What’s the best age for having a child?
The clip above is on the teen end of the scale and touches on the practical side of the matter. It’s an American clip and so doesn’t take into account the dole culture over here of getting pregnant and going onto welfare .
The Telegraph is running an article on the other end of the scale – how eggs dry up for women by 30. It still doesn’t prevent women conceiving – it just reduces the chances somewhat. Also:
“These warnings presume an awful lot – that a woman has a fantastic career and has made a conscious choice not to have babies because of her lifestyle. But usually a woman is childless because she hasn’t met the right man, because she’s not in a financial position to have a baby, or she’s just not ready.”
I’ve read the stories of how primitive cultures see very young girls have babies but they are different societies with a lot of support mechanisms from the extended family and less expectations for career, travel etc. As for the older woman, what really is the upper limit?
In the case of a boy and his father, when the boy gets to 10, he’d want to have an active father who would still be vibrant enough to get involved in the kid’s life and I’d say a man can do that until mid-50s perhaps. Therefore, working back ,he wouldn’t want to have been much past 45 when it happens.
Let’s say he’s 45, then applying the “half the age plus 7 rule”, she’d be around 30, which is the upper limit the biological studies indicate. That she can physically have a baby later is only one side of it – there are the social considerations of how relevant to the daughter is the mother, is the father, as the child gets to certain age crossroads.
One thing for sure is that the two parents are going to need to have the readies when the kid gets to late educational age – it costs a bundle. 50 and 40 seem good ages for parents to be at that stage. If we take our 45 year old giving his wife a child, then he’ll be about 63 when the kid gets to the critical age.
So, what’s the ideal? Biologically plus emotionally and with the wherewithal to look after the child herself, the girl should conceive [and I say within wedlock but we can argue about that], no earlier than say, 23, with a few years’ work under the belt and not much later than 32-34.
That puts the man between 29 [maturity wise] and perhaps 42-44.
Filed under: Society & human issues
There is no ‘right age’, there’s just a ‘having kids at this age is not quite as bad as at any other age’ age.
I’m a sufferer of late onset fatherhood…tricky,exhausting but rewarding and something I would have been useless at as a younger man.
I prefer low to mid 20′s. You’re building a life together and have lots more time and energy to invest in the munchkins. What you lack is debt, money, expenses, and material clutter. I’m challenged in keeping up with my 8 year old granddaughter and can’t imagine having a 5 year old like my best friend does.
I don’t think you can make rules for this as some young adults can have very “old” attitudes and vice-versa. But of course one would want to give the unborn child the best chance of a happy life. I agree with the extract about such articles assuming women are childless from choice. It’s often not that way.