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My preference is to adopt school age children, 5-8 years old. Guess that puts me in a very small bracket with few to no women my age willing to do the same. I don't want to risk pregnancy complications or unhealthy children being born (since I'm approaching 40 myself in a few years).
I know someone who adopted an older child and it's the coolest thing. I'm open to this actually and more and more open than childbirth.
however, older couples produce children with higher rates of health risks (some permanent). That has to be a huge consideration for older childless couples wanting to conceive.
My preference is to adopt school age children, 5-8 years old. Guess that puts me in a very small bracket with few to no women my age willing to do the same. I don't want to risk pregnancy complications or unhealthy children being born (since I'm approaching 40 myself in a few years).
Don't make any assumptions, OP. Some of those child-free women out there would be open to adoption, they just don't want to have their own kids. Put that up on your profile, and see who responds.
I have a question about childless women ages 36-40 on online dating sites who say they definitely want kids. This has most likely got to be adoption, right?
Take a 38 year old woman, for example. She dates a few guys, and finally meets "the one" by age 39 to get serious. About one year of dating before proposal at 40. Engaged, then married by age 41. Then start trying to get pregnant at age 41. Lower chance of conceiving. Even lower if the man is in his 40s too. Artificial fertilization is very costly per attempt. But, if successful, there still are pregnancy complications for women in their 40s. Additionally, the cost and issues of surrogacy seem unrealistic for most newly wed couples. Finally, a male in his 40s is more likely than a younger male to produce a child with mental or health challenges.
So when 36-40 year old childless women on online dating indicate that they definitely want children, does this most likely mean adoption?
No.
I met my husband when I was 35, on OKC. He was 40. Neither of us had ever been married before, both wanted kids if possible someday. We had both been in long-term relationships as adults, but none where having children was in the cards as it turned out. We got married on my 37th birthday. We are having a baby in September. I'm 38, my husband is 42, will be 43 right before the baby is born.
I have a congenital uterine anomaly that I'd always been told by doctors could make conceiving difficult, so we figured that if we didn't end up being able to have a biological child, we would foster and/or adopt. Many people in my family have done IVF, and my husband and I decided that we would actually prefer to foster and/or adopt rather than go IVF. That said, it was a nonissue, and I got pregnant very easily after going off the pill (took two months)...we were able to conceive naturally with no problems.
Both my younger brothers' wives have had to go the IVF route for all their pregnancies (they have five children between them), and they both were much younger than I when the started having kids...fertility issues aren't always tied to age.
Thus far in my pregnancy, everything has progressed smoothly, all genetic screenings that post-35 mothers-to-be generally take have come up roses, no chromosomal flags, I and baby are both healthy, have not been deemed high-risk, etc.
I honestly don't remember what my husband had on his online dating profile when I messaged him, other than the fact that it didn't say "No Kids, Please," because had that been the case, I wouldn't have messaged him.
It did come up in our first several dates that we were both hopeful about becoming parents, because when you are dating in your thirties and forties, I think it's fair to lay your 52 cards on the table in that department, however you lean. I also had dated my previous boyfriend for a long time, moved in with him, etc., and we had always talked about a future involving kids, only for him to tell me five years in that, no, not really, he just didn't see kids in his future after all, so after that experience, being frank in this department upfront was essential. My husband's thoughts were that by the time he hit forty, and hadn't married any past girlfriends, he figured that at most, he'd be a stepfather to someone's kids from a previous relationship someday, if anything, and he was fine with that. When we started dating he was glad to hear that I did want to have kids.
I explained that I had never known, at any age, if it would be possible, due to this uterine abnormality that I've had since I myself was in utero. He was cool with that, and by the time we got engaged, we both knew that if having bio kids didn't work out, we'd explore other avenues. We have many friends who foster, and were no stranger to that process, nor the foster-to-adopting process.
I had my son at age 42, without any fertility treatments. Plenty of women get pregnant in their late 30s and into their 40s, with or without assisted reproduction techniques. It is unlikely that the majority of women ages 36-40 who want kids are thinking of adoption as the primary method of creating a family, and even less likely that they are thinking about adopting older children.
I had my son at age 42, without any fertility treatments. Plenty of women get pregnant in their late 30s and into their 40s, with or without assisted reproduction techniques. It is unlikely that the majority of women ages 36-40 who want kids are thinking of adoption as the primary method of creating a family, and even less likely that they are thinking about adopting older children.
When you were 42 matters. My mother was pregnant in 1959 at age 36. It was old then to be trying motherhood for the first time, but for societal reasons, not biological ones. As I understand it, age 35 is something of a biological rumble strip. Every year after 35 a woman's fertility plummets. At age 40 only 1% of women are able to get pregnant with their own eggs. That number gets less as time goes on and the planet gets more toxic. A 36 year old in 2015 does not really have a lot of time to get things done the old fashioned way. She simply doesn't. I know its hard to hear, but as a society we sugar coat this essential truth in so much feel good psychobabble that the truth is, there are lots of over 35's on OLD sites that have never been married and want kids. Their own.
IMO kids are the least of it. As guy shopping at the usual OLD retail outlets, one should have some common sense handy before making a selection. Low miles is great when shopping for a used car. It is reasonable as a 16 year old to expect your girlfriend to be as inexperienced as you are. Not when you are 40! I met way too many 40 year olds when I was dating that had almost no experience with matters of men, dating, romance, intimacy.... sex. All they cared about was that I was stable and employed. They would have married me the following week.
IVF was never intended to be a way for older women to conceive when they no longer were fertile due to natural causes. The clinics don't tell you that. Why would they? They get paid whether you get pregnant or not. Truth is, the rates of conception for IVF after 40 aren't much better than rates of conception without IVF after 40. Essentially 1%. That is still a large number of women in a country the size of the U.S. but... do you really want to gamble on 99 to 1 against, odds?? You can increase your odds by using another woman's eggs but ... is it still your child at that point?
Seriously, we are doing the young people of this country a HUGE disservice in indoctrinating them against early interest in the opposite sex and dating. The uber materialism of First World society primes young people to put career advancement above everything else. Women included. There's plenty of time for having a family after all. Erm... no, there isn't. To everything there is a season. Ignore this truth at your peril. Your fertility's peril that is.
Last edited by Leisesturm; 05-11-2015 at 01:11 AM..
There are also genetic issues tied to when fertlity "plummets."
My grandma had my aunt, her youngest, in the early 1960s when she was 42, and both her older children were older teenagers...obviously natural conception, and no problems, health of child or otherwise. My great grandmother had children well into her forties (she had nine kids, total). My own mom didn't go through menopause until she was nearly 60. Some people happen to be on a longer timeline than others for reproduction. This is life, and genetics.
The whole "shelf life" of sustainable and healthy pregnancies as being 35 is a guideline for doing genetic testing ,not a big skull-and-crossbones-imprinted red flag. Getting pregnant a few weeks before my 38th birthday, I expected my first OBGYN appointment to be a lot of handwringing about my age, and when I mentioned this to my doctor and her nurses, they looked at me like I had three heads, and said, "This isn't uncommon at all, and we wouldn't expect any complications as a rule, unless we saw a chromosomal flag [which they can now test for with noninvasive blood tests as early as 12 weeks and do if you are over 35]. We have loads of patients older than you are with uneventful pregnancies and births."
FWIW, I'm also a special education teacher, and have worked with many families with children with chromosomal abnormalities over the years, some of them severe. Of the children I've worked with who have genetically rooted syndromes, I've actually not encountered any where advanced maternal age was a factor...all the kids with Down syndrome I've taught had parents who had them in their twenties. I had a student with a very rare and similar disorder called Smith-Magenis Syndrome that is traced to a partial deletion of the 17th chromosome (DS is an extra copy of the 21st chromosome, usually). That student's mother was quite young. I've had students with Prader-Willi Syndrome and Angelman's Syndrome, both of which are caused by deletion of segments of the 15th chromosome and/or failure to express genetic information within those same genes. None of the mothers in these cases were of advanced maternal age. In fact, the only "older" parents I've experienced working with special needs children were non-biological...people who had specifically decided to adopt and/or foster children with developmental disabilities later in life.
When I had genetic testing done, I received all the statistical figures for genetic defects and correlation to maternal age (paternal age is increasingly being determined to be a factor in genetic defects, as well, FWIW, which nobody but genetic counselors really talks about). Genetic abnormality statistics actually aren't significantly higher than they are within the general population of expectant mothers, especially through the upper 30s. Screening is really more of an exercise in "better safe than sorry" than "we expect to find an abundance of genetic abnormalities." And insurance typically pays for it post-35, so it's easy money (a LOT of money, actually) for healthcare providers without fighting insurers. And with the noninvasive blood testing like MaterniT21, Panorama, Harmony, etc. that have become available in the past several years, it's easier and safer to do than it has been previously (and a big pharmaceutical company moneymaker with minimal risk).
What does this mean for dating, online or off? Well, OP, it's really pretty simple. If you are not interested in biological children, communicate that when you meet someone you might like to date, and find out their stance. Likewise, if you are interested. This is really true at any age. It's not jumping the gun, it's discussing a life expectation that affects the potential for a relationship/future more than almost any other. Don't assume that women over 35 as a group have overwhelmingly decided that they're no longer able to reproduce, because that's actually quite far from the case. Making assumptions about what people want is always a poor strategy, but it's even more poor in this context than many others.
I have a question about childless women ages 36-40 on online dating sites who say they definitely want kids. This has most likely got to be adoption, right?
Take a 38 year old woman, for example. She dates a few guys, and finally meets "the one" by age 39 to get serious. About one year of dating before proposal at 40. Engaged, then married by age 41. Then start trying to get pregnant at age 41. Lower chance of conceiving. Even lower if the man is in his 40s too. Artificial fertilization is very costly per attempt. But, if successful, there still are pregnancy complications for women in their 40s. Additionally, the cost and issues of surrogacy seem unrealistic for most newly wed couples. Finally, a male in his 40s is more likely than a younger male to produce a child with mental or health challenges.
So when 36-40 year old childless women on online dating indicate that they definitely want children, does this most likely mean adoption?
I don't browse dating sites so I have no idea what these women are thinking. However, being in NYC, I know a lot of careerists women. It's completely normal for some of them to start having kids in their mid to late 30s. I sense you're not really curious what these women think but instead trying cloak your opinion on whether they should have kids at this age into a question.
My preference is to adopt school age children, 5-8 years old.
Having read some of your posts regarding other relationships in your life, I don't think you are cut out for this. Kids that age have a lot of emotional baggage that I doubt you would be able to handle.
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