The 30s are the new 20s
When we were in Mexico we kept vigil over a mama hummingbird’s two baby chicks. Neil’s boss said, “maybe it’s about time you get a kid.” Many baby boomers & older generations question why my generation is postponing major milestones & why some people take longer to graduate, marry & start lifetime careers.
Are we just lazy ambitionless louts? No. Since life expectancies are elongating (with a possible reversal in years to come due to obesity in America) the 30s are the new 20s. People are able to work longer, have children later and generally be of good health farther into life. Therefore, it is not until their 30s that some people decided to get a real job, start having children and generally “settling down.” This trend has many people from past generations, at least my parents, very perplexed. Neil’s father advised him, very concerned, the other day that “making money is not a sin.”
My parents have been equally perturbed that I don’t “just apply to law school…already.” To see our “26-year-old going for a life expectancy of at least 90, and active until at least 75″ point of view, you must understand that we are simply stretching out our unindebted, no-responsibilities, adventure part of life instead of our mortgage paying, kid rearing, career juggling part of life.
If you are going to potentially have 5-10 extra years of life, why not spend those traveling the world… when you are young? Why not designate a proportionally lager slice of life’s pie to character development, variety & freedom?
Instead of seeing this approach as lazy, or childish I see it as farsighted life planning indicative of careful analysis. If I’ve statistically got more time, I will choose carefully which period of life to drag out. I’d rather take travel, internships & adventure than motor-home tours & Medicaid.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:22 am
As a current twentysomething (according to your math, with which I heartily concur), I fully support this approach to life!
As fr the women’s biology potion of it - don’t believe the hype re: scare tactics about fertility declining in your “30’s”. In fact, women in their 30’s will often start to release more than one egg each month - especially if they’re genetically predisposed to twins (AHEM).
Keep on rockin’ in the free world!
November 9th, 2007 at 11:24 am
^^ I meant to say “for biology PORTION of it”, obviously, but that’s kind of a nice Freudian typo . . .
November 17th, 2007 at 3:07 am
Hi Kate,
After I completely embarassed myself on Neil’s blog I thought, how can I neglect my own flesh and blood by not at least being an equal #8^*& of myself on Kate’s?
I don’t really have any specific advice on this topic, as I go back and forth on it myself all the time. So I will just post some random thoughts, and be sure to not sound like I am saying you should or shouldn’t do anything other than what you and Neil want to do. But for the sake of discussion, and because you spoke very well for your perspective, I will mention perspectives I have had on the other side of things. So remember when you read on: I have had your exact thoughts myself and often still do, but there is another side, for sure.
Female biology is not exactly something that we can complain about to its superiors or get it taken to court for discrimination or even write a letter to the editor about its insensitivity. It is truly anoyingly unfair about certain things, and one of them, just one, is that it does prevent women from choosing when exactly they have their kids. We can travel or work in our twenties or our seventies, but not get pregnant, at least with our own biological children. The actresses that get preg at 50 probably aren’t even carying their own children, not that that is a terrible thing, but I think you guys would have pretty cute kids.
Women do twin more when they get older, but I think it goes from like one percent to two (percent of their pregnancies, not of all twins), nothing that makes up from the parabolic fall in conception in general. And a similar increase in pregnancy loss.
And I actually don’t think that either of these widely available facts, (not even something to believe or not believe they are just the case), could be thought of as a scare tactic. No one is trying to scare any woman into having a child she doesn’t want, especially a young one. I can’t think of a worse idea. A few people, not even very many of them, are trying to do something about the considerable number of women in their late thirties that get upset that the finish line ended up passing by them and no one told them. I have seen their editorials and interviews on tv, almost as if they were trying to think of someone to sue for negligence. One of them was mad at her doctor. But her doctor probably didn’t want to be seen as trying to use a scare tactic or be insensitive.
And just because women tend to be putting off having babes untill they are older doesn’t mean that they are shifting their fertile years, those haven’t changed, yet. In fact lifespans haven’t changed, either, it is just that we are actually living to the end of them more often because we have reduced acute diseases, and we are left for the chronic degenerative ones. One of these degenerative states is loss of fertility, which starts in the late twenties.
Sadly, I even noticed a difference, not in fertility, but in ease in carrying the loads. I had my first three in my early twenties, I know, so backward, and noticed a big difference when I had Sadie at a whopping 29. Now, at 36, I am thinking about continuing my family, and my doctor is treating me as if I am positively geriatric.
And I don’t know, was the above person suggesting you were genetically predisposed to twins? If so it would be not through relatives of Neil if he has any, but because of your relatives on your mother’s side, and since my dad has twins in his family and my mother doesn’t, my guess is that you are probably safe. And neither of us is related to Kristina. She might not have been suggesting that, I don’t know. But I had mine when I was 26, so it wasn’t an age thing, for sure.
One of the reasons that I had to take a big break is that the horrible back pain I experienced especially during the last one dearly disabled me and set off a chain reaction of health problems ranging from minor to profound. If you are prone to back pain this will probably hit you like a ton of bricks, too, and will make it so that you probably won’t be able to point to a year on the calendar in your thirties and do any one thing you happen to want to do because it seems convenient.
A few more considerations that I noticed. I think that it sometimes limits people when they are young and making decisions about kids before they have any and know what they are deciding about in particular. I know there isn’t really anything that can be done about this, but I think that sometimes people assume that children are something that they would want to put off till the last possible second, like terminal morphine or something, when if they knew how much they might actually like the critters, they will wonder why they didn’t do it ages ago.
I notice that a lot of women in professional circles figure that they should put it off till they are like thirty seven and thirty nine, the last five minutes of fertility, because they assume that there is no possible way that they wouldn’t want a third one or do it before they absolutely have to. When they have two children and realize that they actually liked their family after all, it is too late to revise their plans. Often these same women think all this time they were thinking they wanted to do fun stuff when their family was the funnest thing they ever did. And then if their kids end up being on their same schedule, so much for meeting the grandkids. I think it is pretty cool that my mom may end up living to see her great great grandchildren. That is a pretty cool accomplishment, and since other things CAN be fit in any time during a life, and this one pretty much has math involved and is less flexible, it could be the other things that get moved around.
I figure that by the time I am on my own again with Slade I will be still young enough to travel and then I have some extra people who will like getting my postcards. And also I am kind of glad that I didn’t barge ahead in my twenties to get my education, because life has been the best teacher and I have changed direction so many times. I know it seems like Oh, she’s just my Old Aunt, well, I think I am like nine years older? Scary, huh?
Again, I hope I don’t sound preachy, because I wouldn’t presume to think you needed advice from me, you always seemed to make pretty good decisions about your life and I have made heaps of mistakes, but I think that perspectives and ways to look at things aren’t really something that one can be hurt by or have too many of, especially since you know that I absolutely wish you the very best happiness that the world has to offer. Love, Aunt CA. And I probably still won’t spell check.
August 3rd, 2008 at 7:47 pm
AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel younger every step I take towards 30