Reply to "The trouble is with men's sperm"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds. [/quote]

Most people are done with undergrad by 22 and by 25, at least one of the spouse is working in a professional full time job with health insurance etc. [/quote]

I want you to go look at the entry level job market and see just how hard it is to get a job right now

Yeah you have no idea what the job market is like for 25-year-olds these days[/quote]

DP - I’m not pushing for people to have a baby at 24-25 (unless they want to!) But I do think younger people, both men and women, need to start dating with intent to be in a committed relationship that will hopefully lead to marriage, while they are, yes, still in college. If they don’t find someone, at least they’ve had actual relationship experience, not just dating and hookups. That is important too.

[b]I think the goal really should be[/b] marriage in your mid 20s and a first baby before you turn 30. I didn’t quite make this personally, I was married at 25 but didn’t have my first kid until 31 due to … unexplained infertility. Now imagine if I had married at 30, we spent 2-3 years doing whatever, then started getting serious about having kids at 33, and found out about infertility then. Now you’re getting close to the age of decreased fertility at 35. Now you might not be able to wait it out or do less invasive/less expensive things like progesterone supplementation or traditional IUI. Everything that doesn’t work takes months, and you lose time, and maybe don’t have the family size that you want, or it costs much more money than it might have 5 years earlier and affects your health and wellness too. [/quote]
And yet some other people don't have that same goal. Crazy how that works. [/quote]

Sure, don’t have kids at all and live a child free life, or just have 1, or do whatever you want. [b]But you can’t be surprised and upset[/b] if you have to go down the route of expensive and invasive fertility treatments in your mid-late 30s or if you end up with a smaller family size than you originally imagined.

And it’s not just a family size issue, earlier marriage sets you up for more financial security early on, regardless of if/when kids come into the picture. This focus on casual dating and you have to be financially secure before marriage is hurting middle class people in their 20s. [/quote]
None of the people you're criticizing are surprised or upset. It only seems to be OTHER women (and way too many men) that are upset about women waiting to have children. It's none of your business. [/quote]

This. I got married at 34. Decided to have a kid at 36. Had said kid at 37. Thought about having another at 39 but decided against it. I sometimes feel a little sad I didn't have a second child, but mostly I'm happy with the one I have and glad we didn't overextend ourselves financially because we can afford to give our one kid a really good life. I've never expressed any surprise or anger over the outcomes of any of my choices, which I made with my eyes open and continue to feel were the right ones for me.

However, if someone says to me "what would it have taken to convince you to get married or have kids earlier, or to have more kids, " I will tell you honestly that I might have been able to do this if there was less of a penalty against women for taking time off to have kids, if childcare wasn't so prohibitively expensive, if I didn't have to save so much for both my own retirement and my kid's college education, and if society was more family and kid friendly so that I could have felt more confident that having a kid in my 20s or early 30s wouldn't have meant becoming isolated socially. That's not me complaining or being surprised, but since people often state that they want people to marry and have kids earlier, that's what I think it would take to make that feasible in the US for more people.[/quote]

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