Kirstie Allsopp does have a point: Society isn’t set up for women to have babies when they are at their most fertile

 

Image: Now Magazine

The furor yesterday about comments made by handmade home design guru Kirstie Allsopp in this article, in, of all places, The Torygraph, that young women should concentrate on settling down and having babies rather than going to university struck rather a chord with me.

She’s wrong about the education bit of course. After all, one of the best places to find a future mate (and boost your future earnings, thus protecting the future of said babies) is at university. But she was right about having a baby by 27. Isn’t that what most women would like? The trouble is, life doesn’t always work out like that.

Before I left journalism school, aged 25, and 6 months pregnant with my son Jonah, the final article I wrote as part of my course was entitled We need to talk about children: How society prevents women having children when they are at their most fertile, addressed this very question (I later read it rehashed in a broadsheet without my byline, but that’s by the by). Despite being at my peak fertility, I was a complete anomaly, in London, as a pregnant 25 year old. Society, it seemed to my 25 year old self, divided women into two groups of mothers, a particularly in the capital: socially well adjusted 37 year olds with 42 year old partners, desperate to take a break from their careers, or so-called “gymslip mothers” between the ages of 15 and 21, who have, according to right-thinking members of society, thrown their lives away. You’re more likely to find mothers in their twenties in the suburbs, who have, perhaps chosen a less intense career path than their city dwelling compatriots, who find it easier to dip I and out of work to have children. But as a young London mum, that hasn’t been my experience.

I found none like me among my antenatal group, being the youngest by a decade. I found one of two younger ones among the baby group hotchpotch, many with whom, as a university educated homeowner, I found I had little in common.

When I began maternity leave from my job as a graduate trainee at a B2B corporation, it was clear what camp my colleagues placed me in – the washed up gymslip camp – except for one thing – I had a massive sparkler on the fourth finger of my left hand, and that, more than anything else, for some reason, seemed to set everything to rights in the eyes of my colleagues. On my junior journalist salary, of about, oooh, 19 grand, there was no way I could afford to bring up a baby in the capital without accessing the purse of the state. Except of course if I had a well off partner. Which, lucky for me I did.

And that could have been it for me, career wise, absorbed into yummymummydom, prevented from working by the sheer cost of childcare eclipsing my teeny tiny young woman writer’s salary, I would probably be on my fourth by now, kids being something of a status symbol among a certain percentage of well off Londoners, at the time (as well as being considered the sign of feckless fecundity among the less well-off). But with my gym membership, my Ocado clubcard, montessori nursery, regular nights out in Shoreditch House, and designer baby gear, it certainly felt like I was in an elite club of women who could afford to have kids while they were young.

But the financial crash changed all that. As a banker, my husband was in the front line, ousted, two months before my daughters were born, to zero public sympathy, he floundered, workless on benefits for almost two years. So in the end, I did need to access the purse of the state, but not through any fault, other than reckless optimism, of my own. It was bitterly humiliating.

But it taught me a useful lesson. Never rely on anyone else when you can rely on yourself. Lucky for me, I had an ace up my sleeve, which I was forced to pull up once the rug of an overinflated partner’s salary was pulled from beneath me. This ace was a first class degree and a masters, which had been languishing, unused for some five years. Multiple application forms, and yet another internship later, I demanded to be paid at market rate as a 32 year old copywriter, rather than crawling my way up the graduate pay ladder. It worked. I jumped through hoops much quicker in my thirties, and although it was scary at times, ( and I got several HRs backs up in the process) what with my patchy career history, I am now, aged nearly 34, by hook or by crook, there or thereabouts where I would be had I not taken five or so years out to have two babies. Had I not been to university, I would not have nearly so many options available to me.

But the fact remains I am an unusual case. Western society is not set up for women who want to be able to look after themselves rather than to rely on a partner to have children at their peak fertility. I did the relatively m normal middle class thing in the late nineties, of taking a gap year, but, already one the oldest in my year at school, felt like a bit of waste of time for all the wonderful experiences I may have had. I had a long term boyfriend at uni, but I knew even then I would be unlikely to want to settle down and have children with him. After uni, I floundered, doing several unpaid internships before finally getting funding to do a masters. I was pushing 24, and I felt like I already had my eye on my fertility clock.

In the end, I met my husband in a strip clup, not at uni, paying for the whole shebang myself plus getting on the property ladder afterwards. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it worked out alright for me. Yes, the classic union between banker and stripper, as unlikely as it sounds, has been by and large, a successful one. We have been together for coming up ten years, but as we have an eight year old, you can “things” moved pretty fast. I was pregnant within nine months of meeting him. His family certainly had their doubts when I announced, nine months after first persuading him to buy me champagne under fluorescent lights, that I was up the duff.

But at 25, giving birth was, relatively, a breeze. I suffered few of the side effects of pregnancy and labour my 37 year old compatriots seemed to be afflicted with – the nausea, the stretch marks, the stitches, the mastitis. I had a drug free home birth and breastfeeding fell into place as the milk, and baby weight poured off me. I wouldn’t say I snapped back into shape, but then, I’d never gone above a size 12 during the whole ordeal. It felt, at the time like I was winning. But I really don’t know how I’d feel about putting myself through it all again, ten years on. But for all the clock may be now ticking for a lot of my friends, most women I know don’t seem to have too much problems conceiving until they hit 40. It may be true that fertility nosedives after 35, but where I may have conceived the first month of trying in my twenties, my friends in their mid to late by and large took just two.

Being younger was not without its difficulties either: seeing all my uni friends streaking ahead with their careers, heading out to festivals, staying out all night, while I was sat at home with a breast pump and Gina Ford for comfort, was hard, at first to  swallow. I wasn’t ready to give it all up, and for a while, I tried to do it all – much easier if you haven’t got to work, but even then, on zero sleep, you start to go a bit mental. That was another useful lesson. You can’t do it all.

Even before the financial crash, I began to get itchy feet, longing for a bit of personal validation that wasn’t one of my babies’ milestones. When Jonah started missing them, displaying the first signs of ASD at around 2 and a half, shortly before my daughter was born and Tom lost his job, I just about had a nervous breakdown. But when the good times ceased, I had my education to fall back on. So that is where Kirstie has it wrong. It is much better for women if, by some miracle of planning and luck and support, they can mange to have babies in their twenties, but not at the expense of going to uni. But as far as I’m concerned, having a glittering career can be postponed. But only if you’ve found someone who is prepared to tide you over in the meantime, and that, dear Kirstie, is the rub. Even if you are lucky enough to find a partner that can and will support you during your best years of fertility, there’s no guarantee that they will be prepared or able to do this forever. So until maternity care for women in their best baby making years is out of the hands of business (or the few men who can and will support young women have their babies) and into the cradle of the state, women will always unfortunately fall prey to the divisive policies that mean they are likely to be damned by their pockets if they do have a baby young, and damned by their bodies if they leave it too late.