HERE comes the next downer: Next month, city buses will carry ads with an upturned baby bottle that’s also an hourglass – and the warning, “Advancing Age Decreases Your Ability to Have Children.”
That’s right. In case you missed recent cover stories like Newsweek’s “The Truth About Fertility” and New York magazine’s “Baby Panic,” the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) is going to blare the news on the city’s streets.
That will surely set off a debate in front of the tampon machine. “Yeah, when I was 27 [the optimal birthing age, says one article],” dead-panned an actress on Saturday Night Live, while holding the magazines, “my cats and I were living above a strip club downtown.”
The reactions will range from wincing guilt to anger to a big old “Duh!” After all, there’s nothing new here: We’ve long known that younger eggs are better eggs.
But it’s easy to forget that when we’re bombarded with pictures of a glowing Madonna (now pregnant with her third child at 43) or Jane Seymour (who had twins at 45) or Geena Davis (who just had her first child at 46).
And today’s longer life expectancies and scientific advances mean women can have kids at a later age, right?
Well, not really.
The hard evidence shows that women who carry babies full term after 40 – let alone 45 or 50 – are clearly exceptions.
US Weekly’s cover had the headline “Will They Ever Have Babies?” over 30-somethings Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox. The story examined how young Hollywood women – focused on their careers (only so many starlet years!) and extremely conscious of their weight – struggle to find a balance between work and family. It hinted that its covergirls might be having problems conceiving.
Many New York women ask themselves the same question: Will I ever have a baby? The focus on career and body image here rivals Hollywood’s.
New York is the Peter Pan of cities: People rarely feel (or act!) their age, as they do in, say, Boise or even Boston.
You can have pink hair or wear mini-skirts at 50, still have a rich social and professional life and not get looked at like you’re some freak from outer space. But in this Never Never Land, you still age.
Delaying childbirth – as well as lengthy battles with weight, and other factors (like stress and smoking) that plague the urban professional set – will make it harder to have a baby.
Which is why ASRM’s warning is particularly apt for this town.
And it is just a warning – ASRM isn’t out to coerce young women into having kids, or make career gals feel like failures. Just to let us know the clinical realities.
Instead of thinking about some abstract “time later on” when we’ll “maybe” have kids, we’re reminded about life’s bitter truths – and our ticking clocks.
Fertility treatments? They average $10,000 to $30,000 and insurance often won’t cover them.
Maybe you can have it all, baby.
Or maybe you don’t want to.
But that’s where we’re at in post-post-feminist whatever: Ads on urban city buses reminding us to have kids.
It’s a healthy reminder, too.
E-mail: jhuden@nypost.com