At 42, I'm knocked up, about halfway through my second pregnancy. I am also
a geek. Both these facts explain why I was intrigued by the recent report by
the National Center for Health Statistics that the birthrate for women 40 to
44 years old in 2005 was the "the highest rate since 1968."
Conventional wisdom would say that the birthrate among older women would be
higher now then in 1968. More women in their 40s and beyond are having kids
because they have delayed starting their families--and because access to
effective fertility treatments has increased. Just ask actress Geena Davis;
photographer-to-the-stars Annie Leibowitz; and Elizabeth Edwards, wife of
former vice presidential candidate John Edwards, and other women in the
public spotlight who recently have had children after age 40. Right?
Well, maybe not, according to the numbers. I decided to call up Brady E.
Hamilton, Ph.D, the statistician who authored the new report, and ask him
how he would explain the numbers.
What he had to say was intriguing. Back in 1968, the same year that feminist
activists staged a protest outside the Miss America Beauty Pagent and Kate
Millet ciculated a short pamphlet titled Sexual Politics, plenty of
women in their 40s were having kids. However, according to Hamilton, the
great majority of them--76 percent--were giving birth to their fourth, fifth,
or beyond child.
Of course 1968 didn't just mark the dawn of modern feminism. It was also the
year that Paul Ehrlich published his seminal book, The Population Bomb, which argued that
overpopulation was threatening humanity to the point that by the 1970s and
1980s, hundreds of millions of people would starve to death.
As the feminist movement took hold, the sexual revolution flourished, the
availability and acceptance of birth control increased, and concerns about
overpopulation grew, women in their 40s started to have kids at lower rates.
Flash forward to 2005. Of the more than 100,000 women ages 40 to 44 who gave
birth that year, only 29 percent of them were having their fourth, fifth or
beyond child, says Hamilton. However, presumably thanks to fertility
treatments, a much larger proportion of older women giving birth carried
multiples--as indeed is the case with Geena Davis and Annie Leibowitz, who
both gave birth to twins well after they hit 40.
And thus the statistical tie, with women giving birth at the same rate in
2005 as in 1968. To me this is a fascinating tale. In 1968, there wasn't a
lot of popular attention or worry expended on the fact that women in their
40s were becoming mothers. It wasn't the subject of headlines. If there was
any focus on the subject at all, it was not necessarily about whether having
a baby at that age was good for the child, but rather whether it was good
for the woman herself, or the environment, to welcome a fourth, fifth, or
sixth child.
Now women "of a certain age" are giving birth at the same rate, but they are
much more likely to be just beginning their families. These are unlikely to
be "oops" pregnancies, as one can assume at least some of those fourth,
fifth, and beyond pregnancies were back in 1968. These are women who
fervently desire to be mothers, often going to great lengths medically to do
so. Meanwhile, the little girls born in 1968, some of them to older mothers,
are now rapidly approaching 40 themselves. It's a brave new world in some
ways--and in some ways, well, it's not.
Watzman blogs at Muckraking Mom, whose slogan is, "because MUCK doesn't scare MOMs."