I am Wanker, Hear Me Spooge
Wank generously donated by my LJ flist. Thanks, fromaway!

So there's this website, Feministing.com, which brings out my inner gerund fascist with regard to its title, but which otherwise appears to be a fairly decent feminism-related website.

And then we get to the forums.


Someone named Jessica makes the following post:

A Canadian organization has reported that almost one-half of Canadian women who gave birth in 2003 were 30 or older:

In fact, says Statistics Canada, mothers age 30 and older were already in the majority in Ontario and British Columbia.

The agency says the figures reinforce a long-term trend that more women are waiting longer to start families.

Two decades ago, three-quarters of moms in Canada were under 30.

I’m not sure what the stats are in the U.S. but I’m assuming they’re similar (despite the teen pregnancy rates). I always thought I’d wait until I was past 30 years old to have children, but more and more I wonder whether it would be better to have kids sooner.

What do you guys think?

The conversation proceeds more or less normally (and civilly) until a fellow named Iguana weighs in:

I see in the article, and in here as in other media, the mindless assumption that the entire choice about having children is up to women. The same is said of marriage, which people are doing later in life or not at all.

For sure, the choice of abortion is now completely up to women. Men unfortunately have no rights when it comes to child birth. In fact, they don't even have the right to opt out of supporting a child that is not their own.

When it comes to the decision to actually intentionally start a pregnancy, as with marriage, men are opting to delay, delay, delay. Or, they are opting out altogether. It's not just women making this choice.

But, relief is on the horizon. Science is closing in on an artificial womb that may make gestation possible outside a woman's body. Although touted as a solution for women unable to bear children, such wombs could be the saving grace for men who want children but without the messy complication of a female.

Once we reach that point, there wont be much need for men to consider what the optimal age of a woman is for child birth. We also won't have to concern ourselves with family courts that remove children from our lives, unfaithful wives that succumb to their primal instinct to be impregnated by one man while having another gullible guy raise the kid (ie, paternity fraud), or false accusations of abuse. Most importantly, we will not have to concern ourselves with the fact that while we are out working, the mother is at home abusing the child.

...

Eeeeeyeah. That was about my reaction too.

Apparently this gives Stephen the courage to put in his two cents:

There is no acceptable age for child-bearing: -

15 - 19. It's a teen pregnancy. You will be a single parent, living in a trailer on government handouts, with a series of feckless boyfriends and an undernourished yet simultaneously obese and emotionally disturbed infant.
20 - 27. You're not rich enough, and the child will have a bad start in life.
28 - 33. You're career will suffer and you don't want to feel resentful to your child because of that.
34+. You're too old, your child will be unhealthy, and when it goes to school it will be embarrassed to have a grandma instead of a Mom.

In the 1950's pregnancy was unacceptable because it came before the wedding or suspiciously soon after the wedding or a else a worryingly long time after the wedding. It's still unacceptable, but we've invented new reasons for it, since weddings are not such a big deal any more.

Cue talk of artificial wombs, God playing mean tricks on people, and use of the phrase "You go, girl!" Really. No, really. No. Really.