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[quote=Anonymous][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]

Thank you PP.

This whole thread is either, you're an older parent because you went to law/MBA/medical school, built up your career, waited to have kids until you were well into your 30s and affluent.  OR, you're a young parent because you're an uneducated hillbilly!  I'm sort of the old parent who is also the uneducated hillbilly!!

Well, there are SO MANY in-between stories like the PPs.  Here's one more.  I had my one and only DD at age 40.  I was the daughter of a blue-collar immigrant in a mid-western city.  There was no going to college for me, especially after my father died when I was a teenager.  I went to work at age 14 and barely graduated high school because I worked so many hours.  But at age 28, I had saved enough money to go to local college, graduate, go to grad school on full scholarship.  Met DH (also an immigrant himself with nothing) at 32 in grad school.  We both became professionals and successful.  But I didn't get married until I was 36 and had child at 40.  I had a very crappy high school education so I send my only child to a top school so she can have everything that I didn't growing up.

So, I didn't have the luxury of going to an elite college.  but I was also smart enough not to fall into the pattern of most of my family and friends, who married at 18 and had kids.  They still live the blue-collar life - which is not bad.  But I often wonder what the hell I'm doing here!  I certainly don't fit in with most of the parents at school, and CRINGE when they ask me where I went to school :)  But on the other hand, I'm proud to be self-made, with no family  help.

It's not black and white as my PP friend said.  We all have our different stories. [/quote]You fit in a helluva lot better than some parents who can't wait to flaunt their degrees, and the first words out of their mouths is what do you do and where did you go school.

I would consider it a privilege to know you.[/quote]

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