I confess, I was lucky. My husband and I did not need to use skills for communication in marriage in order to find the best time to have our first child. I got pregnant our wedding night. The IUD got its instructions wrong and ushered in the racing sperm instead of blocking their entry. Within days of getting married my husband and I realized that we were on our way to raising a family. That was the best decision we never made.
Recently my husband and I attended our 50th high school and 45th college reunions. At all four events we were stunned. We had assumed that our classmates would be in a similar life stage to ours. Not quite. That decision we never made, getting us pregnant at age 25, put us into an accelerated class.
One of my high school friends and one from my husband’s high school class each had six grandkids. These two classmates however were the vast exceptions. While most of our classmates did have at least some grandkids, many had none and the others had at most two or three. Their sense of the best time for a first baby had been up in their mid to late thirties, and their grown children were proceding toward parenthood at a similarly leisurely pace.
Our colleges alas seemed to have trained their graduates even more explicitly in how not to create a significant extended family. My husband observed that many of his classmates seemed to have had more wives than grandchildren. My college classmates considered themselves blessed (and I agree) if they had been gifted with at least one or two grandchildren. Most, while they enjoyed successful careers, had raised adult children who as yet, mainly in their late thirties, had not married. No one from our college classes that either of my husband or I talked with came even half-way to the dozen-plus grandkids who make our life so joyful. That's not to say that everyone wants so many. None at all is the problem.
What conventional wisdoms have been pushing back the age of first pregnancies?
I recently asked a thoughtful Stanford psychology student what he and his friends considered as a good marriage and having-kids time line. The young man answered without hesitation, "Play around in your twenties. In your thirties when you're old enough to have a steady paying job and are comfortable enough to support a family, then pursue a longer term relationship."
"Well-put," I thought, "and sadly unrealistic in terms of human biology if you want to be sure to be able to enjoy a happy and healthy family." For an excellent summary of the biological reasons why mid-twenties is the best time to start conceiving children, see this article from BabyCenter.com (note: I loved the article well before I came to the part where it turned out that the article quotes me).
Here's sociological factors that seem to be impacting the choices young people now are making about committed relationships and conception.
1) Stop At Two:
I recall the beginnings of the “Stop at Two” movement. It was when I was in my twenties. Children became regarded as a luxury that you should limit instead of life’s ultimate gift.
Now even China has found that limiting births, in their case to one per family, sets up for the death of a society once there’s not enough workers to support the elders.
Let's face it. Like the Chinese, many of us in America will not succeed in saving enough financially to sustain us, even with social security, through our many years of post-retirement senior living. The government's having forced us to save via social security may have lulled us into a false sense of security. It will help some but not provide enough for comfortable senior living.
Ultimately a couple's traditional and perhaps best insurance for old age comes from their investment in having raised a loving family who can then, if need be, help to take care of its elders. "Primitive" societies all do this. Our advanced technological society fractures families instead of expecting them to be strong and for the members to help each other.
2) New post-college life stages:
I blame the TV show Friends and Seinfeld. These programs popularized the idea of a very extended young-adulthood. College used to lead to marriage, especially for women. Now women, like men, seek to make their way in the economic world before marriage and family concerns rise to the top of the priority list.
I also blame the academic world that provides few examples among the faculty that living and learning can co-exist. Few young faculty members have children, and graduate school students tend to believe that their education has to end before grown-up life can begin. How fortunate my husband and I were to have become pregnant in the midst of our grad school years. My daughter who is now a psychologist attended her first grad psych courses starting age one month.
3) A new timeline:
Add those two factors together, an extended young-adult singles life stage of cavorting when folks used to do courting plus grad school, and suddenly young men and women are likely to find themselves in their late twenties.
Add now several years of trying to find a suitable partner. Woops. Now the thirties already are stealthily creeping by.
Then comes the conventional wisdom that couples should be engaged for a year or more before their wedding, and then another conventional wisdom suggesting that couples wait a year or more after marriage before starting to try to conceive children.
While there is a grain of truth in these conventions, namely that knowing your partner's appropriateness as a marriage partner before you seal the deal, is well-advised, there are faster ways than just time passing to get that data.
Similarly to be sure that a successful marriage will develop after the wedding, there are better ways than passively waiting to see to find out. See the bottom of this article for a better alternative.
Beyond concerns about consolidating a marriage, there's for many young women a belief (more questionable conventional wisdom) that they should wait until their career has been well-established before starting a family. By then, couples are likely to be well into their thirties.
The realities found in studies in the 70's in fact said that the happiest women worked part time, were with their children part time, and in this way advanced both their careers and their family simultaneously. Full-time work made for overload at home. No working outside of the home tended to invite maternal depression, especially for women with a prior gratifying career. The combo of part and part generally was ideal.
What are the downsides of launching a family after 35?
A couple in their mid to late thirties aiming for a first pregnancy has significantly lower odds of being successful in getting pregnant. Conception is likely to take longer to accomplish. The pregnancy is likely to be more uncomfortable, with more morning sickness. The rates of birth defects, mental retardation and autism begin to zoom upward. Not a pretty picture.
The bottom line is that women’s bodies are ideally suited to having babies when they are in their mid twenties. They can stretch that some into their early thirties, especially for second and third pregnancies. Past age 35 however conceiving babies enters a danger zone, for men as well as women. Sperm and eggs do not increase with vitality as they age. Conception as late as early 40's certainly does occur for many women. It's just more iffy and more likely to be problematic.
The bottom line is that many couples treat pregnancy via the paradigm of handing in a college paper: wait to start the at project until the last moment; work at it then feverishly; and hope you can get an extension. That strategy may work in college. It's less than ideal for launching a family.
Living organisms’ first priority is survival. Their second is reproduction. How have we become so out of synch with these basic life goals?
If you are concerned about population explosion, the math looks good. Few of my high school or college age cohort managed by their late 60’s to accomplish replacement rate. Two parents plus two parents of your son or daughter in law need four grandchildren total for the population to stay even. So our society is doing well in terms of curtailing population growth. European countries as well as China have begun however to ask how much reduction in population growth is too much reduction.
What does age of reproduction mean for you personally?
Time taken for extended young adulthood is time taken away from grandparenthood.
Is the extended family becoming an endangered species?
When the Beatles sang, “Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?” they were singing about “…when I’m 64.” If college-educated young adults now are having their children mainly between ages 35 and 40, and their children do the same, they will enjoy no grandchildren until they are in their 70’s or 80’s. That's maybe young enough to play with young grandchildren, but by the time the grandkids get to be elementary school aged and the most fun to do activities with, the grandparents are likely to be pretty far gone.
What else holds folks back so long from marrying and launching their family?
One factor can be wanting to finish their education first. That's sad, because studying and raising children can be a great combo, provided one spouse can support the necessary babysitting help, or maybe the grandparents.
A second factor may be how long it is taking to feel secure that you can earn a living, especially in this iffy economy. Still, while two may not be able to live as cheaply as one, when it comes to adding children, I'm a believer that where there's a will there's a way.
Third, it's hard to go against trends. Human beings tend to be herd animals. If your friends are waiting until their mid to late thirties to have babies, that age is likely to "feel right," even if biologically it is mistaken.
Researchers who claim to have found that moms who have their babies later are happier don't help. The reality most likely is that older moms score happier because older moms are more likely to be more a) affluent, b) educated c) physically healthy and d) married. These factors, rather than age of conception, probably account for higher happiness scores for older moms, scores which may correlate with age at first birth but do not indicate causation.
A potential subconscious blockage:
This last barrier to birthing kids, fortunately, is something you can do something about. Offspring of parents who were unhappy or divorced grow up wary of choosing a mate for fear that they may end up on the wrong side of the 50-50 divorce statistics. They are especially at risk for waiting to get married, co-habitating instead of committing. They then may wait again after the wedding for a gong to go off that will assure them that the marriage will last before feeling ready for conception to begin.
The good news here is that couples can stop wondering and instead do something to put themselves on the right side of the 50-50. Learn the skills for successful marital partnering. A couple's odds of sustaining a loving life-long marriage partnership then zoom upwards, setting the stage for inner readiness to conceive and launch a family.
at the same time, I'm a big fan of family life. Any time is better than never for having that first baby.
Let the good times roll, and save space on your knee for grandkids!
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