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The Guardian
This is something I've been thinking about for a while. Like most women of my age, I was brought up with the idea that you have to get your career sorted before you procreate. Working in Kazakhstan with women of 35 who already had teenage children, I saw an alternative. Hilary Mantel asks us to consider if the 'career, then children' rule is just one more way we have to fit in with the male-oriented working world timetable. Actually the problem with having children early might not be so much about career as about finding the right person to have children with in your early 20s....
1 comment:
Hilary Mantel was widely attacked for her comment but I think it's worth questioning the orthodoxy that women who wait are good while those who have children young are feckless and bad mothers. The prejudice against teenage mothers is one of today's many forms of anti-feminism, with a considerable degree of class prejudice added. I've come across a number of women who have had children before the age of 20 - and they've usually been good mothers, with more confidence than I had as a first-time mother in my mid-30s. Once these women reach their mid-30s, they are ready to focus on other aspects of their lives, perhaps on a career or perhaps on the degree which they now pursue with more dedication. The extra freedom they have allows them to enjoy a rich social life too. I first thought this when I worked with someone who had had two children in her teens and, in her early thirties, was just embarking on a more adventurous career. (Against the stereotype, she was still married to the children's father - they had married when she was 16.)
I don't think there's one right age at which to have children and I don't think there are perfect mothers either, though you sound as though you're doing pretty well. The old virgin/whore dichotomy seems to have given way to the perfect mother/monster opposition, which makes it too easy to blame women for any mistake or imperfect choice ... but everyone is fallible and most choices don't include the "perfect" option.
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