Too late is when you never think about it biologically.
However, it could be established as an extreme reproductive age at 50 years.
The biological and physiological limitations to human reproduction that are determined in women by the wear and tear and programmed death of the ovaries, do not necessarily agree with social limitations.
While this is true, today women have and are able to have children at later ages. Social factors such as: education, job performance, second unions, job promotion, determine that women seek fertility at later ages.
If we add to this the increase in life expectancy over the last 30 years, it is easy to find women aged 42 to -44 who come to our clinic for the first time asking for help.
If we biologically and physiologically define 35 years as the age that marks the beginning of a decline in reproductive capacity and 40 years as an age at which both infertility and treatment for it are marked by low success rates , what could be established as a social limitation that a society determines when a woman is too old to look for children?
Human Reproduction, one of the most important fertility journals published by the European Society of Human Reproduction, published a study carried out in 25 European countries. The survey was composed of 21,909 women and 21,239 men between the ages of 15 and 85, for which they were asked several questions, one of them was: when did they think it was too late to have a child.
As we mentioned initially, one of the substantial changes at the reproductive level is the increase in the age of women when looking for and having a child. In the United States, by the 1980s, 1.6% of births were born to women over 40 years of age and this increased to 3.0% by 2006, doubling the number of women who have children after the age of 40.
Despite this increase, there are still few births in women over 40 years of age. The reason: biologically it is known that 15-20% of women aged 40-42 will be infertile only because of the age factor, 54% will be infertile at 45 years of age and 96% at 47-48 years of age, the negative effect of age is clear. However, why is this group of 40-44 year olds not having children?:
1. Because he can’t; because he doesn’t want to, and that feeling of “not wanting” is motivated by what people will say? This is where the concept of social limit plays such an important role in decision-making.
Making an estimate of how many children would be born if women aged 40-44 decided to have them is 1.1 child per woman. This figure is not negligible. Continuing then with the European study: They found that for the European population to have a child after the age of 41 in women and 47 in men is already “Too late“.
If we were to transfer these results to our Latin American Population, surely these age limits would change and the age of 38-39 years for women and 45 years for men would be socially considered as late ages to have children.
Finally, I invite all women, especially those who are between 38-42 years old, to be proactive and determined with the aim of becoming mothers, to convince themselves that even though they are limit ages at a biological level, they really have important opportunities to become mothers and as I began this writing, it is too late if I never propose or consider it.
inSer Group
