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Delaying the choice

A few months ago a friend of mine, who is childless and happy that way, asked me if I regretted having kids. It was a jarring question; of all the choices I have made in my lifetime, having children was definitely the best. (However buying them a dog may have been the worst.)

But it's interesting, now that having children really is a choice (which it wasn't only a few decades ago) how the birth rate has dropped to an all-time low. It was recently reported that Canada's birth rate for 2002 fell to its lowest level since 1921.

No one knows exactly why the birth rate is dropping because everyone has a different reason for not having children or for having smaller families. While certain trends are down, like teen pregnancies and fertility rates for immigrant women, they don't completely explain the drop in the Canadian birth rate.

Certainly, birth control is better than ever and abortion is more accessible than it used to be. But those are simply the means that keep the birth rate low. Are people actually choosing not to have children or are they simply delaying it, and by delaying, are they making a choice without really making a choice?

The average age of first time mothers is up ? now standing at 29.5. A third of first time births in 2001 were to women 30 or older ? a decade earlier only a fifth of births were to this age group. In 2002, 45 per cent of women aged 30-39 were giving birth. In 1982, that number was 23 per cent. Women are definitely older when they have children these days.

People blame the low birth rate on everything from fears about divorce to having to pay off student loans. Some people, especially children of divorce, might worry about the stability of marriage. But if you are blindly in love, or really want kids, you are likely going to be filled with optimism about it.

I know women who are divorced, struggling to make ends meet and doing the childcare single-handedly, and who would make exactly the same choices again, right down to marrying the same guy, so in love are they with their kids. I know men who would do the same thing.

I think many people simply delay and in doing so have the choice made for them. Perhaps a woman wants to establish herself in her career, hoping that if she has a great job she will have more job security once she has kids. I remember speaking with one news anchor years ago who told me she would like to work her way up to a job like Barbara Frum's and then have children. Ironically, Frum had her children very young and then went on to a wonderful career.

Most women realize that having children has an impact on a woman's career, no matter how great the child care or support of her husband. Women watch as their friends who have babies struggle to work full-time or part-time or choose to throw in the towel for full-time diapers. And so they delay their own decision.

Often they even delay getting married, figuring that once they do the whole baby issue will follow too closely. But in delaying marriage women's options drop as they get older. Finding the perfect mate becomes daunting as the marriage pool becomes leaner and, as time wears on, the choices become fewer and the woman more selective.

With age also comes more difficulties having a healthy baby and also in becoming pregnant. By the time a woman is 40, she has a one in 60 chance of having a child with a chromosomal abnormality. One study shows that 10 per cent of women have ceased to ovulate by the time they reach age 40.

The thing is you never really know how you are going to feel about children until you have them. I have one close friend who has confided to me that if she were to do it again, she would not have children. I knew another woman years ago, who told her husband before she left him that she never felt comfortable with all of the other families in the park. She just never fit into the whole family thing, she said. She has seen her children rarely since the divorce.

Some people who have delayed having children regret that choice. One man in his late 40s confided to me recently, "Our daughter is five now, and we are nuts about her. If we had known how wonderful this all would be, we would have started sooner, but it's really too late to have a second child."

I tell my own kids that I love being a mother and I tell them they'll have to make their own choices. Deciding to have children is similar to jumping into a pool or lake that looks pretty icy. And yes, at first when you jump in it can be a bit of a shock, but once you start swimming the water does, in fact, get warmer ? most of the time, though not for everyone. When I chose to be a parent for the first time, I jumped in the pool without looking; the second time I knew exactly what the pool felt like and I was ready to dive back in.

There are those who think women can have it all these days, but women with children know they still make choices along the way. Will they be there to watch the Halloween parade or sitting in a business lunch? Simply because there is so much more freedom, so much to choose from, choosing can be daunting. And by delaying that choice, sometimes the choice is made all by itself. Is it any wonder that the birth rate is going down?

- GEORGIE BINKS, CBC News Viewpoint, April 23, 2004

Posted by thinkum at April 26, 2004 01:53 PM