In your teens you are too young. In your 20’s, you think you have plenty of time. In your early 30’s, no one dares comment or harangue you, except maybe your mother, if you are lucky. And in your 40’s, you are overnight, too old. So when exactly are you encouraged to make babies?
When is the right time to have a baby? The truth is never. By the time people are bold enough to say I want a baby, come what may, they are usually biologically speaking, too old. That is why there are so many women desperate to have babies in their 40’s.
So how does society encourage delay?
- Modern culture promotes endless dating.
- Modern society eschews marriage and babies.
- Our role models are the coy and smirking bachelor and bachelorette.
All of this makes finding the right partner more onerous than it should be.
Society doesn’t encourage people to be responsible – it encourages procrastination. I mean look at who we revere – a good proportion are people who look good and promote a supposedly forward thinking agenda that sounds good, regardless of whether it does good.
Our role modes are people who cycle through relationships as frequently as alternating Netflix series.
It makes for good comedy but it does not make for real life happiness. Studies have found that men and women are happier and less lonely married than unmarried. With those boring statistics in mind, it is worthwhile to think about the benefits of marriage. That may change who you find attractive and who you date and provide a larger context to the ritual of dating. You can endlessly date the type of character in a comedy that gets the most laughs. But your life itself may become a parody too and you only live the one life.
A typical 35 year old woman spends her last fertile half decade hoping to find a partner but often her equivalently aged male counterpart is only interested in younger women at that point. Keeping your options open for too long actually closes your options later on. Both sexes delay parenthood to enjoy life that little bit more before the next chapter begins. However the average woman’s fertility is at risk of failure earlier and more rapidly than the average male’s fertility. On the cusp of thirty-eight, a woman’s fertility markedly declines so it is predictable that men may choose to partner with someone younger.
To be affronted and aghast by that logic is to live in a fantasy world. I think the 35 year old woman needs to stop being coy about her interest in babies and be vocal about her baby plans earlier in her life so both sexes can have confidence that a baby is part of the plan. With confidence, you can tackle life goals but if they are taboo or not articulated clearly, if there’s no trust, then you are building on sand.
Where does this leave the ordinary person in the street? The ordinary person does not have the ability to rebound after numerous mistakes. Their safety net, if they even have one, does not allow for endless delay. The ordinary person for the most part wants to have a life partner and raise a family. The ordinary person in the street wants the ordinary things in life. Those important things become the most meaningful – the extra-ordinary.
What would I say to my younger self?
I would definitely not say, don’t have babies late. It’s futile. I would say this.
Don’t follow the fads whatever they are at your moment in time. Don’t be hoodwinked by media or trends. Look at the free love proponents of the 70’s – some have come full circle. Youth don’t always know best.
Dismiss rites of passage at your peril. Marriage has survived for so long as an institution across so many cultures because it gives babies the best chance of being born – and that’s a huge endorsement for the institution. There are incredibly good things about marriage …..and babies is definitely one of them. I’m not saying you can’t have a baby outside of marriage but the stability of marriage increases the likelihood of having babies. They are the statistics. More babies are born within marriage. And generally two heads are better than one when it comes to raising babies.
When you come to try and make babies later, and invariably open your wallet to IVF and do not succeed, the media which previously lauded your lifestyle will forsake you because you are potentially a sad ending.
There is method in the seeming madness of committing to someone else to stay together for life. It’s stable and that stability encourages babies.
Married as opposed to cohabiting couples are more likely to have children, less likely to part ways, more likely to be happy, and more likely to be financially better off .
So even if you don’t think much of the institution of marriage, the fact that statistically more babies are born within marriage than outside of marriage, means it warrants some merit.
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.
The irony is we are resorting to extreme new ways of doing what we did so easily before – having babies – because we have been hoodwinked by society, popular culture, and Hollywood that we were too young for babies before and too old now.
The media generally derides baby-making and has at certain points advocated against using technology to overcome the obstacles we now face in having babies so late. It’s a vicious double hit. Convincing you when you’re young that you don’t need to have babies and then convincing you when you’re old and do want babies that your selfish desire harms others and offends childless couples everywhere.
So put all that to one side, and focus on how to make a baby even if you come to it late. Procrastination is no longer your friend.
