A Brave New World?

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."

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