybe this advice would be better suited for our parents’ generation.
Except of course, that this isn’t necessarily true.
My husband and I had our first baby 5 years ago at ages 29 and 33, and bought our first house nearly a year later. We had our second kid at 31 and 35. I think our ages were just about perfect, and we still have time to have a third if we end up wanting one.
I had mine at 25 and 28, and I think that was perfect for me.
I took my last final at Uni the Friday before my first was born on the following Tuesday. I went to graduate school and my second was born the July before I started my last semester. Yes, I wrote my master’s thesis project with a six week old and a 2 yr old in the house. 
Really, if you want it to work, and you are willing to work hard at it, it will work, just like anything else. As someone else said, age should not matter as long as you have determination and love.
There are pros and cons on each side … youthfullness and flexibility vs. wisdom and patience. I think each pair of parents knows what will work for them.
RE: the money/house thing - I was divorced and a single mom when my kids were 6 months and 3 years old. We lived in a rented house trailer for years. I don’t think that hurt them any.
It sucks you can’t climb the pyramids - we certainly did. Steep. Great views!
Even better were the ruins along the so-called Puuc Route - like Uxmal. Need to rent a car to get there, though.
Just one pic, one of my favourites:
Back on topic - yeah, there are so many hoops you have to jump through to have children responsibly - I suppose they are self-imposed (like being financially secure and secure in your relationships; having a spouse and a house) - that by thre time all the ducks are lined up - you are getting on in years. At least, that is how it worked out for me.
I know in theory that you can just have a kid and work hard at getting everything in place. I suppose that works for some, but I suspect that it doesn’t necessarily work for everyone - particularly where society appears to be happily bifrucating into “haves” and “have-nots”, and where being a young single parent is a pretty good indicator of being a “have-not”.
I’m not sure.
There ARE plenty of people who get done with their degree at 21. They get married and start a family. Money isn’t as ample as if they’d waited to have kids for ten years, but they manage - money is certainly NICE with kids, but plenty of kids turn out just fine despite having to share a bedroom or wearing hand me downs. I have a friend or two like this. To be successful at it it helps to have a supportive family - often it seems daycare is provided by grandma - and it helps to have emotional maturity…that doesn’t come because you are financially stable or because you’ve been out of school for a few years. There are some sixteen year olds far more emotionally mature than some forty year olds. But it often comes with age.
(I’m a returning college student at 40 - never finished my B.A. the first time. And some of my classmates are young and astounding in their maturity - often these are the immigrant students. And some of the older returning students don’t seem to be emotionally any more mature than the 20 year olds - with the same “the test was too hard, you really want me to do 20 problems!” whine.)
And there are plenty of people who delay kids for life to pull together - and it never really does. So they start their kids late with all the disadvantages of age and none of the advantages.
But to the fertility thing - I’m an adoptive parent after infertility (and a surprise bio parent after adoption). I’m not a big fan of fertility being the reason to have your kids at 22 because there are other ways to create families. However, you do age out of adoption much like (and about the same time) that you age out of fertility.
I can’t really disagree with what you say. My point is that, in general, society seems to have changed its expectations so that a lot longer period of learning, travelling and experimentation is considered normal or even required in order to land a job (and for one’s own self-expression); and that this has had the inevitable result of people extending their adolescence (that being the stage in life when one is considered by one’s parents and peers free to do all of these things and not take on major life committments).
Now, that being said, obviously it is more of a tendancy or trend than any hard and fast rule. Some people are more focused at an earlier age, get their degrees and line up a job, have a steady loving relationship and are ready to have kids by 21; some don’t need all of these preconditions, and have kids young anyway - and they turn out fine. Others may wait to have their life fall together only to see that it doesn’t.
For me, if I had a time machine I’d tell my younger self not to sweat the material things so much and to go for children somewhat earlier.
My wife and I had a discussion about this once, and we cameup with the idea that, given our health care possibilities now, young people really should have their families very early, raise the kids, launch then imto the world, and then go to school, launch their careers when there’s no conflict with home duties, etc. The problem is getting society to agree to this and (1) provide a living wage so families can thrive and (2) agree to delay the gratification of high income until after the kids are raised.
This ‘having kids early then getting on with life’ seems even less likely given that so many kids are staying at home 'til they’re in their 20s. And how many people in their late teens/early twenties are even in committed relationships? It’s sort of silly to tell them to wait 'til they’re 17 or 18 to have sex but to then make the life-altering decision to have a kid within a year.
Most twenty year olds have so many changes to go through that results for the marriage and child rearing are problematic. The person I was at 20-then 25- then 30 were very different.
I have heard arguments that being older parents ,you will have difficulty keeping up with your child. My son was born when I was 38. He is 26 and we play racketball together 3 times a week. A child can help you stay active and interested .