Wednesday, July 08, 2009

First baby

When’s the best time to have a baby? It’s a question many women ask themselves, and to which they find a wide diversity of answers. American women have their first baby when they are 25 (a way much better compared to 1970 when the average age was 21.4 years!)

This 'aging', becoming an older mother, is a global movement. For instance in Europe the average age of women becoming for the first time a mother is higher: 29! Which makes me very mediocre, because I was 29 years old too when I gave birth to my son. Like my fellow-late-mothers, I had a lot of reasons to compete with my biological clock, but career (and financial reasons), finding the right partner and self-development were the most important reasons of my delay.

Still, many don't agree with that. I have had so many discussions with people saying that it's not healthy for women to have their first baby at that age (which is not true because also in the old days, women had babies when they were over forty!) And people telling me that babies are healthier if they are deliverde by women in their most fertile periods, which is when they are 23 years old. As if Britney Spears and Jessica Alba are better mothers than Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton?

For me 'being fertile' doesn't always mean 'capable' of becoming a mother. With my experience in life, and the self-esteem I built through these years, I think I am a good mother, at least I am trying to be.

Which is in my opinion the biggest difference between younger and older mothers: the young ones take it for granted that they just had a baby. It is all natural.. The older ones think about the steps in their lifes continuously and decide very conscious what they want.

In her book Ready professor Elizabeth Gregory* gave me the confirmation. I went to her lecture here at the University of Texas. One of the results of her book was that women 'who embrace later motherhood' are healthier and live longer. The biggest reason for that is of course that women who have their first baby at an older age, are higher educated, have better salaries and thus have better access to health care. We all know that their children will always profit from that.

*(Elizabeth Gregory is Professor of English and Director of the Women's Studies Program at the University of Houston. She blogs about modern motherhood and women's work on the Huffington Post and
http://www.readymoms.com.