Not that I don't entirely understand where that "oh my God, I'm thirty!" crisis comes from -- it's not so much the number of years as it is the implication that by this point you're really supposed to be an adult, and so forth -- but nonetheless I've always thought that it's a symptom of the fairly twisted mindset people are so good at adopting.

To quote Tyler Durden: "You have to give up. You have to realize that some day you will die. Until you do that, you are useless. I say, may I never be complete. I say, may I never be content. I say, deliver me from Swedish furniture. I say, deliver me from clever art. I say, deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth. I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may. This is your life, good to the last drop. This is your life, it doesn't get any better than this. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."

Not that old Tyler wasn't a fucked-up individual (or half of a one, anyway) with a skewed perspective and a badly malfunctioning sense of proportion, but I certainly approve of his views on all the pointless and meaningless superficial shit we get so hung up on. It is just a number. It's got nothing to do with what's really important in the world in general or our lives in particular.

Of course, I have yet to reach that particular milestone myself, so it's very easy for me to say all this. Maybe I'll just revert to type and do the "oh my God, everyone else is married or graduated or accomplished and I'm still earning shit money at a dead-end job and nowhere near writing the books I'm always thinking about or doing the things I should be doing and it's almost too late!" thing. It'd be really stupid, so it'd be completely in character, too.

A year ago I would have totally agreeded with you, and I still do. I never ever believed it would happen to me. Except it did - but I have all the confidence that it will pass.

Was going to write lengthily, but decided to blog about it instead.

http://www.ecyrd.com/ButtUgly/Wiki.jsp?page=Main_blogentry_250704_2

Not sure, but women might think about this age as biological decay more than men do? Not everyone wants children, but I have always liked the idea to at least have a choice in the matter. As years go by, I am slowly deprived of my choice... (and men are not)

Then there are other issues which seem to be the same for all sexes: the adult thing, meaning of your life, achievements and all that.

Yeah, sure, but it's not very likely that -- barring illness, injury or sterilization -- any woman's going to become infertile at the age of thirty or even forty. Not that aging helps there, of course, and some women are pretty unlucky, which sucks.

As far as the biology goes, I seem to recall that it'd be best to get knocked up in your early twenties if you want to play the odds. Not that most people would be ready to become parents at that age.

(As a point of vague interest, my mother had my youngest sister when she was about 44, and she had the one before that two years earlier or so -- they'd tied up the old tubes years earlier and then re-opened them when she decided she wanted to have children again. No problems there, though I guess she was lucky. Hell, you'd think that after me and my two brothers she'd learned something, but no, she wanted to do it all over again... twice. Go figure. Though maybe she was right -- those two seem to be turning out better than any of us guys ever did, so what the hell.)

In any case, personally, I'm not all that interested in the biological aspects -- though I realize that I may well be in the minority here. In my view, adoption is a perfectly viable and laudable choice for those who want to become parents if pregnancy isn't an option. Of course, considering my fairly hectic and complicated family background, perhaps this disinterest in whose sperm ended up in which egg isn't all that surprising -- when it comes to the old "nature vs. nurture" thing, I'm not real big on nature.

Anyway, we all lose things as time goes by. Parents, children, jobs, friends, opportunities, pets, possessions, apartments... It all goes away. In a hundred years, nobody's going to care. I don't mean to be entirely fatalistic here, either; I just mean that if I start to cry over all the things I've lost or missed or stupidly passed on, whatever the reason, I'm gonna be here all night and then I'm gonna bitch about how I wasted tonight.

Which is exactly what I'm going to do, of course. But that doesn't mean I don't know it's really dumb. =)

Dear Mikki,

you are missing the point and it is very understantable since as you yourself pointed out you have yet this milestone to reach plus you're not an egg-breeder.

This is a feeling and not based on facts. Although I must add that the risk of miscarriage and/or deformity increases after 30.

This might be called the biological clock or whatever. It doesn't mean you have to obey that clock. It just is. The feeling might pass, and it may be cured with (adopted) children or a dog or a cat or something entirely else. But I'm not there yet. So I feel for Kolibri. :)

No, actually, I understand the point of biological urges perfectly well. Obviously, the instinct for motherhood is often a strong one -- but, uh, what you were actually talking about was diminishing choice. That's what the words on the screen were about, anyway.

You're right, I wrote about diminishing choice. Your example of a very fertile woman who has had her first childbirth under 30 anyway (am I not right? And this is an important fertility factor.) does not change the statistical facts.

But I also wrote about why that might be a problem for even women that would never consider actually having children. Having less choice *feels* bad. We of course have the choice to ignore these feelings if our reason states otherwise. But in my opinion ignoring your feelings is being less human.

Is there a similar urge for fatherhood, BTW? It obviously doesn't manifest itself as a biological clock, but is there one and do men have to battle it?

I realize that you and I are prone to discussing in great lenghts and still not talking about the same subject. Could be my fault, and for my part I express my regret since I really don't mean to do that. Must be this damned thick corpus callosum linking things together! ;)

Being a man of broad generalisations based on my own meager experiences; no, we males don't have a biological clock ticking towards fatherhood. At least, we don't know such thing exists before the birth of a first child.

A faint tickling can be heard after the first child, but it might just be my imagination. I don't think it's biological - more probably something mental (in a good or bad way, I don't know) based on previous experience.

I am a woman and I am definitely suffering from MAJOR 30's crisis. The feared moment will hit me in 5,5 months...

When you are a childless woman approaching your 30's, you just cannot miss the fact that your fertility is declining like "cow's tail". Your doctor, grandmother, aunts, the media etc. are all making it very clear: if you want to have children, you should do something about it very soon. Not to mention the fact that from now on your whole body starts deteoring faster than you can spell botox... :-) Just kidding. Sort of.

If I could be absolutely sure that I could have perfectly healthy, wonderful children very easily and naturally still in 10 years -- or even in 5 years, I probably wouldn't feel as fragile/nervous/restless as I feel right now.

Funnily enough, I was just listening that "song" from Fight Club couple of days ago -- as well as all the music I used to listen when I was a teenager (sure sign of getting older). Anyway, I am quite sure that after 9th January 2005 I feel much calmer and happier again... :-D

Congratulations for you birthday!

Love,
Kutri

Based on the extremely scientific sample of six or so people in this conversation, this seems to be an issue linked to gender. Or at least women seem to be feeling it much more - certainly threre is more biological basis for us to feel bad about getting old. The limit of 30 is most likely just a limit set by the society, though.

And while we're in the matter of having children that for some reason or another seems to creep in to this conversation: I've never wanted kids - but as HunnuH says, I'd like to a have a choice in the matter. Some friends of mine have had the sterilisation procedure done as soon as it was legally possible - personally I just can't be that sure that I will never want kids. Yet, as stated earlier by the ladies I'm being told by everyone that this is something I should consider doing soon if I want to do it. Practically I'll probably have another ten years or so to think about it... but the chances of safely giving birth to a healthy child have already greatly dimished. (And Mikki remembered correctly - age 19 is the best age to have kids, physically. But am I glad I didn't do it then!)

I could almost say I feel I'm being pressured to do something or make a decision about something I'm not yet ready to do. But it's very much an issue I feel that if I make the wrong decision I will regret it for the rest of my life.

Oh dear. This has really become a topic about breeding which wasn't the original intention...

I was going to respond to this -- to HunnuH, to be more specific -- sooner, but I got kinda sidetracked, what with deadlines, lethargy and all.

Anyway -- yeah, undoubtedly many women who are unable to have children for whatever reason are still going to have the urge, which sucks. And that not having choices in general sucks. Agreed. And after a certain age, the statistical likelihood of your becoming a mother goes down, and the older you get, the less likely you are to remain fertile and capable of having a successful pregnancy. This is all true.

But.

I don't know. What do you want me to say? That it sucks? Obviously, yeah, but so do a bunch of other things. Still, it's not the end of the world. A lot of doors close in our faces as we get older. I don't think that this particular choice is all that much more important than many others. It's a more personal choice, certainly. It's got a lot of urges associated with it, which can make it problematic. But difficult or not -- and it's just one more difficult thing in the long and arduous chain of difficult things that make up our lives, and anyone who finds that to be the most difficult choice they ever have to make is one lucky motherfucker -- either you deal with it or you don't.

Do I feel the urge to be a father? Not today, but absolutely, at times. I like kids. I often prefer them to adults, actually -- but that's another discussion for another time. Anyway, it's an urge I can ignore fairly easily, though, not so much because I can be fairly certain of my fertility even after I hit 40 or 50, but because I'm not at all sure that I am in any position to pledge at least 18 years of my life to the well-being and upbringing of another human being. I would like to pretend that the fact that my father is a disappointing failure with all the social grace and appeal of a turd-encrusted tumor stuffed into a bottle of cheap booze has no bearing on this, but no such luck. The idea of turning out to be a similarly weak excuse for a parent is abhorrent to me.

In any case, I don't really give a damn whether any children I might or might not have happened to have my DNA in them. It's a non-issue -- if I had both of my balls cut off tomorrow in a bizarre accident involving a revolving door and a skateboard, I doubt it'd have a heavy impact on my desire to be a father, or lack thereof. Certainly, I like my balls. They're the best balls I've ever had. I'm friends with my balls. It would be a sad day indeed if I ever were forced to part with them, not least so because I'd have one less choice in my life -- but choices nonwithstanding, they're just my balls. Just a bit of flesh. I can still be a parent in all the ways that matter regardless of whether I'm fertile or not, and, I would have to say, so can any woman.

Obviously, I'm aware of the fact that many people are far more concerned with the biological connection than I am. I find this to be rather illustrative of the many things I dislike about our society.