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Forget teen pregnancies:
Moms over 40 the new normal
For the first time in recorded Canadian history, women over 40 are
officially having more kids than teens are.
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Halle Berry was pregnant over 40 |
As teens take birth control and mothers prefer to be changing careers
than changing diapers, young and middle-aged women are rescheduling
motherhood to a later date. And now, for the first time ever recorded in
Canada, being pregnant over 40 is more common than teenage pregnancies.
"I think of it as an evolutionary change," says Elizabeth Gregory, a
professor at the University of Houston who interviewed 100 women who
started families after age 35 in the United States, where the trend is
similar. "Women can control their fertility in ways they couldn't
before."
According to the most recent Statistics Canada data, in 2012, women
over 40 gave birth to 13,395 children, while teenagers produced 12,915.
Demographers have been expecting this tipping point for decades. In
1974, the older age group gave birth to just 3,550 children while
teenagers produced 38,650 - and the numbers have shifted each year
since. The transition has just been confirmed in the U.K. and Australia
as well, while data show that men are also fathering children later in
life: the average age of Canadian fathers at birth of their children was
41 in 2011, compared to 39 in 1995.
Career
So what's the holdup? "I wasn't one of those women off pursuing a big
fancy career," says Erika Schroll, a mother who gave birth at age 40
without artificial reproduction therapy, after a first birth at age 30
with her former husband. "I just wanted a partner who I had a better
working relationship with."
Indeed, while teenage pregnancy has fallen due to later marriages and
better contraception since the 1960s, older women are delaying pregnancy
for the sake of work or better lives. The recently adopted medical term
is "mothers of advanced maternal age," although Schroll says doctors
still refer to them as women with "geriatric pregnancies." "We find it
hilarious," says Schroll. "It makes you feel like [you need] a walker
and a cane."
Perhaps they don't need crutches, but many do need artificial
reproductive therapy (ART). Quebec, Manitoba and New Brunswick offer tax
credits for in vitro fertilization, a type of ART in which a doctor
draws sperm and eggs from a man and woman, fertilizes the egg and
re-inserts it into a woman's womb to increase the chance of pregnancy.
It costs about $10,000 per round. Last year, Ontario began covering the
procedure for all women under 43, although not the required drugs, which
can cost an additional $5,000.
Along with celebrities including Celine Dion, Tina Fey and Halle
Berry, who all gave birth after 40, the highly educated represent a
primary clientele for ART. "Academics have a low fertility rate because
we spend a lot of time in graduate school," says Rachel Mongolis, a
professor of sociology at the University of Western Ontario. "I know
quite a lot of people who have tried [ART]. There's not very much taboo
on this."
There is trepidation, however. Mothers over 40 both receive advanced
monitoring during pregnancy and are offered inductions of labour at 39
weeks, rather than the 41 weeks offered to younger women. Their children
are at increased risk of chromosomal abnormalities causing autism or
other developmental disabilities, according to the Society of
Gynecologists and Obstetricians in 2011. Pam MacInnis, a midwife in
Toronto, hears fears from her older clients. "They'll say, 'how many
blood tests have I had? How many injections? [They'll talk about] the
increased watch they're under, the appointments ... It might take away
from the general experience of pregnancy."
Bonus
Another downside, Schroll knows, is that she won't be around as long
for her now 17-month-old son, Paul. "One of his parents could die in
high school, and that's not a bonus," she says. Gregory echoes, "It's
not predictable whether you'll be there in the long-term for your kids.
They'll miss you." Further, if the next generation delays having kids
also, there will be fewer grandparents. As Gregory says, "You might be
80 or 90 [when your grandchildren are born], and you might be dead."
Yet when maternity comes with maturity, mothers can parent with less
financial stress, more stable relationships and more life experience to
pass onto their kids. "The media says women don't understand that their
fertility wanes, and that they're stupid," says Gregory. "But actually,
they are being responsible and thoughtful."
"Tick-tock anxiety," or the social pressure on women to reproduce, is
beginning to fade, as society becomes more accepting of women not having
children at all. Although some women may feel a biological urge to give
birth, Gregory says, "what we're finding is maybe there isn't a
biological urge to parent. Some people delay and realize they can have
happy lives without children."
Parenting
Or with them, later in life. Schroll says she's less anxious
parenting Paul than she was while parenting her firstborn, Arabel. "I'm
not so invested in the 'make baby a genius' [programs]," she says. "He
likes to chuck toys over the baby gate. At 25, I'd be like, 'Stop that
right now!' Older parents, we see the sweetness." While her boy has
proved more challenging than her girl, she concludes, "it's a more
intense baby, but a more relaxed me."
- Chatelaine.com |
