Perhaps, but that often means selecting a partner more quickly, which is another gamble with potentially terrible consequences.
replyLife is full of such gambles and it's inevitable.
replyAnyone who drives risks their life more than they risk having a special needs child at reasonably non-late age.
We just brush off most such gambles because:
1. People have a terrible intuition for probabilities.
2. If it were better, they would go insane.
I agree. I'm saying that "just have kids younger" isn't a good solution to the risks of developmental defects, because it's usually merely a trade of that risk for a different one.
replyI wonder how much of that is because people who are autistic (for example) find love later, and then pass down their autism.
replyAlmost everyone are having children later.
replyEasy to prescribe, hard to implement for the last two generations or so
replyIt's not like people had an established career when they had kids at 19 in the 1940s. They just didn't view "being halfway to a comfortable retirement" as the prerequisite to having kids, the way my generation thinks it is.
replyI think the best advice to having kids young is to lower your expectations. The only reason people ‘cannot’ have children young is because they want a specific kind of life for themselves and their kids that is incompatible with that.
replyThe difference likely there is in the ‘40s you were seeing improvement after the Great Depression and employment during WWII, followed by the postwar boom. Whereas the past two generations have seen precarity increase while living standards falter if not drop compared to their parents’ generation. So they are striving to recreate what they once experienced in their childhood, yet may never return.
replyAlso the entirety of society including their families emphasizing the importance of higher education, good careers, etc. even as the latter is harder to achieve and the former becomes increasingly devalued, yet pricy.
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