Throughout their lives, women are repeatedly told by that the “optimal childbearing years” are 20-35 by health professionals and society. But a strong focus on professional development, higher educational attainment, and a focus on dating longer in order to avoid divorce have led women to push pregnancy back more and more over the years.
“A lot of us are having careers that we are focusing on for longer, or it’s taking longer to find the right person,” said Hoboken mother-of-three Sally Robertson, 39, last week as she and another mom watched their children pay at the small park by the Hudson Street Starbucks.
Her friend, who did not want her name published, said she was 33 when she had her first of two children.
“…which is considered young now,” Robertson, 39, interjected.
“I’m not sure of anybody in the area having kids in their 20s,” added the friend, who is 35. “But I’m sure it exists.”
In New Jersey, the median age of women having a child is 30.5, according to the state Department of Health.
‘Right now, 50 is like the new 30’
Single women know that having children later increases the difficulty of conceiving a child, and increases the risks of birth defects. But some do not always find the right person or get their lives together as quickly as biology might dictate. As a result, more women are seeking out strenuous and sometimes costly fertility treatments and drugs, adopting, or just waiting years and hoping for better luck.
Hoboken University Medical Center Perinatologist Dr. David Principe said that in his private obstetrics practice, he sees women in their fifties who are having children with the help of invitro fertilization.
“Right now, 50 is like the new 30,” said Principe, who specializes in high-risk obstetrics.
Despite the success stories that Principe discussed, Jane Miller, an obstetrician and reproductive endocrinologist at the North Hudson IVF (in-vitro fertilization) in Englewood Cliffs, said women in their late 30s and beyond often find it more difficult to get pregnant because their bodies are not producing healthy eggs at the same rate as when they were younger.
“We know that eggs have a shelf life, and that by age 42, a woman has 80 to 90 percent abnormal eggs,” she said.
In vitro fertilization is a process in which the egg is fertilized by the sperm in a laboratory environment rather than in the womb. The IVF center also helps with other fertility methods, including intrauterine insemination, which sperm cells are inserted into the woman’s body.
Miller said she has worked with many Hudson County residents, as well as people from around the world.
But nowadays, Miller noted, she wouldn’t even consider women in their 30s and 40s “older mothers.” Miller herself gave birth to her son through invitro fertilization at age 42 in 1995, she said.
“At that time, in the mid-nineties, the idea of being over 40 was considered old, especially in fertility practice,” she said. “Now, when we hear of someone in their 40s seeking treatment, we don’t raise an eyebrow.”
Miller added that the idea is nothing new. “As for people having kids when they’re older, that trend has been around for 20 to 30 years,” she said.
Dating and goals
Last week, as they pushed strollers down Washington Street, Cynthia Goodman and Kara Jablonka said changing views on dating have also affected the average childbearing age.
“I have friends who aren’t married and don’t have kids yet,” said Goodman, who is 35. “Women are being pickier. And men are being pickier too.”
Jablonka, who is 30, said her mother had her when she was 23.
“It used to be women went from living in their parents’ house to their husband’s house,” said Jablonka. “Now, women also want to have a single life.”
She added, “It may also be something to do with careers, at least in this area. I know it’s definitely something I thought about – though I’m on the younger end of the spectrum. I wanted to finish my masters before I even started thinking about having kids.”
Having kids was not an immediate goal for many
New mom Renee Gilbert dedicated two decades to her career before she got married at 42 and had a son.
She rose to a senior level in the fashion industry before moving on to publishing. She said that having a child at the age of 20 or 30 wasn’t something that she or most of her friends considered.
“My closest friends are just getting married,” she said. “These are gals that are working at top of the corporate ladder, which is what I was doing years ago. We’re different from the gals who are [now] in their 20s and 30s. For us it was a big deal to work and have a great job – of course I can’t speak for all of us – and having kids wasn’t at the front of the program. If anything happened, you just set [your career] aside. A lot of us ended up at the top, or close to the top, but it also meant that a lot of us waited to have kids.”
Since they waited, Gilbert and many of her friends missed that “ideal” childbearing age range, and are not as lucky as she is.
“Several friends of mine struggled with fertility,” she said.
She was able to give birth to her now seven-week-old son “100 percent naturally” at the age of 44.
What to expect when you’re older and expecting
“All women who are pregnant are at risk for pregnancy complications,” Principe said last week.
He added that some women are at greater risk, including women who are obese, are diabetic, have multiple gestations, and are “slightly older.”
Among the health risks older mothers face, Principe said, are hypertension, diabetes, and thyroid and vascular complications.
He added that all moms may also face post-partum depression, particularly older mothers.
Robin Petrick, a certified childbirth education specialist and lactation consultant at HUMC, said that the hospital runs a new moms support group with a special smaller group for women who may want more emotional help.
And Gilbert, a seasoned runner who ran the Boston Marathon when she was one month pregnant, is starting a new mothers running club in Hoboken to help moms “boost their self esteem, get back into shape, and have the camaraderie of other gals going through the same thing.”
Pros and cons
According to the New Jersey Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Health Statistics, “since 1987, the number of births to women aged 35 years and older exceeded the number of births to mothers younger than 20 … the overall median maternal age increased steadily over the past decade among all race/ethnicity groups, then leveled off between 2003 and 2004.”
Petrick mentioned some pros and cons she has seen among the older moms she has worked with.
“Older moms are usually well-studied,” she said. “They are very well-educated, and that can be good and bad. They are good patient advocates because they are so well-read and well-organized with what their choices are, which is good. But they also need a lot of support because they’re older. Their lives are a little more structured with their time and career, and a baby doesn’t always come with that plan, and it kind of throws them.”
Gilbert is living through that now.
“I think you do end up sort of getting off track when you have a child,” she said. “You have to rearrange your life, and I’m seeing that. This morning I got up early and poked my husband and said, ‘I’m going for run…now!’ ”
Robertson mused that the physical drain on younger moms may be lesser.
“Physically it would have been easier,” she said, “but I wouldn’t have been willing to give up other things …You’d have the physical energy, but you wouldn’t have done other stuff you would have wanted to have done.”
“The pros are that I feel like I’ve done a lot with my life already,” Gilbert said. “I’ve traveled all over the world. Creatively I’ve done a lot of things. And I still have a lot to do. The cons are, I’ll be kind of old when [her son is] in college. That’s the only con, that I would be kind of old.”
Petrick added that she is starting to see another trend among fathers.
“A little trend I do see lately is the older father,” she said. “I would say they are in their fifties. Maybe it’s a man who was reluctant to settle down and then found the right person and is settling down a little later. It’s not a huge trend, but I’m seeing more of that this year.”
For more information on HUMC’s new mom support group, call Robin Petrick at (201) 418-1015. To join Renee Gilbert’s new moms running club, email dramaqueen2000@earthlink.net. Comments on this piece can be sent to mfriedman@hudsonreporter.com