I see nothing wrong with having a baby later in life if that is your best option for your own health and happiness and the health and happiness of your child. I can directly relate to changing life circumstances. I got married at age 24 and sadly divorced 5 years later. During my marriage there was a lot of pressure to have a baby but given the fragility of our marrige my husband and I knew it would be irresponsible to have a child. My sister in law also faced an inpending divorce and panicked and had a child. Although he is a great joy for her today, he was brought into the world at a time when he wasn't really even wanted and was raised by baby-sitters for the first years of his life. The effects of this on him long term remain to be seen. I am now in a serious relationship with the love of my life and hope to have a child by age 33 but it will not be as easy to concieve in my 30s as it would have been in my 20's. I really had little choice and I do want children. I guess just being honest about procreation limitations is the most important thing. Sadly not all women are in a position to have children when they are most fertile and to do so would be irresponsible, but on the other hand it is also irresponsible for Hollywood to make it look like having babies at 40 is a piece of cake. I think celebrities who undergo complex and costly fertility treatments should be open about the real struggles of conceiving later in life. Its great to have options but we need to be open and honest about what those options really entail. Enough with the judgement, lets just get supportive information out there to all women.

I'm just a single, cheerfully unmarried guy in his late thirties who really enjoys children but has never wanted to have any of his own. I just want to be the fun uncle who can pass off the disciplinary dirty work to the parents. (I can barely endure the disciplinary requirements of cat-ownership.)

Anyhow, I just wanted to register how pathetic (in the pejorative sense) it often seems to fellow intentionally single men and women when we hear about the desperate lengths to which women go to have children of their own instead of adopting. Especially when it comes to women beyond their mid-thirties, when the health-risks to the child begin to sharply escalate. It just seems so patently selfish and myopic.

If we're going to give such women a pass because of the compulsive natural promptings involved, then why shouldn't we do the same in the case of men who act on those caddish but no less natural promptings for younger women that so frequently occur among middle-aged men? My own view is that both are deserving of a good measure of opprobrium, but that the case of older mothers is worse in its consequences, and so should be frowned upon more harshly.

I think that older mothers are criticized by people who are envious. I mean let's give to the older mom...more power to them!! They were able to live their 20's, 30's to experience career, love, travel, life without the burdens of parenting, and then when they want to slow down, and be present at home, raising a child, and making a home....they get pregnant. Good for them!

Yes, Heather, more power to people who, instead of spending some of those many childless years obtaining an orphaned or otherwise unwanted child with which the world is teeming, decide to say 'to hell' with the increased risks of various birth defects and complications, glee in their life-fulfilling fecundity, and further normalize such moral irresponsibility. What makes it all the more objectionable is that such people don't typically have the excuse of low education for their selfishness.

I have yet to hear a reasoned case for why we should encourage or celebrate this phenomenon.

Puzzled, I am puzzled by your strong reaction to this issue. Some people want their own bio children...this is a fact. Adoption is a wonderful option for many, and not for many. Come on....open your mind and heart!!!

Puzzled,

Human beings are all unique, and not on a cookie cutter path. This relates to the career they choose, the partner they choose, when/if to have a family, spiritual/religious path, etc. Woman/men who have family later in life are as deserved as anyone else to have a family. And w/the extra years of life skills, they may be darn good at it, parenting that is!

Heck...if the majority of people waited until later to get married there would probably be a significant drop in divorce rates as well.

I am a young mom of a 16 year old. That said, I met my husband when my daughter was 4 y.o. and he has been in our lives ever since. I have never been married before and it has been the 3 of us for a very long time now. My husband and I are now in our 30's and thinking of having adding one more child to our family, but my daughter is taking this very hard. She gets angry at the idea of a baby in the home and doesn't want to talk. Of course, I will have her see our family therapist soon, but in the meantime, I want to find out more about how teens are handling these situations and better yet, how are the parents handling it all? Thanks in advance!

Signed,
hurt & frustrated

Motherhood is such an exclusive club. And I am talking in a large sense - those that adopt, foster, rear , and have their own babies. Given my challenges it was clear that if men were able to have babies, laws would be so different.

When you assert that extremely narcissistic women do not have children I'm afraid you are confusing narcissism with vanity. Narcissism (in its extremes) is a mental or more specifically personality disorder, vanity is merely an aspect of personality. It is probably correct to say that all narcissists are vain to a degree, it is not correct to say that all vain people are narcissistic.
My own belief is that the urge to reproduce is in fact one of the most basic narcissistic drives in humankind-after all what can be more narcissistic than to seek to replicate ourselves for posterity?
In my experiece ALL narcissists, but particularly narcissistic women strive to have children, both for the reason mentioned above but for several other reasons, including the narcissist's need to control others and the unconditional adoration that the narcissist receives from their offspring.
The victims of these women of course are their children who often spend their entire lives trying to undo the damage caused them by being born to women like these.