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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This question strikes a nerve because, in general, upper middle class Ivy/elite college graduates on the coasts take strikingly different life paths than everyone else.  And it is obvious at the expensive private schools in DC how much older the parents are. 25 years after graduation, there were only 10 classmates with kids at my alma mater. We didn't have DC until we were in our mid-30s and I often think everyone looks like a teen parent when we fly through Charlotte/Atlanta/Dallas.

We're older because we went to a selective college and, contrary to Princeton Mom's advice, we went on to grad school to have careers. Unlike earlier generations, we found partners with similar education and professional ambitions. It took us a few years to get our established professionally and we didn't make partner at our law/consulting firms for at least 5-6 years. How in the world could anyone think about having a kid when you're both billing 4000 hours/year? I think it is probably even more impossible to have kids in your 20s for those who took the med school or academic routes.

Besides having much more professional security, a nicer house, and money, I was a lot better parent at 40 than I could have been in at 30. It's a lot easier insisting on the flexibility I need to be there for DC by waiting until I became the boss at work.

And, I am a little judgmental because my DC is a girl and I don't want her ambitions to take a back seat to any man. I want her to spend her 20s seeing how far her ambition might take her, not taking time off.  [/quote]

As a young mom, I would like to respectfully point out how I find this to be a bit myopic. I own my own business, my own home--a low mortgage on a beautiful old house, to boot--and I have a lot of flexibility because I can afford help. I understand that my circumstances are generally the exception, but it isn't right to say that having a child young will limit your daughter's potential. In fact, I think that becoming a mother is what drove me to realize my dreams and become successful. My ambitions don't take a back seat to a man, they are shared and bolstered by someone who was supportive of me the whole time. We changed life plans together so that I could make it all happen for our family.

It's not so black and white.[/quote]

Good point. If you can pull off being rich young, then totally go for it. The rest of us had to put in a few more years.[/quote]

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