Young mums have it tough

I read this article, It seems younger mothers are having it tough, and it got me thinking. Here’s a quote from the article:

But it was the younger parents who seemed to be suffering the most. They were more likely to have more negative memories of their experiences of being a parent, and nearly a third of them remembered feeling like other people were coping better than them, or having excessive worry and sadness.

For as much as there’s pressure to marry young and have kids quickly – is it really that good an idea? Statistics tell me otherwise. I got married at 28, and I’m in no rush to repopulate the earth.

In some Muslim circles, being the ‘older’ mum seems to be the faux pas. But for everybody else, it’s the in thing to do. Mothers are getting older and older. Check this out – Science beats fertility clock. Now I’m not a proponent of freezing ovarian tissue in your twenties so you can party hard and then settle down and have babies at forty. I just think this option is fantastic for women going through chemotherapy or other health issues. It’s amazing to see science offering hope for women to conceive, when once, it would have been impossible.

Seriously, times are changing. You don’t know when you’ll end up settling down, and rushing to get married to ANYONE so you can have babies is a very bad idea. It’s all about balance and priorities. I’m lucky that my family and in-laws aren’t badgering me to provide the goods (i.e. babies), and if they were, that wouldn’t sway my decision to wait in the slightest.

True story. I bumped into a friend of my family’s at a local mosque, and asked me how I was. I smiled and said I was busy being a housewife and working from home. She gasped and said, “Housewife? You’re not a housewife until you have babies! What’s life for?”

I answered, “To know God.” That just rolled out of my mouth – probably from the blessings of being in a mosque. Her face just changed, and she nodded solemnly. Now that is one way to put an end to the baby question 🙂