With more and more young people waiting until their late 30s and early 40s to start their families. As Shulevitz points out, one in three female college graduates in the US waits until after age 30 to have her first child, while for women without a degree that number is just one in ten.

The negative aspect of delaying parenthood

Delaying can wreak havoc with the next generation’s health:

  • higher risks of schizophrenia, autism, and developmental delays to children born to older fathers
  • more chances of chromosomal damage for children born to older mothers
  • increasing reliance on ever-more-intrusive forms of assisted reproductive technology (ART) the longer folks wait to get pregnant, a greater likelihood that the children of older parents will become orphaned as relatively young adults.

The positive aspects of the slower path toward parenthood, especially for young women

  • It’s considered a feminist triumph, in part because it’s the product of feminist breakthroughs: birth control, which gives women the power to pace their own fertility, and access to good jobs, which gives them reason to delay it.
  • Women simply assume that having a serious career means having children later and that failing to follow that schedule condemns them to a lifetime of reduced opportunity—and they’re not wrong about that.
  • a new assisted reproductive technology (ART)  has given us the chance to lead our lives in the proper sequence: education, then work, then financial stability, then children.

As a result, the twenties have turned into a lull in the life cycle, when many young men and women educate themselves and embark on careers or journeys of self-discovery, or whatever it is one does when not surrounded by diapers and toys. This is by no means a bad thing, for children or for adults. Study after study has shown that the children of older parents grow up in wealthier households, lead more stable lives, and do better in school. After all, their parents are grown-ups.

 Things to consider

Fertility treatments work less well with age.  It’s true that young people have surprisingly low “Fertility IQs” and really don’t understand how hard it is to get pregnant, even with the help of ART, in your 30s or 40s. But it’s not just lack of information that’s keeping young people from rushing to have kids. They have to give up too much, with too little institutional help, to commit to a family before they feel completely secure in their professions and their personal lives. Gone are the days when young people grew up through having children; today, they feel that they have to grow up first.

Source:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cusp/201212/delaying-parenthood-may-come-cost