How old were you when you had your kids?

I don't think there is one right age. It's one of those balance things, I think, some of this, some of that.

When you're older, you're more likely to have gotten more life experience in -- traveling, work, whatever. I think that can be super-important if you are a stay-at-home mom especially, because it's such a shaky time, identity-wise. If you KNOW who you are, have all of these experiences behind you, it's easier to get through.

But yeah, there are a lot of things that are easier when you're younger -- more energy, easier pregnancies (usually), stuff like that.

I had mine a month shy of 30 -- worked well for me. A good compromise/ balance -- had a fair amount of life experience, still pretty young.

I was thinking that 30 would be about right.

Then I started thinking about my life.

I was 29 when I got married. I wasn't really the settle down kind of girl. My life changed so dramatically between 30 and 40. Would it have been different?

Very. I think.

I thought about that girl today and how she doesn't get to see her kids much compared to the long, leisurely days Mo and I spend together.

It is nice to be of a generation that has so many options!

I was 22 when I had my now 18 year old son.

Twenty years old with my first one. Sick as a dog and looked like hell.

I felt pretty good when I was pregnant until those last 32 hours of hard labour

Soooo......

Do you think that was a good age or a bad age?

Do you think things would have been different if you had been older?

boomer, honey. Virginia girls like poor Letty got married and had kids. That's just what was expected. Absolutely should have waited.

I was 35 and 39 when I had my children. I still remember my doctor making a comment when I was pregnant that I had a certain risk because I would be 40 when I had my child would be born. I immediately jumped in and said No! I will be 39! I was really meaning it in a joking way, but he stopped and I never really heard what risk he was talking about.

Most Okie/Texan girls like me did the same thing, Letty!

I watched many, many of my friends do it.

I was such a late bloomer, Harriet the spy girl that I couldn't contemplate it for myself.

I didn't know you were a Virginia girl!

I have some happy memories of that state!

I also wish I had waited. 22 is still very young and I think I would have been much better prepared if I had waited until I was at least in my late 20s.
My son wasn't exactly planned, lol.

First natural child at 24, joined with three year old from my then wife's first marriage. (had him at age 21) She ran off to be in the music business and I raised the boys on my own until I was thirty and married again.

I'm glad I was young with my kids. I refereed their soccer games and chased fungoes all over the ballfields of Tulsa. The younger kiddo and I went canoeing and rode bikes across Oklahoma and Arkansas. Sledding in the winter and bar-b-qs in the park on summer nights, swimming in the pool or the lake, and movies at the drive-in, all the things we could do while the old man was still a young man.

I'm going to my younger brother's house next Sunday. His second child of his present marriage is going to be christened. He is 52. I kid him that he will have to be careful not to schedule a PTA meeting on the same night at his AARP get-together.

Joe

I was just a few months shy of 40 when my son was born. I didn't plan it that way, though. My plan was to have a baby when I was 34 or 35. God had different plans.

I married at 19, divorced at 24, then married for the second (and hopefully final!) time at 28. I was 32 or 33 before I was in a settled-enough position to even consider having children. Then once we decided to do it, we ran into infertility problems and I had two miscarriages. After the second one (at age 36) they told us we had less than a 5% chance of ever having a successful pregnancy. So we stopped trying. We decided we'd been very happy before we had the brilliant idea to have kids, we could be perfectly happy without them. And we were for three years until (shock of shock!) I became pregnant against all the odds. Then we were ecstatic.

As I told my son on his birthday last week, these have been the best 12 years of my life.

Truthfully, I couldn't imagine taking on the responsibility of children before I was in my early 30s. My life was too chaotic. It's tough being an older mom sometimes...I often don't have enough energy to do things I'd like to do. But I have the patience and insights that no 25 year old mom could ever have. Plus, I can better afford it now. (It's getting more expensive every day.)

There is no perfect age, really. And I know one more thing, too. There will be a whole white-haired section of us at the highschool graduation ceremony.

In short...I'd much rather be sixtysomething when he leaves home than be sixtysomething and never have had him.

Good thing about having them young, like Joe said, your young enough to run around with them and now that my son is grown, I'm still young enough to have some fun.

hopefully i'll have one of them little rascals one day, too.

I had my years of fun beforehand, that's all.

You will Dag and you'll be a great mom ;-)

That's why in a way I wish I had been older.

I was 34 and 36 when the girls were born. Being 34 with my first child was fine, but being 36 with an infant and a toddler was difficult. I was tired and didn't have the same energy I would have had for two small kids if I'd been a bit younger.

I noticed that I was a few years older than most of the other parents at school events and I would guess that most of the parents of my kids classmates are probably about 5 years younger than I am.

I will be 54 when my youngest leaves for college. Plenty young enough to enjoy myself (I hope). Like Eva, I had plenty of childless years in my 20s and early 30s to focus on myself and my career. I think it's only because I was well established in the workforce that I was able to leave my job when my daughter was born, and start up a home-based consulting business a couple years later.

I don't think there's any best age. If you're younger then you'll have more energy, but perhaps less patience.

20 1/2- Whatever was I thinking? I was a kid myself!