Some people think, when you’re single, that 40 is the worst birthday. I believe the worst birthday is 37 as it separates your mid from your late 30’s. At least when you’re 40 people assume you have given-up on men and babies and stop nagging, but your late 30’s is officially panic time for you and more importantly everyone around you.
Think back to your childhood; do you remember playing the egg and spoon race? Thought it was just a bit of harmless fun? Oh no that was Mother Nature preparing you for your late 30’s and the delicate balancing act of keeping your eggs intact until you make it the finish line of impregnation by marryable sperm. I like to call the mature version of the game an “Egg and Aisle Raceâ€?.
Bizarrely the older I get the less inclined I am to have children. The advantage of being one of the last to get pregnant is that you see the harsh reality of having babies. Never mind the physical issues - what about the total loss of freedom, independence and spontaneity?
No more heading away for the weekend because you feel like it or watching the entire box series of ‘24’ back to back until your eyes fold into your head. With children life becomes a war zone as you try to co-ordinate, naps, feeds and housework with military precision, not to mention the high level diplomatic negotiations required to get some time on your own or heaven forbid a lie-in when it’s not your turn!
(does anyone else find the Sky Plus ad really annoying when the bloke talks about how his wife can now postpone watching her Soaps e.g. the only bloody break she gets from the kids all day – instead with Sky Plus she can now “help� him put the kids to bed – only a man could have invent that)
Apparently it’s different when they’re your own, that’s what women ALWAYS say. Of course they also say things like…….
“Honestly getting the full Hollywood isn’t really that sore.”
At least with waxing it’s over in a few minutes, kids you’re stuck with for life.
.
.
.
PS - if anyone is having issues with comments can you drop me a mail please - irishflirtysomething at hotmail.com, trying to figure out if it is a general issue.
Assuming you are very drunk, in a dark room and squinting - a lot. Email me on Irishflirtysomething at hotmail.com
April 1st, 2008 at 10:27 am
I will be brutally honest. It’s not different when they’re your own. It still sucks, everything you mention, lack of freedom, social contact (if you’re at home) etc. The difference is that you love them, but that doesn’t make it suck any less.
As much as I love my two wee girls (and I do - so much!), I can honestly say that knowing what I do now, if I had to do it over, I would not have kids. Of course, my two showed up uninvited about ten years early, so maybe in my mid to late thirties, when they were SUPPOSED to come along, I would (will) feel differently.
I can’t help but feel our twenties should have been a time for travel, exploration and education. As it stands now, my career, which I loved, no longer exists and I’m always broke. I suppose the highlight is that when we’re in our early fifties they’ll be grown and we’ll still have a few years left to enjoy ourselves, and hopefully in a more luxurious manner than youth hostels!
Does that put your mind at ease?
April 1st, 2008 at 10:36 am
As a 35 yr old i hear ya flirty. i am regularly interogated as to when will we be having kids by the general public! yawn. i want them, but it makes me so mad the way people think they have a right to ask such personal questions. saying that i babysat 4 kids under 10 for the weekend . . . i’m thinking of just leaving it as me and boyf and the pupster! how do you do it deborah?
April 1st, 2008 at 10:42 am
Deb - really impressed with your honestly, I do worry that women being women feel the need to be “superwomen” and pretend everything is fine, perfect and natural when in fact it is bloody hard work.
On the plus side you will have a ball when you’re in your 50’s!
Towny - babysitting is the ultimate form of contraception
April 1st, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I know it’s different for women, but surely these days there’s no longer the pressure to have kids in order to complete your life?
My gf hates the idea of having kids (more than I do) and, while I won’t be surprised if her attitude changes with time, I can easily see us having a long happy life together without sprogs running around our feet.
Enjoy your 37th year!
April 1st, 2008 at 2:41 pm
The answer is start early and end early. By the time I’m forty, my kid will be out of the house and earning a living for me to sponge off.
And I’ll be free to spend two decades backpacking around South America before I become old, doddery and a general embarrassment to my offspring.
I pity my mates who are only having kids now, in their late 30s/early 40s.
They’ll be in their 60s before they’ll be free again. Ouch.
April 1st, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I know the ad you’re talking about - it actually made me LOL in the car one day last week…to hear the poor creathure describe Sky Plus as a “God Send” !!!!! Jeysus, did they never hear of getting on with life WITHOUT soap operas!??
Anyway, as someone who turned 36 yesterday (boo hoo) I have to admit that I feel have turned into the cliche of the Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock single girl … this has not been helped on my birthday weekend by the 5 random punters who have asked me “So how many kids do you have?”
April 1st, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I think you’ve brought up a very important issue, that skyplus ad is so annoying that it deserves its own post.
Happy Birthday, I hate birthdays anyway so can only sympathise about the added annoyances.
April 1st, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I think the only reason why women continue to have kids is that in the face if the horror stories and the friends that become hermits they tell themselves it’ll be different for them…And then it isn’t but they suffer some kind of amnesia concerning how great life really was without kids and tell themselves that life’s more meaningful with them.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Having kids was great for me. But then I didn’t have to lug it around for months in my abdomen or squeeze it out of my unmentionables in front of an audience. Or have my nipples bitten off by a starving raptor.
I did work from home for 18 months, do all the nappies and night feeds (with bottles) though. That had to count for something!
April 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Please forgive an old Irish woman living in the hills, but what is a ‘Hollywood’?
April 1st, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Darren - thank god it wasn’t my birthday!
JC - bit late for that plan.
Amy - 5, bloody hell that is OTT
D4 - what else is wrong with skyplus?
Red - it must be mass amnesia
mj - well done on making it work
mary - getting your lady garden removed with hot wax, apparently still less painful than child birth.
April 1st, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Totally agree with JC. Have em early, really appreciate your freedom when you are in your thirties/forties. Its great! After however many years of going out just often enough so you still remember your friends faces, suddenly its party time. And you are old enough to appreciate good wine, good food and good sex! OK so im painting a really pretty picture here but its probably cos I was so jealous of you sprogless ones when I was twenty five. Plus if you meet men they relax so much if they know you already have kids…they are like “fantastic, she wont be trying to march me up the aisle in six months time” After two labours though, I still won’t be doing the Hollywood….lets face it, if he is that bothered, he is not that into you.
April 1st, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I’ve never experienced as much as a flash of broodiness. When I ask mates why they want kids, none of them can tell me why - they just do. Strange, maybe it is a need rather than a want…I’m lucky enough to be with a fella who doesn’t want kids either! I couldn’t imagine even getting married. It’s just seems like too much WORK!
Oh and by the way I had a brazilian wax today - and it was very, very sore.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:27 am
Grrrr, hate it when I am asked “So, do you have a boyfriend” “So, do you want to have kids”. No thanks, I have a closet full of fantastic shoes, travel lots and sleep in at weekends.
The state of the human race is not dependant on my ovaries, thanks very much and I will not do anything that is more painful than a hollywood. Ever!
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:54 am
I’m with you, Flirty. Jenny and I never had any urge for children and we’ve never regretted it. Our life has been fuller and richer and more adventurous and we’ve travelled to places we’d probably never have been to otherwise. Plus we’ve had a lot more money to throw around! And yes, mothers are always expected to love being a mother, when as you say it’s bloody hard work.
Oh, and thank goodness Jenny’s never asked me to have a Hollywood!!
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:14 am
As someone that had mine way too early and with the wrong man, and has now ended up a single mammy, I can whole heartidly say that I totally believe in waiting to have kids. Mainly, a) wait for the right bloke, b) live out your own life first (good reliable babysitters are hard to come by) and c) they cost a fortune, do the maths - shopping trip or creche fee’s?????
But all that said, mother nature designed us girls the other way around
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:32 am
The issue I’m having with comments is I can’t think of anything to say. Does that count?
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Enjoy being 37, Flirty. It’s up to you if you want children or not. Nieces and nephews are great, you can spoil them and give them back afterwards!
Once you turn 40 (in this country anyway) it’s like you’ve boarded a rocket that’s just been launched downwards. If you want to get yourself an Irish man you’d want to have the ball and chain on him before you turn 40. But you might be better off on your own.
I didn’t think it would be this bad when I turned 40 because the blow was cushioned by a very handsome 33 year old who grew up on the Continent. Unfortunately he was never going to be around for long and the attitude of Irish men towards women over 40 was a rude awakening.
My experience of being 40 is you don’t look any different, you don’t feel any different, but the crucial thing is that people SEE you differently and treat you differently. I noticed that my success on dating sites (pathetic I know) dropped dramatically as no man seems to want to email any woman of 40 or over. On the other hand, I still get approached by guys (particularly younger ones) in pubs because they don’t know my age.
There is a huge difference in the way that women over 40 are viewed by Irish, British and Americans (the Anglo-Saxon culture) and the Continental Europeans. Women of all ages seem to be celebrated on the Continent and turning 40 is no big deal. It’s definitely better for a single woman over 40 to be looking towards Berlin and NOT Boston!
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I’m with Deb and JC. Physically active parenting young children is much easier in one’s 20s than in the late 30s or 40s. Which may be why many late 30s/40s parents go the minder route for much of the day.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Good point, Conan. I went to college with my GP. We both had our first kids around the same time, ie v. early 20s.
I was in the surgery a while back and he’s married 18 months and had a new baby last summer.
He’s v. successful, own practice and so on.
But he told me, “JC, it was easier when I’d no money as an impoverished student than it is now, believe it or not. At least back then, I had the energy for a child.”
True words, people.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:51 pm
A hollywood??? Is that a full (lower) waxing?
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I agree with disgruntled. I’m not so narcissistic that I think the future of the human race will be jeopardised if I don’t get to pass on my genes.
Has anybody notice that middle-aged men who have kids already often want kids again when they get married for the second time, preferably to a nubile twenty-something, so they can prove their virility. Then they complain about being wrecked. Well, they’ve made their beds and they can lie there with their hyperactive newborns!
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Textual - It is. And if you have it, you’ll certainly be seeing stars.
April 2nd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Hey Flirty, love the blog. I’m a long time lurker, but never commented before.
Kids are a personal choice, and there is no global right our wrong time to have them, the only wrong is to have kids when you don’t want to or don’t want.
My wife and I have 3 kids, I’m about to turn 40 (34 when I had my first) she is 38. We love it, and yes it can be difficult, and despite earning much more we are always cash poor. For us having kids in our 20’s would have been a disaster. We did all the things we wanted to do in our 20’s. We ditched our jobs and traveled around the world for a year, I played guitar in a zillion bands, recorded some CD’s, we went out when we wanted etc, so we were happy to settle down a little. We’d be divorced by now if we’d had kids then. My experience of friends that had kids in their 20’s is that they missed out on a lot, and felt it. True your energy levels need to be up to it, but there is something to be said for kids keeping you younger. There is a common idea of kids as this energy money sucking monsters. Like all most human beings the more you put it the more you get back, the enthusiasm of kids can be very energising, and I find you often see the world in a fresh light through their eyes - of course there are many times when you feel murdering them for x,y or z infraction, but how different is that from our interactions with most adults.
Also most people talk about sleepless nights and screaming infants like it is a life sentence - that part lasts a few months, a year at most, even if they become pain in the ass toddlers, (I had one), that is over in a flash. After these stages they are a lot of fun. Of course I have no experience with teenagers yet..
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:44 am
oh you’ll enjoy the teenager bit John Mc, it took me a few years to realise the eyes up to heaven attitude thing was universal rather than personal, but i’m now starting to think this is actually the best part of parenthood, (and I have two girls).
There’s something lovely in how much they hate you!
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:46 am
Hola Flirty Lass–
I think you are forgetting that God designed women to have lots and lots of children between the ages of 15 and 52 and for men to have no children at all. That is the natural order of things.
Personally, I have kept my part of the bargain by not having any sex at all with ladies since I was at school, and even then it was not ladies, it was men dressed as ladies.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Is this guy for real? (It’s not our own Manuel, that’s for sure) Men are designed not to have children? I had no idea virgin birth was still with us.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Manuel, men dressed as ladies makes me think of the June Mini-Marathon.
Flirty, this article was excellent but have you anything to say on The Great Race to be the next Taoiseach?
April 4th, 2008 at 10:01 am
I had a long comment written about this but I’ve just deleted it. As the stories involves someone else as well as me and I don’t hide behind a username I’ll have to keep my thoughts to myself… Sorry
April 4th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Flirty, I’ve just turned the bend into my 40s, having spent the last few years wondering at the back (and sometimes the front) of my mind if I would have kids, if this was the right time, if I had set my priorities right, if I would meet the right man, if I should get up the duff anyway alone.
And then I woke up on the morning of my 40th birthday and the first thought that came into my mind was ‘now I can get on with the rest of my life’.
This was the day I’d been building up to for years with dread, and yet turning 40 has proved to be a liberation.
Since then, I’m totally freed from all those questions and analysis that I’ve laboured under during my late 30s. It’s still tough to accept that I won’t be a mother, but I’m going to try and fulfil my potential in lots of different ways. And stop dwelling on the ‘will I won’t I’ motherhood questions.
Great blog, my first response this, but read you often, thanks, L
April 5th, 2008 at 1:14 am
I recently turned 37 but had a full blown mid-life crisis at 36 including trying to go to nightclubs and take drugs. It was exhausting. Now I’ve embraced early nights, cocoa and gardening.
And for God’s sake don’t have kids if you don’t have the maternal urge….no lie ins for 10 years. nuff said.
April 5th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Flirty, you have opened a Pandora’s box of ticking ovaries. I am so happy to realise that I am not alone in not wanting to have children. I have just turned 30 and, at a whim, can take off for a weekend wherever I want. Many women splattered with baby sick will find this approach selfish and yes, it is and I couldn’t be happier.
April 6th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
The word ‘kids’ envokes nightmares for many people, it certainly did for me when I was ’surprised’ at age 21 with a baby boy. When the child arrives though, things change - being covered in puke by something that is a part of you isn’t something you mind so much, however odd that may seem. Caring for your own genetics makes things a little less tough.
I do regret not travelling more, but never say never I suppose. Like JC Skinner says, there’s always a retirement plan.
I thoroughly dislike the pressure that is put on women to reproduce.. a close friend of mine is getting very depressed and feeling de-feminised by the fact that she’s having trouble conceiving. She, along with so many others are under the misunderstanding that a woman is only truly a woman when she’s had a child, which is complete rubbish!!
April 10th, 2008 at 11:30 am
I recieved my first at 31 and my second at 34 and I thought “Why the hell didn’t we do this 5 or 10 years ago and have 6 or 7?” Really!
The only pressure we got was from within. Sorry.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
emmak…midlife crisis at 36, now over it at 37…whats the secret…?
I started my midlife crisis at 36, quit my job and went on a round the world backpacking trip for a year, back working again but still have the need to go to nightclubs, get drunk, climb mountains, travel ete..etc…still not over it 4 years later….!!!!!