You can have a baby after 35. You can have a baby after 40. Five years ago, a 60-year-old woman in New Jersey gave birth to twins.
It does get harder to conceive as the years go by, but a closer examination of the data we all take as gospel reveals the “facts” about fertility decline are based — not on statistical analyses of modern women trying to conceive — but on French birth records from 1670 to 1830.
“We’ve rearranged our lives, worried endlessly and forgone countless career opportunities based on a few statistics about women who resided in thatched-roof huts and never saw a lightbulb,” says Jean M. Twenge, author of “The Impatient Woman’s Guide to Getting Pregnant.”
If we calculated our chances of contracting polio based on data from an era in which “medicine” meant dandelion tea and leeches, this error would be corrected immediately. But advocates for delayed motherhood say a societal stigma against older moms has allowed these fertility myths to continue.
“We need to do something about the negativity and fear because it’s crippling,” says Angel LaLiberte, whose blog, “A Child After 40,” is aimed at debunking myths and normalizing later motherhood. “Even the term ‘biological clock’ is terrifying, as if a little toy gun goes off and out pops a flag that says ‘You’re done.’ ”
Hardly.
According to a report released this month from the CDC, the average age of women giving birth in this country is on the rise. Within the one-year period between 2011 and 2012, the birthrate for women ages 35 to 39 rose 2%, and the rate for women between 40 and 44 rose 1% — all while the overall birthrate remained unchanged.
So why the panic?
“We have deeply rooted cultural stereotype of what a mother should look like: young, vibrant and healthy-looking,” LaLiberte says. “The idea of somebody ‘grandmother age’ being a mother is anathema to some people. It’s going to take time to eradicate that.”
“There is a very common assumption that if you waited until your late 30s or early 40s to have a child, it was because you were focusing on your career. And what is almost always implied is ‘too much,’ ” Twenge says. “For most women that’s not how it goes. You get divorce, you are in a career but you don’t make enough money. Assuming the only factor is ‘hard-driving career women’ is really false. It ignores the complexity of this choice.”
Twenge gave birth to all three of her children after the age of 35; her youngest was born after she turned 40. LaLiberte had her two children at 42 and 45. Both became mothers naturally, without the use of fertility medicine, and both say they were unduly fixated on their odds based on flimsy scientific claims.
“I remember many sleepless nights,” says LaLiberte, who didn’t meet her husband until after her 40th birthday.
After divorcing her first husband at the age of 30, Twenge, a psychology researcher at San Diego State University, scoured the medical data for information about fertility decline. She knew she wanted to be a mother, but who knew when she would meet Mr. Right?
Looking for documented research, Twenge found that the scant studies about fertility decline rooted in modern realities paint a more optimistic picture, with evidence that for women who have sex at least twice a week, 82% of 35- to 39-year-old women conceive within a year, compared with 86% of 27- to 34-year-olds.
A drop, sure, but not a plummet.
As for the widely quoted statistic that only 20% of 30-year-old women and 5% of 40-year-old women get pregnant per cycle, Twenge has no idea where that information came from. No one — from fertility researchers to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine — could tell her where those numbers originated, leading Twenge to conclude, “Someone made them up.”
“As long as you can get pregnant, if it takes a couple more months, who cares?” Twenge says. “Women want to know, ‘Can I have a baby?’ The findings all have the same general conclusion.”
Doctors, however, say it does women a disservice to paint too rosy a picture. Risks of congenital abnormalities increase dramatically with advanced maternal age. Duke researchers will soon publish a study about the maternal health risks of pregnancy after 45, including the increased risk of heart disease and pulmonary embolism. And in-vitro fertilization success rates sharply decrease after 40.
“Most people do well, but if you’re fit and healthy and you exercise, that’s not a guarantee that you will navigate through this process unscathed,” said Dr. Haywood Brown, chair of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Duke University. “The data don’t lie.”
But modern medicine is making screening for abnormalities easier and less invasive, improvements in prenatal care has reduced the risks of birth defects and women have more options — from freezing their eggs in their 20s, to using donor eggs down the road — leading delayed-motherhood advocates to ask, what’s all the fuss about?
Instead of focusing on pregnancy odds, women should be preparing themselves for the reality of motherhood, LaLiberte says.
It’s way easier to pick yourself up off the Mommy and Me floor if your knees don’t predate the Carter administration. “Even 25-year-olds will tell you they’re tired from sleep deprivations and having a baby at the breast all day,” LaLiberte says. “The difference is, younger mothers are allowed to complain.”