All that being said, the pressure on women is unlike that on men, for reasons that stretch into the thousands before you even get to “which one of them has to give birth?”. The age of 29 was presumably chosen symbolically, to flag that 30 is just around the corner, and that’s when you’re supposed to worry about your fertility. It’s an exceedingly cautious cut-off point, and a heavily gendered one, by which I mean, when did you last hear anyone say, “tick tock, tick tock” to a man on the occasion of his 30th birthday?
That is not gendered, that is sexed. It is also a simple statement of fact. The fertility of the male sex is not time limited in the same sense that the fertility of the female sex is. Just one of those things about our species.
And this is nonsense:
In other words, don’t buy it, French 29-year-olds: you’re being used as pawns in the creation of a Great Replacement narrative. That’s the worst reason ever to start a family.
‘In Germany, mothers would probably not see the inside of their offices again for years. In France, childbirth was expected to take no more time out of your diary than a minibreak with one plane cancellation – which is to say: OK, more than a weekend but certainly not as much as a week.’
Sounds as though both approaches don’t work!!
I do find it curious how many women will give their age as a number ending with a nine. It’s far more than 10%. The popularity of ages declines the lower the number with zero being the least.