I see my friend going straight from 9 years at home with young children to caring for ailing parents, and I wonder how she does it. I look at my own 12 years at home with young children, and worry about whether I'll have energy left to cope with the stresses of the next stage of life.It never occurred to me before that we're reaping one of the results of having kids at 30 rather than 25 - and that's without full-time work on top of motherhood. As I read the article "Shades of blue" in last weekend's Sunday Life, about women juggling careers and motherhood with apparent ease while they battle depression in private, it was this paragraph that stood out for me:
Allison Pearson [author of I Don't Know How She Does It] went on to describe herself as a "sandwich woman", one of a generation who had children in their 30s and then, just as their offspring were "sleeping through the night, one of our parents fell ill". The stress of this situation - and a job on top - took its toll. "Is it women who are mad, or is it the society we live in?" she asked. "We always suspected there would be a price for Having It All, and we were happy to pay it; but we didn't know the cost would be to our mental health."
Yet another good reason - on top of the extra energy! - for having children while you're young, if that choice is open to you. It certainly seems a better option than squeezing all your "fun" and career advancement into your 20s, and only thinking about having kids later.
image is from Wondermonkey2k at flickr
9 comments:
Just makes me feel more tired than ever Jean!
Yeah, me too - a bit of a depressing post, hey what?! - this may help: http://jeaninallhonesty.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-to-encourage-younger-woman-and-be.html
Having it all extracts a big price indeed. Why do we in the church encourage people to pay it? Why do we not encourage people to marry in their early twenties and have babies before they are 30? Surely there would be fewer women grieving over fertility issues, and fewer women facing the burden of caring for aging parents and not-yet-independent children at the same time.
Yes, we've changed the culture in our ministry (with uni students) - they've mostly had kids younger than me! - but this takes time, and involved teaching God's perspective on all kinds of things, like career and womanhood.
I think the article made me feel tired because even though I had children fairly young I had five, so it has been an extended period of small children. And now we have five it is full-on! I wonder if there will be any time to regroup before the next stage. Thankful that God provides all the strength we need.
Unfortunately though it's not always a choice. I know heaps of Christian women who are either single and in their thirties, or didn't marry until their thirties (because no guy seemed interested) and then discovered they were suffering from infertility when they tried to start a family. These women are griveing because they never had the choice to marry and become mothers young and there seems to be a lot of single men out there (thirties and forties) who seem completely disinterested in getting married. Where are the godly men who want to get married?
On the whole, I agree that there are probably many benefits in having chidlren younger, I just feel for those who wanted that option, but never had it.
True, Sarah, it's not always a choice; and like you, my heart goes out to women who can't have children, whatever the reason.
There are no guarantees though. I am the eldest child of my parents; I had my first bub at 23 ("young" in my book at least). Only two years later my mum (at 50yo) got breast cancer.
So even young grandparents can get ill.
(sorry, I haven't read the article linked to)
Yes, that's a good point. There are never guarantees, are there? I guess hope doesn't really lie in what age you have your kids, but in the God who is loving and sovereign over everything that happens in our lives.
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