The Truth About Female Fertility:
The Case for Taking Your Time
This holiday season you may be bracing yourself for the talk. The talk about any prospective boyfriends in your life, any plans of getting married, if you and your significant other have talked about having kids, because remember your biological clock is a ticking time bomb – you’re not getting any younger.
What does that mean biological clock? this phrase is brought up they are usually talking about fertility. Often in these discussions you will hear of ‘studies’ proving that a woman’s fertility dramatically decreases after 35. The ‘study’ being cited in census data from French farmers in the 1600s- and that it (Henri Leridon, Human Reproduction, Jul 2004). This ancient data is cited over and over again as being proof of women’s fertility when in actuality there are many reasons besides age for fertility to have decreased so radically in this population such as general health and life expectancy, there are too many unknowns to be conclusive, and even if they were conclusive then things are very much different now regarding women’s health.
The truth is, when looking at modern data a woman who is healthy has an 86% chance of getting pregnant within a year at the age of 27. At the age of 37 that same woman has an 82% of getting pregnant (David B. Dunson. Obstetrics and Gynecology, Jan 2004). Not that drastic decrease your aunt always tells you about. In reality if you do not already have fertility problems age is not going to affect you all that much.
So, if fertility does not decrease what about the health of that pregnancy? Everyone knows that the health of the fetus goes down drastically in your mid-thirties, right?
Not exactly.
You have probably heard it said, or told to you by a family member concerned with your childlessness, that the chances of birth defects double after 40. While the chance of a miscarriage does increase the actual rate of birth defects does double- from 0.5% to 1% (Mayo Clinic, April 2014).
So why are we still being told these things from the media? Well, the fertility industry is a multimillion dollar business, and if ‘older’ women hoping to become mothers can be scared into their offices that just means more profit. More and more young women are being cautioned to freeze their eggs now, just in case, with the majority of these women never actually using those eggs they’ve paid so much to freeze (Eliza Barclay, NPR Shots, 24 Nov 2015).
When it comes to having children you can wait until you’re ready.