Letters to the Editor
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Fertility doesn't "drastically decline" in your 30s just because of age
Well, actually fertitilty doe drastically decline at 35. Sure, there are always exceptions, women who easily have kids in their 40s, but the data shows that fertility drops significantly at 35. Look at the statistics, it's pretty common knowledge, particularly to someone who's been there and researched it.
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The Facts
According to the Mayo Clinic, a woman's fertility peaks between the ages of 20 and 24. However, fertility rates remain relatively constant through the early 30s, after which they begin to decline:
At age 30 to 35, fertility is 15 to 20 percent below maximum. From age 35 to 39, the decrease is 25 to 50 percent. From 40 to 45, the decrease is 50 to 95 percent.
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pool of genes
Somebody said something about the Pitt&Jolie show, and the need to perpetuate ones' genes into the pool. Jolie drags other peoples' genes in from all over the planet--dropping her own & Brad's appears to be an afterthought, and I suspect Brad is no more into this endeavor than Woody Allen's paternal instincts contributed to Mia Farrow's "it's a small world after all" coalition. Hopefully, this younger twosome will have a happier ending.
It is a statistical fact that the smarter people are, the less impelled they feel to reproduce. Maybe they think more about the consequences; maybe they have other things to think about; places to go; things to do. But for women with IQs over a certain mark, offspring are almost non-existant, and for men they are fairly sparse. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the less mentally endowed have no qualms about dropping as many of themselves as they (or sometimes the rest of us sucker tax-payers) will pay for.
I don't actually blame men in their 40s for wanting to reproduce, and if they are good, intelligent, responsible people, that is to be commended. It's once you get into the late 50s and beyond that it gets really weird for someone to say they are ready to start a family. That is enough to give one gagums.
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LW says: "Thinking Men Are Spoiled"
I guess it's easier than looking in the mirror!
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re: Still broke? No way. Fat and old I would believe, but the girl who dates a man older than her father is looking for some financial security or status.
Not my wife - she makes more than me at 14 years my junior. When we met, I was 38 and she 23 - it was a company party - she was a client. I'm bald and I know she digs shaved heads - so that may have been my ticket. BTW - this may december stuff is not all it's cracked up to be...
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So what?
Fat and old I would believe, but the girl who dates a man older than her father is looking for some financial security or status.
So what is wrong with that? I have a much, much younger girlfriend. She has never known who her father is/was as he never "claimed" her and her twin sister. She comes from a country that is incredibly poor and were there are few opportunities for advancement. She has no one to help her make her way in the world (except me).
She has had a couple of prior relationships, but was unhappy because the guys cheated on her.
So she is looking for a father figure. So she is looking for financial security and the chance to send money home so she can help her mother and her sister. What is wrong with that?
The real delusion that one finds again and again in discussions in Salon is that "true love" is supposed to be some mystical experience divorced from the real world and with a happy ending as in a Mills & Boon novelette. Well, each to his or her own.
Anyway, I love her to death and am delighted to devote what energies I have left to making her happy.
She probably won't have an easy life after I die, though my estate may make it a bit easier for her, but then we are all dead in the end, some sooner than others, and eventually we are all forgotten.
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Mojo
By what factors are they judging this? Like, if someone can't conceive in their 20s but waits until their 30s to try, how can they know its due to age or just that they were never able to but never tried earlier? Those two 20 year olds that had the failed in vitros in their later 20s got pregnant multiple times past 35.
Also, the affects of STIs does play a major role. Most people I know do not get regularly screened. The most common STIs can lead to PID and other diseases affecting fertility as you age. HPV can mess you up in lots of ways and the majority of women have been exposed by then. More ammunition to the pro-vaccine crowd. Actually, it will be interesting to see if vaccinated women in the next 20 years show greater fertility at a later age. That is if their parents will let them get vaccinated early enough to make a difference.
I was saying age alone isn't the only contributor. I wish I could remember the poster and the subject since she had statistics much different and at a much lesser decline after 35. The example I was siting yesterday was the 26 yr old woman who couldn't wait the 5 years til she was 31 and her husband to be was more comfortable with having children since at that age she was convinced she'd be sterile. Thats what I'm talking about. This idea that 30 is actually the benchmark when things go south immediately and by a landslide. Even your statistics don't back that. 40s? Yes, I'll give you that its harder then, but not early 30s and for age reasons alone.
The only thing that has been proven for a long time is the incidence of Down's in children born to older women.
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Blame the woman, again.
LW could be me and a heap of my friends. So, when many of the letters attack LW as bitter, ugly or as a representative of some other person or a historical incident, I have to wonder, did someone his a nerve?.
In my office there are at least a dozen women of about 50 who've been dumped by their husbands for a younger woman. There are another dozen in their 40's who've found that men their own age want to date women 15 years younger.
Maybe there's a reality that men are able to get younger women so they do. After all, Hollywood pairs teenagers with old guys all the time. Presidential candidate Fred Thompson dumped his wife of 22 years to proudly tomcat around before marrying a woman younger than his youngest child - just in time for making a run at the highest office. Salon.com's Farhad Manjoo ran an article about being disappointed at his second family and the facts of fatherhood over 50.
If an increasing number of old men with young women is the reality, it's going to be perpetuated by the children of those May-December relationships who think that's the norm. But blaming LW for wanting to be in a loving relationship even if the odds are against her is unfair and mean. Wanting intimacy is normal and healthy. What's not healthy is to focus on having a man or on having a family no matter what the prime relationship is.
That's not what LW's doing. She's got a life - as do I, as do my single over 40 friends and those now ex wives - but she's angry and disappointed. Why is that bad? Isn't that accepting reality and trying to cope?
It's easy to tell someone to build s life that supplants or goes around the need for a primary relationship, but that doesn't account for simply missing or longing for one. It takes courage not to settle for a less than loving relationship and you never know if the person you're seeing, man or woman, is capable of commitment until you get to that point.
For every young woman like the letter writer who's realized that when she's done taking care of the children she and a 45 year old husband would have together, she'll be taking care of him, there's another young woman falling for the old line, "My wife doesn't understand me...." or "Let me take care of you in style...."
And there's us, the older women, enjoying the lives we lead without having to have a relationship, but wishing for close connection just like everybody else.