WHEN you have so many contraceptive choices these days, family planning may be down to a choice of what suits you as a couple financially and socially.

I’m not saying this is right or wrong because it’s such a personal choice. But a couple of recent news stories about this might throw some different perceptions into the mix.

Reproductive expert Dr Sarah Martina da Silva stated girls should be taught in school that the “optimal age” to start a family is in their late 20s. She warned that many career women risked missing out on motherhood altogether because they didn’t realise that the number of eggs in their body declines over time.

Then, a study from Albany Medical College in New York revealed that most women who have their eggs frozen to delay motherhood are doing so because they’re waiting for “Mr Right” and are putting their careers first.

Personally, I find the idea of women still having babies well into their 60s and older both odd and self-indulgent when you consider how much natural lifespan they have left to be mothers.

The other element of this is the way we tamper with Nature, determined to change the natural order of things because we can make a case for wanting to concentrate on our careers or some other external reason.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m both very pro-career and pro-children if that is what you want. I had my first child at 31 and my second at 35 so I was an older mother in medical terms.

What I don’t really understand is the unshakeable confidence that somehow we can make Nature do our bidding when, plainly, we don’t always have that control.

Yes, we can make women in their 60s pregnant but they aren’t physically in the best condition for this – and that doesn’t even scrape the surface about the energy levels needed to cope with a growing baby.

I genuinely don’t begrudge anyone parenthood; it’s a wonderful, fulfilling gift that goes on giving. But, it’s a huge commitment and it’s hard work, and just because society appears to have given a free pass to us in every other direction that we take in life doesn’t mean it will automatically happen.

Nature makes up its own mind most of the time and, even with intervention, it quite often doesn’t play ball. And this is a fact that needs acknowledging.