Career opportunities will always (likely) be there.

The ability to have children will not.

Any woman who thinks, even remotely, that she wants kids, should make that a #1 priority over focusing on career, because guess what?

Fertility is at it's peak in a woman's early 20s, and starts decreasing significantly in late 20s, with huge cliffs at 35 and 40.

Highly anti popular to say, but absolutely true.

Besides, have you looked at the population stats lately?

Besides, I don't buy this aging-egg hypothesis. I suspect it's like a lot of other things we "know" about the human body, only to find out otherwise later: we made some not-so-educated guesses and now they're gospel. It's like the thing with Down's syndrome. This is nearly universally blamed on older mothers. Here's a bee for your bonnet: The majority of cases of Down's are caused by trisomy-21, which means that in the process of meiosis (the formation of germ cells, or sperm and egg cells), something split the wrong way. BUT WAIT. Science tells us a woman is born (well, as a girl) with all the eggs she'll ever have her entire life, right?

Well, if that's true then there is NO process of meiosis involved in grown women. We already have our eggs. So how the hell are we responsible for trisomy-21?

I know we all like to talk about how men are fertile all their lives. Well, here's another bee for your bonnet. Researchers are finding more and more connections between the age of MEN and the incidence of birth defects. Because, unlike with women, men are CONSTANTLY in a state of meiosis, CONSTANTLY making new sperm cells. As they get older and have put themselves through all manner of abuses (frat-boy drinking/pot-smoking? so on and so forth?), they damage their DNA.

And are women more likely to have younger husbands or older ones, who therefore have more damaged DNA? Even in sperm? Hel-LO?

Either (a) women have a set number of eggs for our whole lives and never make any more, thereby we are not to blame for Down's, or (b) scientists have LIED to us about whether we make more eggs, and we don't really have to worry about aging eggs. Either way.

And the bottom line is that women have to take care of ourselves financially because God only knows the government isn't doing it and God sure as hell knows men aren't doing it and God will forgive me for invoking Him in a political argument, because He sees. You got any better ideas than establishing a career in our twenties, I'd LOVE to hear them. Men leave, men get disabled, men die. We are not delicate little hothouse flowers–we have got to be prepared for those eventualities. Shoot, *I* have had to face those eventualities TWICE. Had no career. Put the family first. Am in poverty now. If any of you ladies out there don't want your career and high pay, I'll take it!

"Freeze your eggs"–why? Because it rarely works, but adopting is so not fashionable?

"Test your eggs for premature aging"–I love how these fear-mongering articles never address the fact that a man's sperm quality goes down dramatically with age, it's all about how the woman needs to fear being old and used up.