Dr. Gillian Lockwood, medical director at the Midland Fertility Clinic in the United Kingdom, says the best age to have a child is 25.
And while our bodies might be ready in our mid-twenties, Dr. Lockwood acknowledges that the majority of women's lifestyles might not be.
'Age 25 is exactly the time when today’s young women have left university, are trying to get off on a good career, trying to pay back their student loans, trying to find someone who wants to have babies with them and trying to get on the housing ladder,' she told the Evening Standard.
She also had a blunt reminder for those wanting to fall pregnant later in life.
'The bleak reality is that the chance of IVF working with your own eggs once you are 40 is absolutely abysmal,' she said. 'In what other branch of medicine would we let, yet alone encourage, patients to pay for an elective operation with a less than five percent chance of working?'
But don't let these kind of numbers freak you out.
Let's be honest, there's rarely an 'ideal' time to start a family, only you can determine when is best.
This article originally appeared on Women's Health.
