It was you who said that you “couldn’t understand the ‘nature’ bit”. If nature intended us to have our first child in our early twenties, then we have to face the natural consequences when we don’t, such as increased levels of infertlity due to our aging ovaries, to metion just one cause.

[Daphne – Hey, come on. Nature doesn’t have ‘intentions’ and not everything that is natural is good or healthy. Most girls have begun to menstruate by the age of 12, at least in the Mediterranean. That doesn’t mean they should be having babies – it is dangerous from the medical point of view and wrong from every other standpoint.]

Andrea, the message is clearly stated in my first comment. It is healthier and safer to produce children at an earlier age. And for many more reasons than the one outlined by Daphne. This is a medical fact, not an opinion, and even though you regard it as “rubbish”, a fact it remains.

Yes, Cynthia, I know them all and I’ve read them all: the pros and contras. It is not as if couples do not think about those facts. You are not getting my point: women AND men do not ignore them, but they have to face reality. It can’t be that hard to understand that.

John, what is your actual message?

You have made that very clear, Andrea.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/09/fertility-mot-children-nhs

bw

@John
Well, why should they?
I am not an obstetrician.

That’s what I meant, Daphne: we cannot turn back time, even if we want to. Reality beats the biological factor. Sad, but true. Even if an ‘elderly’ mother and the baby need special attention, it is not necessarily safer to ‘produce’ (what a word) children at an earlier age when personal living conditions are not healthy and safe.

Most women I know do find themselves in a permanent quandary when it comes to babies and their profession, at least in Germany. I was honestly surprised when I read that a woman in her 30s who gives birth to her first baby is called an elderly mother. I know hardly any women who give birth for the first time at under 30. My mother gave birth to three children and was only 18 years old when she had her first baby. She worked all her life (like all women in my family, even my grandmother did) and keeps telling us that she could not cope juggling with job and family these days, anymore. She is convinced, even though she had a tough time when she was a very young and a full-time working mother (and there was my full-time working father, as well), that nowadays life is more complicated and demanding.

The discussion in Germany as to whether a woman is an elderly mother or not starts when a woman is around 40 and that’s why I was surprised.

Thank God, Andrea, that “most women in Europe” don’t need to resort to you for obstetric care.