Do you have a vague feeling you may want children in the far distant future? Do you tend not to want to think about it too much because you consider yourself too young, have not met the right person or are just finding your feet? In fact the only thing you feel you have control over is your job.
The media portrayal isn’t necessarily an accurate reflection of what our late 20’s and 30’s is really like. The love and intimacy in a friendship, think Friends and Sex in the City, does not replace the love and intimacy of a romantic relationship or the love for a child. It is not better, more worthwhile, longer lasting. And the 30’s just seem to never end until….you’re too old. It’s too late to go back and do things differently.
In my 30’s I recall going on a ski holiday with my 30 something girlfriend. We were both recently single so we did a club med holiday in Val d’Isere , France. Every night we sat at a different table with different people. One night we sat with a lovely Dutch couple who were in a defacto relationship and saw no reason to validate their union with a piece of paper. We both thought that very modern and desirable.
Oddly enough when I returned from that holiday, I had two friends who had been asked to have babies by their respective defacto partners without getting married. One was bold enough to say what she really thought – if it doesn’t jeopardise the union or take away from it, if it does no harm and possibly does some good even, then what is your objection to marrying. Women want to know their partner will stick around. Be bold.
Women and men gain satisfaction from having jobs and fulfilling careers. You get your training wheels off in your late 20’s and you look forward to a 10 year trajectory of uninterrupted work. So you either face the option of having babies and returning to work and juggling and it’s a lot more difficult than is glamorised in the movies or you start having babies later which more women are opting to do because medically it’s feasible – not guaranteed but possible. Of course there’s a risk but that risk is often taken. So I’m not here to advocate against late babies. I did it myself.
I would say women need to start taking control of their fertility options earlier and reassess their romantic inclinations earlier to have children later. The two go hand in hand. Taking control of your fertility options will necessarily involve looking at someone to partner with, if you want children later. Nothing is going to remove the biological, social and economic reasons underpinning the desirability of some form of long term commitment to someone. It is worth assessing what you will do if you can’t have a baby in your late thirties. A fallback may be that you would look at donor eggs and/or sperm.
The point is that women need to start taking control of their fertility earlier. Didn’t we do that with the pill? No because the control was directed towards a different end – not to have babies, which of course has its place. But now we need to remind ourselves about our personal life goals which may involve children.
You need a big picture plan. Your immediate goal may be to keep your romantic options open, develop your career and save money. But that short term goal needs to morph into a long term goal at some point.
You might not want babies now, but if the picture you have of yourself later is to have children then don’t think of it as some alternate reality. Make it your reality around the corner so that you make choices now which make it more likely that you will realise your dream later. You may consider some of the following ideas to help realise your baby dreams.
- Seriously find a partner who you would want as a long term partner and father and who sees themself in that role. Don’t just date someone to avoid being single. You have to envisage being with them and only them during a pandemic type lockdown. Why? Because having children often leaves you socially bereft and time poor in the early years and the first casualty is often yourself and your own pursuits including social contact. Your social interactions tend to contract because the rest of your time outside of work is taken up with the baby and baby related chores. If you can’t see your partner sharing the child rearing then unless you have a fabulous support network or you are content with that arrangement, that partner may not be ideal. You might not be making babies just yet, but at least you are thinking about who you date, with babies in mind down the track.
- Be honest and disclose your life goals. If you do, then it is more likely someone else will share this information too. And you can say, it’s not something I see for myself right now, but I am thinking about the choices I make now so that it does happen for me later.
- If you don’t articulate your personal goals, the challenge of trying to make it happen when you are older will snowball.
- If you have left it rather late, you need to be honest and proactive. You can’t spend time in a relationship that is not working because you don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings, you just don’t want to be alone or you want to pretend that it’s all ok. Guaranteed your partner will not be thinking of you when they have babies with someone else down the track.
- Don’t set yourself up for failure. Don’t move in with a partner you don’t want to stay with long term. It just puts you in a predicament that you cannot easily extract yourself from. You don’t want to have a partner move in by default. I’ll paint a scenario – boyfriend cannot find a place to stay, his lease has expired, he moves in temporarily, just until he lands on his feet, ends up staying for years and that becomes the status quo.
- Think about whether a long term commitment is on the cards. And if it is, be bold and discuss marriage. Ask your partner how they feel about it. Most people know sooner than they would like to admit whether it is even possible to envisage staying with the person they are dating for the rest of their life.
- If every relationship you have hitherto experienced has broken up, and you have cycled through a number of relationships, then breaking up is potentially on the cards again. Some counsellors observe that people who divorce, often re-marry the same type of person they did the first time ‘round and are surprised it ends the same way. It is worthwhile analysing yourself to understand what traits in someone else may be better suited to your personality. You may be dating the same wrong person for you over and over and over again.
- The thirties pass by really quickly especially if you are wrapped up in your job and busy with everything life throws at you. There is really nothing to mark the years. And if you look young for your years, or tend to socialise with people much younger than yourself, you won’t realise the time slip by. There are very few reminders. Our old people who could weigh in with insight are out of sight.
- Beware lying to yourself. It can be really easy to profess complete disinterest in babies and leave that to the ‘grown ups’ but at some point you have to get serious with your life goals. Beware surrounding yourself with people who also lie about their own personal goals and mimicking that. Talk to people you can let your guard down with and be honest.
- If your career is super demanding, you need to have a plan in mind. You need to think about what you are prepared to sacrifice (time at work or time with your baby) or alternatively what you have to do to remove yourself from the competition. By that I mean not working harder and longer but offering something that fewer people do. At that point, you have pulled yourself out of the rat race to some extent. And that lifestyle you have created for yourself is wonderful because it’s in tune with your life goals. Sometimes people choose a job or a profession and feel they have to just take the lifestyle that’s part and parcel of the job. Well you can do that or you can use the skills you have learnt in that job to get the job you really want, the one that gives you a much better family lifestyle.
- It is worthwhile looking at what you can do before your fertility falls dramatically at thirty-seven, thirty-eight years of age. Freezing eggs is becoming popular. The younger the eggs frozen, the better your chances of those eggs being of good quality. Older eggs are less likely to be of good quality and more difficult to freeze and thaw. Freezing older eggs can give a false sense of security because you are completely ignorant as to your pregnancy chances with those eggs. Freezing embryos is one step better. With embryos you have some idea as to quality because they have survived being cultured in the laboratory but often a forty year old’s embryos do not freeze and thaw as well.
- You need to formulate a fall back plan – these are the things that you would rather not do to realise your goal. It might be going it alone or involving a donor, all of which you previously dismissed as less than ideal and not for you. The point about doing this is that it provides very good motivation for avoiding the biggest trap of all – endless procrastination without a plan. It’s the reality check to keep you motivated to stick to your better plan. Otherwise it’s the less desirable plan B, C or D.
It takes a long time to execute on plans. Even if you don’t fully execute on a plan for one reason or another, formulating one does unconsciously influence your decisions to put you in the best possible place for later getting married and having babies. It might mean you switch jobs, dump a useless boyfriend or set yourself up better for later parenthood and sharing that journey with someone who will stick around. It will have some influence over what you do a decade on. Assessing your romantic and fertility options as early as possible will put you in the best possible place for actioning your baby dreams later on.
