This archaic idea - that a woman who is unmarried and childless at 30 is somehow unnatural - will probably always exist, and, like most social standards, it is ridiculous.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Women are now very comfortable to have babies into their late 30s. You can be a father in your 50s. I'm not saying it's for everybody, and I think people have to get their own life secure before they take on the responsibility of a partner and children.
Women have to control their fertility for 30 years. Thirty years is a long time not to make mistakes.
The stigma of being an unmarried mother was something we can't comprehend today. It was not uncommon that you'd go off somewhere to have your child, then give it up for adoption.
Couples in their 30s are having trouble having kids. And you just kind of extrapolate that and say, 'What if it happened to everybody? What kind of society would it be like if all of a sudden we knew that this was the end of the line - we couldn't have kids?'
Marriage was coined at a time when people died when they were 30. That stability would be nice, and I am definitely open-minded about it, but I don't need it in that way some women do.
People have preconceptions about women of a certain age.
I had thought a lot about unmarried life during my years as an unmarried woman - which was all during my 20s and into my 30s. I was someone who didn't have a ton of relationships as a single person - and so I had a sharp identification with singlehood.
In various European countries, it is increasingly common for young men to live with their parents into their 30s and even longer. Why not? In the welfare state, there is no shame in doing so.
I'm 36 and if I met a woman of my own age and married her, I'd also be marrying her former life, her past. It might be OK for some people - I don't want to judge it or anything - but it's not for me. It would destroy my creativity.
Any young man who is unmarried at the age of twenty one is a menace to the community.