Females of my generation, including myself, since I am unarguably female, were raised to believe we could have it all: the career life and family life.
I spent years not ruling out any career possibilities because I thought there was nothing in my way; I had the drive, the ambition and the intellect. But then as I got older, I started recalculating my future, realizing I had left one important variable out of the equation: kids.
Yes, I want to have kids. Call me crazy or just a woman, pretty much the same thing. (Calm down, feminists, it was a joke.) I don’t want to have them soon, but I do think babies are adorable and cannot deny I have an overwhelming maternal instinct.
It was when I acknowledged this that I began to hear a little tick-tock going off in my head.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to run off and get knocked up because I think my biological clock is running out, but I think girls of my generation need to take a step back and realize, wait, maybe you can’t have it all.
Maybe you need to prioritize.
We see celebrities giving birth well into their 40s, seemingly without a problem It gives us comfort that we have so much time for settling down and having a family; we can go to school till we’re 30, establish our career and then decide it’s time to pop one (a child, that is) out. 
What we don’t see is the fertility struggle, the IVF treatments, the 40-year-old waking up every two hours for feeding, the 42-year-old chasing a toddler around the house.
Scientists seem to agree with my concerns (scientists and I are just so in sync.); it has been known for some time that older mothers have a greater chance of bearing a child with chromosomal abnormalities, such as Down Syndrome.
A recent study discussed in TIME shows that it is not just older mothers that control the likelihood of abnormalities, but older fathers as well.
(And, since when you find an older mother, you will probably find an older father paired with her, the child will be at higher risk for more than just Down Syndrome.) Older fathers were found much more likely than younger fathers to have children with autism or schizophrenia.
So now, ladies, it’s not just our biological clock we have to worry about; it’s our potential partner’s as well. These studies are especially beneficial to help increase knowledge of from where increased risk for these developmental or psychiatric disorders stem. In America, the rate of children born and diagnosed with autism has skyrocketed to one in 88.
These increased rates may have something to do with new gene mutations passed down, called “de novo mutations,” which have been found in the same study to be 97 percent attributed to the father’s age.
For example, the study found a 20-year-old father will pass 25 genetic mutations to his offspring; a 40-year-old father passes 65 genetic mutations.
A mother will consistently pass down 15 mutations, no matter her age. The increase in genetic mutations translates to an increased risk for developmental or psychiatric disorders.
Another recent study conducted in Iceland compared genetic mutations in children born in 1980 compared to those born in 2011. From 1980 to 2011, the average genetic mutation number increased from 60 to 70, paralleling an increase of fathers’ average ages, which rose from 28 to 33. So yes, dream of doing whatever you’d like.
You can have a great career and  also have a beautiful healthy family, but realize the rate of autism is most likely not going up just because of something in the air. It is likely increasing due to the increasing age of parents.
I understand the desire to have it all, and I am in no way advocating dropping out of school to immediately have babies; but, people, realize there are biological factors involved when having kids.
Not only does female fertility decrease, making it more difficult to conceive, but more and more studies are tying developmental problems and other problems to the age of the parents.
Trust me, I read Newsweek.