This past week, the Guardian ran an op-ed by Zoe Williams that warmed my cold Harpy heart.
Over-40 women, you’ve given birth to a healthy facet of modern life, reads the headline. Quite simply, there is no best age to be pregnant.
Hell. Yes. For once, a story about older mothers that isn’t full of won’t someone think of the children! hand-wringing or if you wait too long, you’ll be infertile! scaremongering.
The number of children born to women over 40 in England and Wales hit a record 27,000 last year, and has trebled in the last 20 years – a trend that has alarmed medical experts. Philip Steer, a professor of obstetrics, said: “There are two big problems with [postponing children]. First, you are less and less likely to get pregnant. Second, the physical risks of pregnancy, such as pre-eclampsia, diabetes, kidney problems and tiredness, go up from the age of 30.” Nobody would argue with any of that; but nor does a simple deduction follow that women over 40 should avoid getting pregnant.
I’ve written before about the rush to judge women who use fertility treatments to conceive postmenopausally. The condemnation of women who have children later in life—by whatever means—is simply another visit from the uteri police, along with an implicit condemnation of women who have the nerve to de-prioritize reproduction, if only temporarily.
Williams writes:
The judgmental tone is all rooted in a timeless anxiety that women are too feckless and/or stupid to be left in charge of growing children – an anxiety I have an ever growing awareness of, the more background misogyny I realise there still is. Propagation is the main work of any species, and if you seriously believe women to be inferior, it must be incredibly aggravating to see them in charge of it.
It’s always aggravating to the Patriarchy when women want something other than all babies all the time, even though men often make the exact same choice to delay having children.
You can easily discredit any of the usual arguments condemning older mothers by pointing out that they apply equally, if not more so, to older fathers. Most of the anti-older-mother arguments are irrelevant, or part of a double standard, as Williams points out:
Furthermore, it’s quite true – women are feckless and/or stupid, but only to the same degree as the rest of the population. Some women will have a baby at the last possible moment, just as some people will file a tax return the day before they get fined. Some women will get breast cancer as a result of late-age births, that’s just a fact. Some men will get bowel cancer because they don’t get enough exercise, and maybe 40 years ago they would have been working manually and got plenty.
But in a chauvinist world, older dads tend to get a slap on the back and a fond ribbing about how their guys can still swim, whereas older moms get the side-eye from their neighbors, the media and the medical establishment, (unless they’re Sarah Palin, who’s used her over-40 pregnancy to burnish her reputation as an anti-abortion crusader and Good Christian Wife).
But even if you play by the rules and have children young, there’s still no guarantee you won’t be smacked with a different double-standard:
The people who hector mothers in the 35-plus bracket would be (indeed, are) the same people who berate mothers living on benefits because they had children young and can’t afford to go back to work.
Mega-bestselling author J.K. Rowling experienced exactly that backlash as a young single mother and attacked it in a recent op-ed:
Women like me (for it is a curious fact that lone male parents are generally portrayed as heroes, whereas women left holding the baby are vilified) were, according to popular myth, a prime cause of social breakdown.
If you have babies too young, you’re a disgrace, and a burden on society. Have them too old, you’re unnatural and a bad mother. It’s the classic double bind. It’s worth noting that J.K. Rowling got caught in both sides of the double bind, as she is also one of the “35 plus bracket” moms, having had two children after that age, with the younger born shortly before her 40th birthday.
The conclusion of Williams’s essay is the best part:
Mothers over the age of 40 may have swelled in numbers…but they haven’t done anything wrong. It’s savagely annoying to see them presented as a social problem. All these reports should start with a simple word: “congratulations”.
Hear, hear. If those over-40 moms represent “a social problem,” what about their mates? A small percentage of those women may have conceived via artificial insemination, but the vast majority got pregnant the old-fashioned way: with middle-aged men who are somehow magically exempt from being labelled a social problem, even as they do exactly the same thing as the women.
The take-home lesson here? Have children whenever you’re ready. You’ll get blowback regardless of your choice, so you might as well prioritize your own health, finances and well-being, because the one thing that’s certain is society won’t do it for you.
“There are two big problems with [postponing children]” but…maybe you just don’t want children UNTIL you are in a happy committed relationship whith someone….and as a single woman i know that is not very easy to find.
i don’t postpone children, i’m simply not in a serious relationship since…(2000!!), so if i meet someone and we fall in love i would like to have children even though i’m 39 years old…
and i think life is not the same for all of us, not all of us find someone at the “right age” so…
Many women–and men–are not ready– either emotionally or financially– for children until early 30s or so. And that creates something of a paradox–as you become less able to have a baby, you are probably more prepared in every other way.
I don’t begrudge anyone who tries to have children at a later age, nor am I an official member of the uteri police, but it’s myopic to not acknowledge the risks and difficulties that come with a pregnancy later in life.
Your article also fails to acknowledge the enormous financial costs involved in trying to conceive after 40. Many women, even if they wanted to, couldn’t afford to have a baby at this age.
I agree that our childbearing choices seem to be subject to popular discussion in a way that is (1)rude and intrusive, (2) insulting and belittling, and (3) not applied to men. However…
I don’t agree with the idea that we should have kids whenever we’re ready. There’s a whole lot more to it than just deciding that now is a good time. In my opinion, the decision to become a parent is the most significant one a woman can make. It affects everything-your body, your self-image, your priorities, your decisions, your budget, your career. And it does so forever, not just for the first 18 years. Although we can’t know everything that will happen during the time our kids are at home, we do know that we will have to commit time, money and emotional energy to an extent unequalled (sp?)by anything else. Precisely because society is prepared to condemn us for whatever decision we make, we should think long and hard about what we want and what we’re prepared to put up with before we decide to become parents. Sure, all of this is true of men as well (mostly), but it is and will always be a greater set of demands on us. That’s the price we pay for the privilege of being able to gestate.
I also think that maybe, Becky, you and the writers quoted here are conflating two aspects of childbearing. There’s the physical cost of having a baby after 40, and there’s the experience of actually being a parent over 40. The likelihood of long-term physical consequences is higher with later pregnancies, like it or not, and those can affect your ability to parent, to work outside the home, and simply to live your life.
And parenting, folks, is a younger person’s game. Sure, lots of people do it after 40, but it’s significantly harder the older you get. Yeah, I know you trade energy for life experience and all that, but parenting is a hugely draining endeavor, both physically and emotionally. You should think honestly about what you’re going to be able to give to a kid, and that’s true of men and women. Ultimately, deciding to become a parent means creating a life, whose condition is heavily dependent on what you can offer the child-and I’m not talking about stuff here. No one should bring a child into the world unless they’re really prepared to give it what it needs. Whether you’re male or female, if you’re having a kid to satisfy your ego or carry on the family name or so you’ll have someone to take care of you in your old age or because you want the experience, stop right there and get a pet instead.
I’m not even addressing the social costs of higher expenses for pre- and post-natal care for older mothers, the higher likelihood of birth defects, the problem of children orphaned in their youth and so forth. Although I think there’s a lot of selfishness involved in the decision to have kids later in life, men and women make selfish decisions that impact society every day, and I’m not going to hold women to a higher standard on this.
But we owe it to ourselves, as the ultimate repository of the ability to bear children, to give this decision the most serious consideration we bring to anything. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. There may not be a best age to be pregnant, but there sure is a point after which it is a poor decision for everyone involved.
Your article also fails to acknowledge the enormous financial costs involved in trying to conceive after 40. Many women, even if they wanted to, couldn’t afford to have a baby at this age.
Age brings all sorts of medical risk factors. And conceiving after 40 is only expensive if they’re using fertility treatments. Not all women need them.
I truly believe that women—especially older women with some life experience—are smart enough to consider the physical and financial risk factors of childbearing and make informed decisions. Unfortunately, I often feel like I’m in the minority.
Becky–But a clear majority of women over 40, depending on what study you look at, would need medical assistance to get pregnant after 40. The costs run in the tens of thousands of dollars.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by D Drapeau, Pursuit of Harpyness. Pursuit of Harpyness said: Yes We Can (Have Babies When We Want To) @ http://bit.ly/92VbSi [...]
@Charlemagneinsweats: True, but so what? If women–and often their partners—want to spend money on fertility treatments, that’s their business and it should not be judged, the same as it’s their business to spend money on birth control or abortion, if they so choose.
Saying “OMG, it’s expensive!” is neither here nor there. Women still have the right to choose when and how they bear children.
Also, if you think cost should be considered in terms of whether or not we condemn women for using fertility treatments, remember that there are women who need fertility treatments when they are in their 20s and 30s, as well as women who use them because their male partners are infertile.
Becky–Your article has a “let them eat cake” tone to it regarding women and fertility, as if everyone has tens of thousands to spend on in vitro procedures.
The message that women should forego pregnancy during their most fertile years and have kids whenever they want may sound empowering, but it’s also misleading.
Charlemagneinsweats: “But a clear majority of women over 40, depending on what study you look at, would need medical assistance to get pregnant after 40. The costs run in the tens of thousands of dollars”
That is indeed a reason why some older women might not actually be able to have children. It is not a reason why they should be condemned for having them if no (financial or fertility-related) problem presents itself. In other words: if its not your problem why are you griping about it?
@charlemagne: It’s only “misleading” if you assume women are too dumb to understand and weigh the risk factors beforehand. I’m not trying to mislead anyone here—if you plan to postpone childbearing, you already know there are risks involved. So if you choose do it anyway, that’s your informed decision.
My point is that people need to back the fuck off women’s informed decisions.
charlemagneinsweats, who said “women should forego pregnancy during their most fertile years?”
Sara–does not the title “Yes We Can (Have Babies When We Want To)” imply that? How about the quote “Have children whenever you’re ready.”
As if it’s only the desire to have a baby that matters, as opposed to certain bilogical realities.
@Charlemagne: Do you think “have children whenever you’re ready” is bad advice?
Would you prefer I tell women to have children before they’re ready simply because they’re worried their fertility would decline?
As commenter CE pointed out, above, not all women have the option of having children during their “most fertile years”, as you put it. (BTW, the “most fertile years” for a woman are in her late teens.)
How does “Have children when you want” equal “DON’T have children during your most fertile years?”
Unless you don’t think any women want to have children during their most fertile years.
Becky–No I don’t. But if you choose to wait until the optimal readiness date to try and get pregnant you might not be able to have a child.
And I agree that one’s “most fertile years” are not the best years to have a baby. Hopefully evolution will catch up with the trend of people waiting to have kids and women in their late 30s will become more fertile.
I cheered that Williams article too.
Women used to have children into their 40s naturally all the time – my great-grandmothers did it, but they just happened to be their 8th and 12th kids instead of first.
It’s a shame that saying, as Becky and Williams have, that it’s ok for women to get pregnant later (and neither was talking about 60 year old mothers), should be seen as inflammatory or revolutionary. It’s pure common sense.
For myself, I think sometime in my early 30s would be a good age – but whether or not that happens will depend on a lot of factors that are not entirely in my control, such as if I find the right partner, my economic situation, etc.
There’s no right model to live a life.
@Charlemagne: Last time I checked, evolution was a pretty slow process. I wouldn’t count on it happening any time soon.
And I’d imagine most women understand the risk that they might not get pregnant when they want to. That can happen at any age though, and can also be a result of male infertility. It’s one of those things that we just don’t entirely control.
@Charlemagne: I agree. But I think most women are acutely aware that if they wait until later in life they run the risk of it being difficult. Maude knows, the scaremongerers are loud enough.
That said, I don’t think people should condemn women for being willing to run that risk, which was the main point of the post. Most of the condemnation is coming from people who have their own agendas and are not actually concerned about women’s well-being.
For me, the relevant point of Becky’s post and the accompanying article is that too often, women are judged for whatever decisions they make. It is already happening right here on P of H, which: sad. For me, the cost of in vitro processes has any place here — Becky was posting about women’s personal decisions. The making of a decision necessarily requires weighing the pros and cons. I highly doubt that anyone makes it to 35 or 40 and doesn’t realize that there will be obstacles to having kids…that is, put simply, the risk you run. However, the tradeoff for not having kids right away is the chance to advance in a career, to travel, whatever. Those things are not worthless. Each person has to value these things for himself or herself, act accordingly, and face the consequences. When someone says to (34-yo) me, “Oh, aren’t you afraid it will be too late,” they are saying “too late FOR ME.” The answer is no. I am trained as a biologist, so I know very well what I am up against. To those who worry about my dried-up ovaries: I made my decisions; I am the one who has to live with them; I appreciate your concern; and that is all I have to say to you on the matter. If you persist in second-guessing me, you will only succeed in pissing me off.
Becky–I’m not sure women are acutely aware of the decline in fertiliy after 30. This article suggests the opposite.
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/21/2/558
That being said, I’m not hating on women that try.
I think women are PLENTY aware. There is literally no end to the negative messages we get about declining fertility. Perhaps some women may not get those messages because they don’t consume mass media or don’t receive regular ob-gyn care, but I think they’re a minority.
And even if some women are not acutely aware, that’s totally independent of their right to choose to postpone childbearing, and their right to do so without being judged.
charlemagne:
It seems that if someone wants to have children so badly that they are scared of not being able to as they age they will factor that information into their decision-making process.
Sure, there are always going to be people who will look back and regret doing x and not y when they were 22 (or 32 or whenever), but shouldn’t we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they made the best decision that they could at each time in their life, instead of assuming universal ignorance and thinking we have a right to hand-wring for the slow ticking away of every ladies’ declining fertility?
I think people reading and commenting here probably tend to be relatively well-educated about fertility, our bodies,and other relevant issues. I am not convinced that is true in general, especially when the media makes it appear as if gestating and delivering a baby as an older mother is a piece of cake! Even at 50 or more! Just read People magazine. To point this out does not mean that I am saying that women are stupid or can’t make decisions, just that they don’t have all relevant information.
I think it’s great to say yes we can (have babies when we want to), but for older women, that really applies to a subset of very privileged women who either have insurance that covers IVF, etc or who can afford $30,000 per try with a 35% percent (roughly) success rate per try.
And, I do have ethical problems with creating human zygotes over and over again just to repeatedly try to fulfill someone’s desire to be pregnant. I blame the fertility industry for this, rather than the women who want to get pregnant, because it’s obviously very heartbreaking to want to get pregnant and not be able to.
If every woman were told implicitly in her native language this PSA of declining fertility in their late 30′s, allegedly out of some sort of “concern” (for what?), WHAT is the point or purpose of that message?
The info neither raises my income to a level where I could afford children during my alleged most fertile time nor does it increase public acceptance and support of support programs which make it easier to have/raise children. So knowing this, really KNOWING this because it is my current reality, does not change anything.
Since I feel I’ve been forced to postpone having a child, what good does telling me that when we do reach our pre-baby goals, that it’s going to be biologically harder to conceive? I KNOW THAT.
The hand wringing and gnashing of teeth over women’s reproductive choices seems, to me, to all come from the same place – people just assume we’re so ignorant, we have to be told over and over and over again whatever fearful, tearful, won’t-someon-think-of-the-children message society is currently hyperventilating over.
And in the end, we’re literally damned if we do (as J.K. Rowling so aptly put it), damned if we postpone, AND damned if we don’t.
Jenna FTW
Thank you, Jenna!
I think Becky’s conclusion that we should have babies “Whenever [we]‘re ready” contains an inherent assumption that being ready means already having considered all the financial, emotional, physical, and other aspects of the decision on what “ready” means. Being really ready means having thought it all through, not “Oh, I’ll have a fudge sunday and maybe later get pregnant today! That’d be fun!” Becoming a parent is too important a decision NOT to be ready for, whenever one makes it! (as she has already said)
So mischiefmanager, while I often agree with your thoughtful comments, I very much disagree with this one. While it’s true that SOME women don’t realize the possible risks of waiting until 40 to begin trying to conceive, anyone who reads the newspaper, blogs, internet, and watches current TV not only KNOWS, they (the female ones) get head-bashed with approaching doom if they’re over 30, for god’s sake.
And I don’t agree that raising children is necessarily a young person’s game. As with most things, it totally depends on the person, doesn’t it? Some people are impulsive shits when they’re young, and learn better control as life knocks them up the head. So they become better able to be parents when they’re older. Others have more energy when they’re young, and like to be parents then. I envy my husband his young parents, because I am taking care of my elderly parents now, and I wish my kids could have as much fun with my parents as they have with his. But personally, I am a MUCH better parent now, nearing 40, than I would have been at 27 or even 33. And yes, it will bring different burdens as I and my children age. But it in no way lessens the quality of parenting I can give them, NOR should it affect whether anyone *thinks* I should be able to do it or not.
And thank you Jenna! Yes!
If we had support programs in place to ALLOW younger people the chance to have parents – such as affordable, quality childcare, paid maternity leave, healthcare for all, a stable national economy that didn’t require nomadic employment, reliable housing, etc., this wouldn’t be such an electrified issue.
It’s rather like all the talking heads blaming people without health insurance, as though those people HAD A CHOICE. If they could afford it, they would have it. But they can’t. So let’s fine them and tell them they’re BAD.
Or let’s blame our economic depression on all those poor dumb folk who took out mortgages, rather than on the misleading repackaging and securitizing of those loans, and the gigantic financial behemoths, with no federal regulation or oversight, that did that.
Oops – the chance to BE parents. Most of us HAVE parents.
Most of what I have to say is less about the actual post and more about the comments.
I’ve had so many poorly-educated-moms-of-5-by-30 warn me about my dwindling fertility, that I just don’t buy that women don’t know this. I’ve also known so many mothers of 5+ children who kept having healthy children (unassisted)into their 40s and 50s – that I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea that women can’t get pregnant then or that their children will be grown from withered eggs. I’ve also donated my eggs to women in their late 20s/early 30s – so it seems that other posters are right that age is not the only reason women need intervention. While we have figures on how many women need IVF and similar treatments to conceive after 40, do we really know that they wouldn’t have had the same trouble at 20? Or that they didn’t and only chose to seek treatment after 10-20 years of trying and failing? I know this is all anecdotal and not universally true, I’m just saying.
Furthermore, if we are talking of women waiting until later in life to accomplish educational and career goals, I think that also disproves the idea that these women would be naive of the idea that there are possible problems with women conceiving later in life.
I also feel that the idea that a parent over 40 isn’t able to keep up with their kid or give them what they need is preposterous. Sure there’s a difference in energy level between a 20 yr old and a 40 yr old but that should not deter the 40 yr old as much as I think the lack of education, homeownership, or health insurance should deter the 20 yr old.
I’m child-free by choice, but I admit to getting a pang when the nurse at my OBGYN asked if I still menstruate. A bunch of my 40-something friends are pregnant/ttc. And I’m 39!
I am surprised by some of the comments here today. Really, if you asked the child of a woman who became a mother at 40 +, do you think that person would prefer not to be alive? All lives carry risk, burden, give pain. All lives also have the potential for joy, connection, and love. Deciding that a person shouldn’t have life because you co-dependently judge that life less good because of your perception that the person’s mother might die earlier than is optimal, is inappropriate. Having concern for others is good. Deciding what’s good for others is less so.
I am 41, and my daughter is 15 months old. I am in better shape than I have ever been, partly due to PT I’ve done since her birth, and partly due to exercising I started a few years before I got pregnant. I had a child when I was ready. I was also fortunate in that my body was happy to oblige, and I needed no help to do so. Am I sad that I may not be around for my daughter into her 40′s? Yes, of course. But I think that the love and mothering I can give her while I am alive is a real thing of value, and that my partner and I will be able to offer her a good start in life, better than I would have been able to earlier. I’ve done more personal work, am more centered, am more able to love, less likely to get stuck in anger or resentment.
There are always pros and cons to every choice, to every life. But deciding who gets to have one or not should certainly not be our job.
I also remember reading that older mothers tend to live longer. In fact, here is a link I discovered with a quick google, and I am sure there are more.
http://parenting.families.com/blog/study-says-older-moms-live-longer
I still think we’re conflating public policy with a particular kind of misogyny here. Certainly there’s a connection, in that the latter often leads to the former, but the post is about perceptions of our childbearing choices. For the sake of discussion, pretend that all things are equal, even though we know they’re not.
The post itself is absolutely right in that women are condemned for whatever reproductive choice they make, from having kids early to not having kids at all. And this is unarguably because men resent the lack of total control that is a result of biology. All you have to do to hear this in its most naked form is to hang out at a clinic one time, and you’ll hear antis yelling to male companions of patients to “be a man” and “don’t let her kill your baby”. So as feminists, it’s incumbent on us to support other women in their choices. Moreover, what’s the point of making a woman feel bad once a baby is born? Mothers in this anti-child culture need all the support we can give them.
Having said that, let’s look at some of the societal problems posters have raised. Charlemagne says that reproductive technologies that make pregnancy possible later in life, even past the point of natural fertility, are simply not available to all women who might want them. She’s right. Access to those technologies is a reward of privilege. As a society, we have not had the discussion about how widely available those technologies should be, given how tremendously expensive they are. But for now, going through cycle after cycle of IVF or having zygotes implanted are simply not options that the vast majority of women can choose.
Jenna has been forced to delay having kids due to economic concerns and Elibard (thanks for the kind words!) posits a world in which those concerns and others that arise from societal failures to provide support are gone. I long for the day when that world exists, but I don’t see it ever happening. We simply can’t guarantee that nothing bad will happen in the world that would hurt our opportunities to have kids. That said, many of the supports Elibard mentioned are well within reach, and we must work to make them available to all at a price everyone can afford. Still, kids are very expensive endeavors and there’s no way to promise that anyone who wants to have a kid will be able to afford to do so when she’s ready.
AmBam suggests that if supports were in place, women wouldn’t wait so long to have kids, thus reducing the critique about older mothers. It should be easy enough to find data about childbearing age in countries that do have lots of supports and countries that don’t, remembering to compare countries that are similar in culture and GDP and so forth. My sense, without having any data on hand, is that the more supports you have, the later women will wait. That’s simply because more choice results in delayed childbirth, which is a good thing. Countries that offer long parental leaves, reliable, high-quality child care and so forth probably also have other woman-friendly policies that provide women the ability to spend their young adult years building careers. But I could be totally wrong.
Finally, Cellocat, arguing from the existence of a child is a big mistake. That’s what antis do. Of course you don’t want to unwish a kid once it’s born (generally speaking). But this discussion isn’t about the kids themselves; it’s about the women who may or may not have them. If you follow your logic, all possible kids have a right to be born, so contraception, abortion and even waiting are denying life to potential kids. Let’s not get caught in that trap. Our lives are the ones under consideration here, not the lives of the kids we might have.
Sorry about the long, long posts, and thanks for reading!
I’m too lazy to look for it (and I should be working), but I could have sworn I read some sort of article about 40+ women stopping or intermittently using birth control and ending up pregnant due to the “all of your eggs are rotten after 35 and you won’t be able to have a baby” message. I think women are getting it and in some cases it’s causing problems.
@mishchiefmanager: All of the reasons for having children that you are listing as bad have been given to me as good reasons that I should stop being selfish and have kids.
Mischiefmanager – if people argue that older women shouldn’t have a kid because they’ll die too early, isn’t that the same thing? I mean, isn’t that just saying that having a kid late is harming your child? All I’m saying is that to argue against a woman having a child because she won’t be able to give that child the “right sort” of life is paternalistic.
@VaS: there’s just no winning, it’s true.
@cellocat: In what way is it paternalistic to point out facts? And no, it isn’t the same thing at all. You said “if you asked the child of a woman who became a mother at 40 +, do you think that person would prefer not to be alive?”. That statement is focused on the kid, not the woman. And doing that means we fall into the trap the Patriarchy sets for us of devaluing our lives in favor of others’ lives.
I didn’t say anything about “the right sort of life”; I don’t know what that is. But to pretend that there aren’t serious potential problems to, say, giving birth at 50 or 60 or later is just to deny reality. It’s no different than acknowledging that, say, having a kid while you’re homeless is not optimal for you or the kid.
I feel like the difference between “should” and “should be able to” is getting a little lost in this thread. I think everyone is in agreement that adult women of all ages should be able to control their own fertility to the maximum extent that is technologically possible. Where there is disagreement, it seems to me, is in whether or not a) we should say anything about when women should or shouldn’t have children and b) if so, what should we say on that topic.
Personally, I find that a balance needs to be struck between the sometimes-competing interests of promoting reproductive freedom and promoting responsible parenthood and healthy families. It seems a little inane to deny that there are some situations in which people just shouldn’t have children. Some of those situations have to do with age (both young and old) and clearly don’t apply to everyone within a certain age bracket — but apply to greater percentages as you move towards the extremes. However, that doesn’t mean that the young or old shouldn’t have the right to reproductive freedom, it just means that reproductive freedom, *like any other right*, is one that should be exercised judiciously.
VaS – I saw the same article, and I also don’t remember where. It was about a public health campaign in Britain. If I remember the article correctly, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the British health service had a rash of women in their late 30s and early 40s show up, completely surprised to find themselves pregnant and NOT in menopause. Apparently the main problem was that, due to images in the mass media, they had bought the idea that their ovaries had shriveled up by then. So the public health service started a campaign to inform “older” women “of childbearing age” (I’m not going to unpack that now) that they WERE still able to become pregnant, and YES, they still needed to use birth control.
And I like seeing this discussion return to a reasoned approach.
My badly made point was that it’s highly unlikely that people have children for purely altruistic reasons. I don’t think that it’s even possible. Your “bad” reasons are other people’s “good” reasons. Does the fact that one of the reasons someone had kids was to “carry on the family name” automatically make them a bad parent? Does it mean they should not have had children at all? Would you tell this person they shouldn’t have had kids if you were aware this was one of their reasons for doing so?
No one person’s reasons or timing for having children will ever be right to someone else. Which was what I thought was pretty much Becky’s point.
@VaS: Yeah, that was definitely part of it. Also that people’s reasons for judging women’s reproductive decisions very rarely come from a positive or pro-woman place.
Thanks for a rousing conversation, y’all.
mm – I will just say that I didn’t suggest that having a kid at 50 or 60 is a good idea; I don’t. But I don’t think that all the facts are clear. I have gotten into a kneejerk reaction myself in response to someone older getting pregnant, and I think that’s partly because the facts are sometimes distorted by what seems to amount to a scare campaign.
Either women have choice, or they don’t. If they do, and we societally support that, then we have to accept that there will be outliers, people who are having kids at a time when it’s clear they’re not going to be around for much of the child’s life. But as Becky says above, “judging women’s reproductive decisions very rarely come from a positive or pro-woman place.” And people often do that under the guise of caring for the child and what sort of life they suppose it’ll have, which I believe is a paternalistic approach.
I’m sorry if I’m not expressing this well. I’m certainly not trying to bolster the child’s right to life over the mother’s!
When people tell me that if I’m not careful, I could end up infertile, they’re not warning me of a potential future. They’re expecting me to head it off at the pass, so they can feel better about my ability to propagate the species. Waiting too long and not having children is not considered an acceptable outcome. That’s why women need to be warned of the “risks,” but by risk people DON’T mean statistical likelihood of an outcome, they mean the purgatory of infertility which will make me regret my entire life. When they say I’m at a higher risk of having a child with Down’s syndrome if I’m older when I get pregnant, what they mean is how dare I take the chance that I’ll have an imperfect child because the responsible thing to do would be to not inflict it on society.
When they warn me again of the risks I’m taking, they’re not just letting me know, they’re telling me I’m an idiot for not coming to their conclusions. They’re saying everyone who knows the true risk of being infertile for waiting wouldn’t do it, so if you’re waiting, you must not be able to understand the risk. If people just wanted to let me know what my risks were, they’d tell me as if I’d still be able to make any choice I want.
Wow. Well said, KB.
I agree with KB except for the Down’s syndrome argument.
The risk of having a child with Down’s syndrome is 1/1,300 for a 25-year-old woman. At age 45, the risk of a having a child with Down’s syndrome is 1/30.
That is useful to know, as one makes one decisions about when to have kids. Knowing this helped motivate me to have kids at age 34 and 36 … I wouldn’t say I wasn’t ready. Who is ever really “ready”? I think it would be terrible to hide this information, or act as though it is not incredibly important to many many women.
[...] It is so rare to find commentary on women having children later in life without it being spun as a grave social problem. The Guardian has a great op-ed debunking some of this, and some good commentary here. [...]
I think this is another round of anger at women who think they should get to do anything other than reproduction. Spending your first 20 years of adulthood making the choice that if it’s now or never for children, well then it will have to be never freaks some people out — if she’s not being a devoted caregiver to *somebody*, then what the hell is she doing? Next thing you know, she’ll want to vote or something.
My sister arrived at 40 having made decided that ‘never’ was better than ‘now’ up until that point. Dire warnings notwithstanding, she conceived effortlessly both times she tried and has two perfectly healthy children. And the resources to send them to private schools and a well-built support network, things she wouldn’t have had for them younger. As you pointed out, a lot of these naysayers make it sound like she wasn’t even supposed to try at over 40, because she’d dared have a life up until then or something.
I would say it all depends on the community a woman is a part of as far as her choice goes. I am part First Nations Canadian and there are not to many women who wait till they are in there 40′s or older to have there first baby. I think that if a woman has made plans about the care of her child should she not be lucky enough to have healthy babies at 45 then fine, go have a kid when you want.
What I see is that many of these movie stars who have babies do it to get the spotlight on them as there fame is tanking. This sort of ego trip is part of the problem.I think the rich woman who can afford all of this IVF is sometimes saying to the 25 year old women ” see, I can do it too still”.
Just because we are smart women does not mean ego plays no part in when we have a family.I believe many women of all ages have had children to get social strokes. That may not be why the woman who wrote this advocates older motherhood but then why go on about celeb older moms as a setup?
I work as a personal care aid. A number of my clients are in there 50′s. In 20 years of being an aid I have only had one client under age 40. For that reason alone I think I would not chance getting pregnant at my age.