waiting to have children

every morning (every workday morning), my husband gets up, has a shower, comes back to the room, and wakes me up. i lie in bed for a while trying to convince my eyes to stay open and hydrate a bit (do i sleep with my eyes open? theyre always so dry in the morning) while he gets dressed and ready, then we both head out to the kitchen, where i make his lunch while he gets his breakfast ready. it would possibly easier for me to make his lunch the night before, but he insists the sandwiches go soggy if left in the fridge overnight, and its really no big deal to get up in the mornings and make them.

anyway.

after food making, we sit down in front of the tv for a bit, while he eats, and we watch the morning news/talkback/etc show that happens to be on. then i go back to bed - if my son isnt awake yet - and he leaves for work.

this morning, there was something interesting on the tv.

birth rates in australia are up A LOT from the past 6 years or so, but most of the births - i think they said 90% - are in the over 30s age range. and most of them are another child, rather than a first child. the reasons they gave were just what you'd expect. people are waiting till they feel 'financially comfortable' before having kids/more kids; waiting to have a career first; waiting waiting waiting.

while a part of me can understand this (sometimes i wish my son had come later, so we were more financially stable - there is a reason we live with my mother - but then if you wait till your ready, are you ever really ready), a bigger part of me thinks its really, really stupid.



im just going to ignore all the biblical stuff, since im assuming a lot of these women are not religious at all.

so you want to get yourself established in a career first. why?

a lot of women want to stay home with their children, even if its only for the first year, and then put them in daycare or something, so they can return to work. but it can be hard to break out the work-mentality and give in to the total un-schedule that comes with children. just when you think you figured out their pattern, it changes. they go from 4 hourly feeds (or more frequent) to 6-8 hours or every 3 hours, or nothing for the entire day then every hour all night, but only for a week, then its back every 4 hours.... with different sleep patterns, stop sleeping entirely, sleep only during the day, sleep for an hour/wake for an hour during the night and scream all day... and you have to fit yourself to THEM, not to your own schedule. one day you sleep in till a glorious 10am after going to bed at a mere 8:30, then you get 5hours of sleep (or less) every night for the next month. but never at the same time. 8:30 till 1am, midnight till 4am, 10-2, 4-8, its always changing.

and then you go back to work, only to find you're a year (or however long you stayed home) behind. and now that you've got one kid, everyone expects you'll have more. the bosses pass you over for promotions, because they dont want to have to get someone else in when you disappear again to have another child (if they havent already, even before you had kids, because they were sure they'd be along any time now, since you're married/partnered/whatever), the other women in the office wonder how you could bear to leave your child with a stranger.. if you even have a job to go back to. the bosses have got someone younger and cheaper and more pliable in while you were away, and theyre reluctant to go back to you. sure, theres a job for you, but its not the one you left. (i'm not inventing this last bit. a friend of mine is about to become the younger and cheaper option in about a week, and the woman about to go on maternity leave is shooting daggers at her almost consantly.)

and thats assuming you stay home with the child for a while. after working for so long, it can be tricky to give up the extra money. many women feel pressured to go back to work long before they want to, if they wanted to at all, because they feel they cannot survive on one income. and lets face it. if your disposable income is nearly halved, practically overnight, youre going to feel pretty overwhelmed. especially if youve had such a higher income for a while. the less time you have to get used to extra money (and the less 'extra' money there is to begin with), the less you're going to miss it. so many of these 30-something women are going back to work sooner than they would otherwise choose to - IF they would choose to - because they dont think they had any other choice.

now, obviously, there are many women would likely go back to work anyway, because they feel they have no choice financially (or their husbands feel they have no choice). but getting used to one income in your early 20s when thats all youve known anyway, is a lot easier than getting used to THE EXACT SAME INCOME in your mid-late 30s, when you've been used to nearly double.

and if you do manage to get well established in a career, and then throw it all in to stay at home and have kids, everyone thinks youre insane anyway. why would you possibly want to give up a well paying, secure job youve had for so long, to stay home and have children? how can you manage all that housecleaning and nappychanging and foodcooking? obviously, youve lost your mind. when are you going back to work? never. NEVER?? INSANE!!


then theres the fertility issue. just because women all over the world are having babies on their 40s, 50s, even 60s, doesnt mean YOU will be able to. just because you have ONE child (or two, three, seven, fifteen) doesnt mean you will ever be able to have another one, even with all the medical help in the world.

lets say you get married and start trying to have a baby at 21. fertility decreases sharply at.. what.. 35? so you have 14 years to try before things start getting significantly trickier. a year passes. no baby. another year. still no baby. you go see a doctor, who says as far as he can tell, theres no reason why you havent conceived. so you just keep trying. after another couple of years, and a lot of thought and discussion, you decide to try ivf. it fails. a few times. and quite a few more. you give up. its been 6 years, and a lot of money, and you just cant handle the failure any more. then, a year later, you find youre pregnant. at 28.

now lets assume you didnt start trying until youre 34. assuming it still takes 7 years, you will be 41 before you have a baby. and considering fertility drops at 35, who knows if that baby would ever come?

obviously, this isnt going to happen to every woman, and for some, after a couple of years of trying, the doctor will find something wrong, fix it (or come up with some option, whatever) and there will be a baby. some dont have any fertility problems at all - my mother didnt have me, her first, until she was 35, and my sister was conceived not long after starting to 'try' again, and born when my mother was 38.

but if you HAVE fertility problems, and dont find out until your mid-late 30s, theres a lot less time to try and do something about it, before it simply becomes ridiculous, and far far too expensive.


which kinda ties into another problem. age. energy. whatever. if you have ONE child, at 22, by the time the child is 17, able to be left alone for week or so if needed (holidays, hospital, whatever) (and yes, some children can be left alone younger, but i wouldnt feel comfortable leaving alone any child under about 17), or alternately, old enough to completely ignore you and stay out all night giving you no indication of where he/she is and completely ignoring any punishment (remember, im assuming these families are non-religious, but there are children in religious households too who will rebel, unfortunately) you will only be 39. if the child is born at 35, you are 52. i dont know about you, but i imagine im going to get tired a bit easier at 52 than i will at 39.

and come to think of it, i have a lot more energy now, at 25, than i imagine i will at 38. i have joint problems, and my lungs arent the best, but i can run around with my kid, i can play football and chase him around the park. i can tickle him until he and i can hardly breathe. i can toss him in the air (a bit). i can crouch down behind the kitchen counter and jump out at him. if i had waited til my mid 30s (or rather, if God had waited, since he was absolutely totally and ENTIRELY unplanned) i doubt i would be able to do those things. my joints are only going to get worse (as theyve been slowly but steadily doing since i was 8), and i imagine my lungs wont get any better either. if i have more kids, as i want, i will gradually be able to do less and less and less... but still more than i'd be able to do if i'd started having kids later.



im not saying everyone should get married as young as possible and start having children immediately. but i really do think this trend of waiting so long to have children is not sensible.






please remember, this entire post has been written from a non religious perspective. there are of course other reasons not to get married and then wait 10 years to have children, but ive been trying to think in ways that make sense to everybody, not just religious people.