I'd suggest looking up fertility rates for women based on age; it' quite difficult for a woman to get pregnant that late in life, and for some women it might not be possible at all.

It's historically somewhat common for older, more established and financially secure men to pair up with young women.

It does seem like a good practical/pragmatic approach to raising a family.

Women are still people who can have mental health issues; the solution of "just waiting until you're 40" isn't viable for 50% of the population.

Freezing eggs at 18-22 y/o should be the norm. Especially in rich areas such as LA and NYC.

Gives women options.

The earlier you freeze them the more you can get with a single procedure

My wife spent over $35k getting her eggs frozen when she was younger and we never even ended up using them (despite waiting till she was 38 to get pregnant). I guess having them around gave her some peace of mind, but that's a hefty price tag for someone in their early 20s, even in a "rich area" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The 40 years old man marrying young girl were business transactions.

The normal coupling differences were much smaller typically. (Like 6 years or something).

All marriages are/were to varying extents. I would go so far as to say that being able to "pencil out as a sensible business transaction" is a key element of most/all longstanding marriages.

Being the 40yo guy marrying the 20yo girl is like being the 40yo guy daily driving a Ferrari. Sure there are some pretty big downsides in the practicality department but you're rich enough to paper that over (this sentence is specifically crafted to apply to both parties).

That's a technical problem that will improve with time and has been actively improving for decades.

It also won't be long before we have artificial wombs and can create embryos more expressively than the current 1 male 1 female demands of nature.

I see a future where one waits even several hundred years and dozens of careers and lifestyles before choosing to combine their genes and memes with others to spawn and raise a new consciousness, maybe even committing to a hundred years to raise it.

I would think that there'd be a threshold where the elevated risk of birth defects would place a ceiling on how old parents should be.

25-35 seems to be the ideal window, where the parents have had ample opportunity to get to know themselves as individuals, and the risks of a severe disability aren't particularly elevated. Afterwards, the risk seems to climb very quickly.

https://www.med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/10/older-fat... https://www.ivf1.com/age-birth-defects/

Not sure our biology is great at that, but paradoxically as an almost 40 year old... I have the resources to support a bunch of children. Maybe the change to make is change the dynamic between men and women to introduce more age differences for child rearing.

My parents fought about money all the time, but if they had delayed then they would have been better off. If they were better off then maybe my mom wouldn't have killed herself...

While I agree with you technically, there's something icky about a community full of older, wealthy men talking about how maybe it's actually ideal for older, wealthy men to wife up young, fertile women.

People on their 20 ties are more energetic and better handle sleep deprivation that comes with kids. Kids are not just costing money, they cost energy and effort.

Yeah. In a lot of ways, the push to have kids at an older age is detrimental... although in a lot of ways it's not. It's a tradeoff.

My earliest kid I had at 21; my latest, at 45. Sure, I have more money and emotional stability now. But I was also a lot more active back then, with the ability to deal with sleep deprivation when the kids were infants, and to handle playing tag after work for an hour.

Plus... whatever emotional strength and resilience I have comes in large part from being a practicing father for 20+ years. If I had been childless this whole time, I'd have far less emotional growth.

I'd recommend couples at least consider having kids as soon as they can (a) drag themselves out of poverty and (b) have enough time together that they have some confidence their relationship won't fall apart. Maybe (c) have some 3rd party backup.

The body has a clock that's not really compatible with that.