Reply to Does anyone feel a responsibility to dispell the myth that you can wait until almost 40 to have kids

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[quote=Anonymous]This discussion is interesting and useful, but it puts nearly all of the responsibility for fertility and decisions on women. Men also need to be educated. Part of the issue is that many men are even less aware of fertility than women.  My otherwise fairly educated husband told me, when we were first engaged and discussing TTC before the wedding (since I was 37 at the time!), that he thought that the chances for a healthy pregnancy within the year (so age 38) were around 85 percent and if not, we could definitely get pregnant if we did IVF, which he estimated to cost around 5k, "but covered by insurance, right?". WHen I told him the stats for my age, alone or with IVF, he basically threw his condoms away that night (and we were very, very lucky--two kids at 39 and 41 without treatments).

But I think there are other issues at play--both men and women are delaying marriage and childbearing (part of the reason I waited until 38 to get married is that I spend the better part of my 30s dating two different guys who claimed to want family/kids, but couldn't commit--one is still single in his late 40s, the other panicked at turning 45 and got married to someone he barely knew....and is in the process of divorcing....but I digress). And for women, quite often, it is the pressure to have a career solidified. I needed to finish my PdH and find a job before I felt ready to settle down--in part because as the OP mentioned, I rarely saw women in their prime childbearing years also succeeding at work or in grad school. The female academics were all either childless or were racing to have kids in their late 30s. A few did have kids in grad school , and now I envy them. But its not just academe--we have family unfriendly policies in many workplaces so perhaps some women put it off until they feel their career is secure enough. Just a thought anyway.

as for 'warning' women-its a delicate thing. I think OBGYNs should have frank talks with their patients about fertility but I know that I got 'that talk' all the time from my mother starting in my late 20s (by the time I was 35 she told me I was too old to freeze my eggs!) and all it did was stress me out, since I wasn't ready to do it alone and hadn't met the right partner. It did, however, finally change the way I approached dating and finding a good man who was truly ready to have kids. [/quote]

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