My wife was a developer (EE degree). As soon as our first child was on-the-way she put down her programming books and picked up the child rearing books. She dropped her dev job the moment her water broke and never looked back.

The opportunity cost was enormous but now that the kids are grown it sure seems like it was a great plan for us. My wife did get a lot grief from her family for dropping out of the workforce ($$) until they started having their own kids.

We have two daughters. The youngest is in college for CS, she has made it very clear that she does not want to have children. The older daughter is not STEM -- she is an Army officer (Westpoint Grad) who does want kids someday.

One of my in-laws is using nannies and such even though they easily could drop to one income (MD specialist dad, pharmacist mom) -- it hurts my heart to see how much time they voluntarily spend away from their kids, including weekend shifts, holiday shifts, etc. But it is their life, and their kids seem to be thriving so what do I know.

Between the two of you, why did you stay in workforce?

To be honest, at the time, me leaving the workforce never crossed our minds. I was a hotshot dev in those days and I barely even paused when our first kid was born.

And, as I remember it, my wife intended to go back to dev work after a couple of months. But her return never materialized. It didn't seem like a reasonable option to us when the time came.

>Maternal Age seems like a boogie man story to scare women.

It's just a biological reality. It is certainly possible to have a healthy birth after the age of 35 but the rate of health problems and birth defects don't go up linearly with age. The rate of pregnancy loss is 35% after the age of 35 and is above 50% after the age of 45. This is just reality. If women want to have multiple children it is wise to start before age 33.

The decrease in fertility with age is a biological reality, but I also suspect it's influenced by attrition selection and stress, and looks worse because of it. Fecundability seems to be roughly linear with age, and gravid women have significantly higher fecunability ratio from 40-45 than nulligravid women do.

> In this preconception cohort study of North American pregnancy planners, increasing female age was associated with an approximately linear decline in fecundability.

https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(17)31107-9/pdf

The statistics do not tell the whole story.

A reason I suggest young women speak with women who started families mid-late career would hear actual experiences, giving perspective that it's not as bleak as the statistics show.

We had two children, both healthy, after mom was 35.

We also had a pregnancy that didn't go to term.

I surmise women might take some comfort in knowing that pregnancy complications are normal.

It's not about individual anecdotes, it's about probabilities and actuarial risks.

A woman who gets pregnant at 25 is less likely to have issues than a woman who gets pregnant at 35 and much less likely to have issues than a woman who gets pregnant at 45.

That's the reality.

The fact that some women have successful pregnancies at 45 doesn't change it. Nor does it suggest that women should simply ignore the facts and hope for the best.

Some drivers make successful journeys while drunk, without killing themselves or anyone else. That doesn't mean drunk driving is a recommended personal choice, or that the element of choice somehow makes the risks disappear, or that drunk drivers who happen to beat the odds and survive many journeys should be sharing their lifestyle choices with others.

> A woman who gets pregnant at 25 is less likely to have issues than a woman who gets pregnant at 35 and much less likely to have issues than a woman who gets pregnant at 45.

You are equating to "issues" to mean "no healthy children"

> The fact that some women have successful pregnancies at 45 doesn't change it

Is a straw man.

Plenty of women have successful pregnancies at 35. And 25 year old women debating that choice should hear from them.

Said differently:

Can you wait too long to have children? Yes. Is 35 too long? No.

> Maternal Age seems like a boogie man story to scare women

Actually not. It's not just the genetics / pregnancy problems that are proven to significantly rise with age... but also that the time of menopause can neither be forecast nor the effects reversed (some hit it with 40, some with 60!), so there is a significant disadvantage (=no kids at all) for waiting too long.

Additionally: do you want to deal with a baby when you're 25 or when you are 40 or, worse, 50, that keeps you awake all night? It's a massive toll on your physical and especially mental health - the younger you are the better you cope. And your kids will be happier to have a dad/mom who can actually do things with you when they're 15-25 years...

I absolutely agree, maternal age is not discussed often enough, there are a number of risks that go up significantly when you wait until later to have children, for both men and women. A mother at age 20 has a 1 in 1,441 of having a baby with a Down Syndrome, whereas the odds are 1 in 84 at 40 years of age. Even at age 35 there's a 1 in 338 chance of a woman giving birth to a baby with Down Syndrome which is an order of magnitude higher than a woman at age 20 has, and that's just one defect! There are a whole host of defects including Autism that are strongly associated with the mother's age. Similarly a woman who has a baby at 40 has a 5.5% chance of dying before that child's 18th birthday, at 20 the odds of dying before your child reaches adulthood is only 0.6%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_maternal_age#Risk_of_...

> I gladly set aside my career to raise my kids.

You’re going to need some money when they get to be old enough to go to college.

Nah.

They're 3rd generation immigrants. They need to learn to struggle.