We know we are high-risk. We know the statistics: everything will be harder for us. Getting pregnant, having a healthy pregnancy, having a healthy labor, having a healthy baby. We know.
We also know that we are happy, excited, and proud about our choices.
We are more mature than we were one, five, ten, fifteen years ago. We know more about who we are. We know more about what we want. We've been through some shit. We've survived it. We've gotten bruised, but also strengthened. We are very, very strong.
We've had a lot of time to think about whether or not we want to be a parent, and we know the ways to prevent it. We are choosing this deliberately, purposefully, thoughtfully. Some of us have struggled for years already through infertility and losses to get here. For this group of us, this pregnancy is planned. It is wanted. We fought hard for it. It is a victory.
We are established in our lives. We know that for every year a woman delays having her first child, her maximum lifetime income rises by 10%. Now you might say all we care about is money. Yes, those of us who have careers are proud of them. Those of us who have the benefits that come from financial security are happy that we do. But what that statistic tells us is that fewer of us will be raising our children in poverty. More of us can afford to provide for our children in ways that can foster their thriving, even if a crisis hits. We also know that divorced women make up one of the most impoverished groups. We are creating security for ourselves and our children. We might even live longer.
We are more likely, as a group, to raise our children without the threat of violence. Studies show that nearly one-third of mothers spank their babies under the age of TWO, and this was consistent across class distinctions and races. The only control that consistently showed which mothers were less likely to spank their tiny infants and toddlers was age of the mother. With every year increase in age, a mother is less likely to spank her baby. Maybe that's because we're tired. We're tired of fighting the little battles; we're tired of feeling the need to be completely in control. Maybe we're tired of the way we were raised, tired of the custom of treating children like little prisoners that need to be kept in line, and we're more excited, now that we're older, to get to know them as the individual people that they are instead. Maybe we're more secure in ourselves, and we've been through intensely difficult experiences, and we can draw on our pasts to face the difficulties of parenting without losing our cool. Maybe we're at a time in our lives where we're more ready to listen. Regardless of why, this is our record. This is a statistic we don't hear when we hear we're "high-risk." We would like a world that also recognizes that twenty-something mothers are at "high-risk" of hitting their babies, and we should shower those mothers more support when they're overwhelmed.
We trust in science, and we know our history. We know our friends, our colleagues, our mothers, our grandmothers, and our ancestors have been having children in their late thirties and forties for centuries. Millennia. Maybe some of them were the wise women, the midwives, the "witches," the matriarchs, who taught women about their bodies and held the secrets of planning and stopping pregnancies for years before male physicians caught up so that we could lead full, productive lives that included experiencing the miraculous power of motherhood. We know that we're not new, we're not a "trend," we are part of a long and unbroken line of women who invite motherhood to enrich us, but not define us. We understand that that scares people, and so they might judge us, or begrudge our choices. We respectfully don't care. We're too excited about the fact that a new chapter of our lives is just beginning.
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