Katie Grant: There really is no right time to have children How can women be liberated if the choice of motherhood is curtailed by career, asks Katie Grant When should women have their first baby? Sixty years ago, this was a question nobody asked. Now, it's a subject of controversy because children are no longer a gift: they are a choice. Not only that, but if we choose to have them at all, we also choose when to have them and, according to new research by the University of Southampton, women now choose to have a first child later rather than sooner. In 1974, the average age of a woman having her first was 24: by 2004 it was 27. It's perfectly possible that, by 2034, the average age for having a first child will be well over 30. Already, figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of women having babies in their 40s doubled in the ten years to 2007. IVF and other advances must certainly be part of this changing picture: the biological clock ticks less loudly if you're not solely reliant on Mother Nature. However, Professor Máire Ni Bhrolcháin who, along with colleagues, conducted the University of Southampton's study, has found that a "major influencing factor" is that women are staying on longer in education and training. Rationally, this seems to make sense. All professions barring the Catholic priesthood are now open to women, and women are ambitious. If you spend six to seven years becoming a solicitor or advocate, the best part of ten years becoming a doctor or dentist, or struggle through accountancy and other professional exams, you're not going to want to practise for a month then rush off to have a baby, leaving your male colleagues and competitors a free climb up the greasy pole. All that investment in time, money and effort must be solidified into a career before maternity leave kicks in. In addition, in 2012, when jobs for even highly qualified, trained people are scarce, there's a very powerful belief that if you don't get started on your chosen path before a crock of demanding, dependent babies arrive, you'll never get started at all. Then there's childcare costs. These days, you need a career to pay for that. Possibly two. According to Daycare Trust, in 2012 average costs exceed £100 for 25 hours in some parts, with "the average yearly expenditure for a child under two standing at £5,103." If you've chosen education and training to ensure a comfortable lifestyle, that last figure will make you determined to ensure any break is sustainable, ie not taken until your pay reaches a certain platform. It might be enough to put you off having children at all. Looked at more closely, however, I wonder whether all this rationality isn't a myth, with the women taking part in the professor's study looking at things the wrong way round. For centuries, life patterns have been dictated by men. The school, university, training, career progression works very well for them and for generations they were the only show in town. Yet had women been in charge from the start, the rational progression would have been somewhat different - possibly school, children, university, training, career - because women would very quickly have seen that it's perfectly irrational to wait to have children until it's both inconvenient and expensive. Being rational beings, we would have sorted this out. I had my first child at 26 - not particularly young - and my last child at 31. Crucially, though, I went to university when my last child was two, meaning I didn't have to choose the "best" time in a career for childbirth and childrearing: the children were always part of the equation. Every year, childcare became easier. I had none of the guilt, anxiety and terror of letting both children and employer down that is the daily torment of many colleagues. When the children were ill or miserable I knew how to cope since I'd been a full-time mother for seven years already. The children, too, accepted my return to education without much bother (perhaps they were relieved). When I graduated, my youngest child was six and I could decide what path to take without the pressure of wondering when to embark on marriage and children so as to cause the least disruption to a working life. Of course, I was lucky. I met my husband at just the right time and had no difficulty having children. I fully admit that circumstance rather than insight sent me along what is, arguably, this more rational route. And it has not all been plain sailing, although the moments of chaos and stress seem fewer than those experienced by women friends on the more traditional path. Given the stress, it remains a mystery why in this, the Age of Women, we accept the traditional progression and adjust our childbearing accordingly rather than making a concerted effort to kick the progression into touch. Equally, we rail against the glass ceiling without considering that cracking it might be more effective if we started from a different place. If, when you embark on further education and training, you've already been through the nappies, once in employment you can punch the ceiling without maternity hanging over you. You may begin slightly later than male colleagues or women who have chosen not to have children, but once you're in, you're in and heading upwards at uninterrupted full speed. The Southampton study seems to show a surprising acceptance by women that patterns of education, training and employment are somehow set in stone and that childbearing must be fitted into a pre-existing and thoroughly problematic pattern. Perhaps the last battle of women's liberation is to fight this perception. The decision to have children later and later doesn't have to be the answer. It's perfectly possible to "have it all" as the saying goes, if, should the opportunity arise, you take the plunge and simply put the children first.