Your biological clocks are ticking faster than you think, lady dopers!

[MsWhatsit]

Well, my take on this after reading the article is not that the medical professionals in question are trying to proselytize about the glories of stay at home motherhood or anything. They just want women to be aware that it’s not as easy to conceive past the age of 40 as many people think. I mean, all you hear about on the news is how Madonna got pregnant at the age of 41, or this celebrity got artificially inseminated, or this 50-year-old woman is having a baby. It makes you think anything is possible, when in reality it’s pretty tough to have a child after the age of 40. They just want to make people more aware of that. I think it’s nice.

Some people are probably going to be offended, just as some people are offended when their doctors ask them if they plan to conceive, and inform them that time is running out. But personally I’d be glad my doctor bothered to pass along the information, even if I didn’t care to have children and it didn’t apply to me.

[Bad_News_Baboon]

I read a story about this the other day

http://www.gentlebirth.org/archives/agedsprm.html
(I couldnt find the exact one I read, sorry).

will this be advertised too?

granted, I don’t think its as serious a problem (i think) as with women aging, but still…
perhaps men are over estimating, too.

what with celebrity dads having children in their 70’s…

[Peta_Tzunami]

Article excerpt:

For two years, they’ve been trying, first naturally, now with fertility drugs. A year ago she conceived, then miscarried. Last month alone, she spent $3,300 on injections. “If you ever told me I’d be having this kind of difficulty, I would have laughed in your face,” she says. "I exercise, I eat well, I keep better work hours, but I’m really not in control of what’s happening with my little eggs. It’s devastating. It’s a terrible sense of failure."

Bolding mine.

Okay, so I’d give MY humble opinion, but it would be more appropriate for a pit thread and there’s too great a sense of deja vu in that…

[techchick68]

My biological clock is on contanst snooze just like you do in the mornings, “no I don’t wanna get up for work yet”…waiting for menopause to set in as I don’t desire to have children. I am 33 (next week) and ever since I was in my teens I have made it a point to let the parents know not to expect grandbabies from me.

BTW, my best friend, age 38, had her baby last night at 2:30 am my time. The baby is healthy but mom was not well. She has high blood pressure and the baby increased that. She’s been on bed rest since July 22 and wasn’t due until Sept 4th. Luckily Kaitlyn Marie is healthy, but at a smaller weight than what she was 'sposed to be born at, about 8 pounds.

So, while I think it’s important for women to consider an earlier age to have children I do think that it’s also very important for people to be very sure they want children before boot knockin no matter the age. Most of my friends have had wild surprises rather than planned babies.

[astorian]

Anya Marie is all too typical, I’m afraid, in her reaction to the fertility specialists’ announcement. She attributes the whole thing to the Christian Right (you really think ANY of the doctors in question are fundamentalist Christians???), and rails against pressure she feels to have children… as if that has ANY relevance to the issue at hand.

If she doesn’t want to have kids, FINE! The fertility specialists’ announcement doesn’t affect her one bit, and there’s no reason she should feel the slightest outrage about their findings!

The reality is, however, that nature and our bodies don’t always cooperate with our desires. And if we make the wrong decisions, with the expectation that medical technology and new breakthroughs will save us from the consequences of those decisions, we’re making a HUGE mistake.

Just as an example, we’re now seeing skurocketing rates of HIV infection among gay men, largely because young gay men have bought into the notion that new drugs and therapies can keep AIDS under control, so it’s safe to be promiscuous again. That kind of misplaced faith in medical technology can have deadly results.

In the same way, a woman who WANTS children but also wants to stay on the fast track at her law firm/bank/high tech firm/brokerage has some tough decisions and some difficult trade-offs to make. She MAY decide that being rich and successful is more important than having children. She MAY decide that having children is more important than career success, and go on the “mommy track.” Or she MAY decide to postpone children until AFTER she’s achieved a certain level of success… knowing that, by then, she may be 38 or 42, and having children may not be easy.

Any of those decisions is fine with me. But a woman who postpones marriage and kids until she’s 40 is taking a gamble, and she should KNOW what a gamble she’s taking. She shouldn’t stroll into a fertility specialist’s office at age 42, and act surprised when it turns out she can’t have children of her own.There are a lot more medical and technological options than there used to be, but none comes with a guarantee.

Life is FILLED with tradeoffs. This is just the latest. A woman who wants kids AND a high-power career has to know what those tradeoffs are. She can’t dismiss them or pretend that science will automatically bail her out.

[Jeannie]

I doubt the proposed ads would have much of an effect on my decision. My husband and I have been married for 23 months today (not that I’m counting :)). I am 26 and he is 27. Not to get into details, but right now we have put off “trying” for at least another year. We both feel that right now would not be the right time to bring a child into our lives. If we end up waiting until I’m in my mid-thirties (which I doubt), we know the risks. But we would much rather be good parents to a child who may have special needs than to rush into anything. We may end up with a healthier child if we start now, but we are simply not ready to be someone’s parents.

[Cat_Whisperer]

One thing that struck me from the article in the OP was the condescension involved in deciding whether or not to tell women about these things. How dare you even consider not telling me something that affects my body and my decisions. I thought we were working on getting past the “don’t worry your pretty little head about it” mentality.

The reasons given for not bringing this information to the attention of women are also pretty condescending; they don’t want women to feel like they have to quit their jobs and start having babies RIGHT NOW if they get this information? News flash - women are capable of making decisions based on more than an informative article. Having all the information we can get allows us to make the best decisions possible.