When is the best age to have your first baby?

Exactly, Annobel - we were lucky in that the timing all came together. We were actually trying for a baby for a couple of years before it happened, but I do think that in the 70s couples still tended to wait until they had the basics before starting a family (in general). These days there are no 'rules' imposed by society or even tradition any more.

I was 30. I was enjoying life in my 20s, not that I didn't enjoy having babies, and if I'd met the right man earlier, I suppose I might have been a mother sooner. I was ready by that time to settle down and we had enough money to put a deposit on a house, buy furniture and appliances and so on.

I was considered to have left it quite late by my family - I had been married four years and was nearly 23 when my first DD was born. Both my sisters and both my daughters had theirs when they were 19 or 20. My mother, on the other hand, was 30 when she got married but went on to have five children in the next ten years. She was lucky to get married - there were two million surplus women after WW1.
I had always wanted children from the time I was about nine - I used to ask neighbours to let me wheel their babies in their prams. However, I wanted us to have our own home , car, etc. before I gave up work. Then I just got so broody I was haunting babywear shops - my arms ached to hold a baby. My husband would have liked to wait a bit longer, for a better car, a caravan, a boat.....but once I made up my mind my baby was born ten months later.
I am not sure that anybody who has not experienced that overwhelming need for a baby can understand it.

I first became a mother at 29 and that was the right time for me. Before that, I was too busy living and getting those things out of my system which should have been got rid of in my teens, but for various reasons weren't.
I don't regret putting off having children until then, and wish my own DD hadn't been in such a hurry to have a family so much earlier, given the problems she's now facing.
I think it all depends on circumstances and the parents involved - some women (and men) are more emotionally and financially prepared to have children earlier than others.

Its my observation that you become emotionally ready for children when, or in the months before they arrive. My first was unplanned but I grew up emotionally with her. There is something about being needed that makes you grow up. I know some never do, and I feel sorry for those kind of parents but most people would be happier avoiding the fertility problems that come if they wait too long. Before 30 for instance.

Well, I'd had four children by the age of 25, but didn't mean to, guv, honest!

(Seriously, when I consider how casually and easily we had children, I feel irresponsible and somewhat guilty, especially with infertility problems in the family. It has all turned out brilliantly, thank whoever, but not to be recommended.)