next »

[rambling]

On Mary Ann Mason's recent article there were quite a few things of interest to me. For example the bitterness in some of the comments was surprising, only till I recalled all the other comments some of my favorite feminist blog-writers receive on a regular basis.

But a point I wanted to bring up here besides a hope to initiate a more general discussion of the article, was Mason's comment that "women find that their institutions probably do not support them in starting a family even if they are in their 30s, their chief reproductive years"

I am interested to know what the forum inhabitants think about the 30s being the chief reproductive years. I believe that if you asked women of fifty years ago, these chief years would be the 20s. Do you think perhaps there will be a shift to the 40s as we make medical progress and academic lives remain the same?

Well, this is the main point that intrigued me about the article as I am quite personally aware of the situation in STEM fields and the rest was not much too surprising... However it is an interesting read for others who may not be as familiar with that...

[macaroon]

I believe Ginger Zakian used to refer to this time as the "end" of a woman's reproductive years.  She didn't hedge on that.

[toni52]

If you are a woman in academia who wants to pursue a PhD and eventually land a tenure-track job, you often find yourself in the situation Mason describes.   When I was in grad school, many of my advisors along the way advised me to put off having children because it would be better for my academic career.  They all said to wait to have kids until after I had tenure.  

I'm not interested in having children.  And so personally, it wasn't really much of an issue for me.  But as Mason points out, for women who do wish to start their families during their prime reproductive years, it can be incredibly difficult.  

[mignon]

One solution is the two-parent, one-income family.  The caregiver  need not be the woman.  Of course, this involves living on one small-sh salary.  We did it this way (husband stayed home) and it worked for us, even though we have to shop pretty much exclusively at Goodwill.  There are solutions, and not all involve institutional changes.

[kaysixteen]

Reality is reality.  People like to believe lies that tell us we can have our cake and eat it too, the sky's the limit, be all you can be, etc., but, in reality, well...

[mythbuster]

Once you hit 35, you are "geriatric" according to the OB/GYN community, so I doubt that the 30s are generally the "chief" years although they may be for certain subsets, such as academics.

[johnr]

It is a cruel twist of human fate that the biological optimum does not coincide with the societal optimum.  Academia, of course, exacerbates the chasm between the two.  In any event, I was taught that the biological optimum for the human species was somewhere between 18 and 25. 

[polly_mer]

Reality is reality.  People like to believe lies that tell us we can have our cake and eat it too, the sky's the limit, be all you can be, etc., but, in reality, well...

Yep.  Based on standard fertility rates, one cannot count on having a baby at any age, but the probability definitely goes down the older a woman gets.  Counting on being able to have a baby in one's forties is not borne out by the probabilities.  I'm not going to state that the thirties are the optimal baby years, but certainly the biological window to have a baby is much narrower as part of life than the intellectual window to earn a doctorate and obtain a tenure-track position.

The phrase I've seen bandied out is that one can have it all, just not all at once, because there aren't enough hours in the day or energy in the body.  However, that being said, the creative ways to deal with personal situations aren't necessarily limited to the ones that are most vocally proclaimed by certain ideological groups.  I was particularly struck by one book I read where a small group of women friends fought for an on-site daycare center and then discovered upon having their children that daycare in that way in and of itself was not particularly helpful due to factors they hadn't considered since they had no emotional experience with children.

[mad_doctor]

From a purely biological perspective, why wouldn't a woman be best prepared to bear children as soon as, or perhaps shortly after she becomes fertile?  Is there an evolutionary argument for or against?  Or, another scientific argument for or against?

[cranefly]

From a purely biological perspective, why wouldn't a woman be best prepared to bear children as soon as, or perhaps shortly after she becomes fertile?  Is there an evolutionary argument for or against?  Or, another scientific argument for or against?

Biologically? The brain isn't even fully developed at that stage. The pre-frontal lobe is not finished maturing until the late teens/early 20s. People who haven't finished growing their own brains having kids?

[menotti]

From a purely biological perspective, why wouldn't a woman be best prepared to bear children as soon as, or perhaps shortly after she becomes fertile?  Is there an evolutionary argument for or against?  Or, another scientific argument for or against?

"Low gynecological age" is associated with more complications - biologically optimal seems to be in the 18-25 year range, as stated above.

[mad_doctor]

So, then I suppose the question becomes why, from an evolutionary perspective, would women become fertile before the rest of their body is ready to bear children?  This is a bit of an oddity in the world of nature, n'est-ce pas?  It would seem to me that would have been weeded out by evolutionary factors by this time, and women wouldn't become fertile until they're about 18 - 25 yo?

[cranefly]

So, then I suppose the question becomes why, from an evolutionary perspective, would women become fertile before the rest of their body is ready to bear children?  This is a bit of an oddity in the world of nature, n'est-ce pas?  It would seem to me that would have been weeded out by evolutionary factors by this time, and women wouldn't become fertile until they're about 18 - 25 yo?

Maybe because we're pack animals, and would all help raise the baby? I'm guessing. I've no idea.

[karmann]

Once you hit 35, you are "geriatric" according to the OB/GYN community,

The OB/GYN community also labels women who have multiple miscarriages as "habitual aborters."  I'm thinking a terminology makeover may be due in that field. 

[biomancer]

So, then I suppose the question becomes why, from an evolutionary perspective, would women become fertile before the rest of their body is ready to bear children?  This is a bit of an oddity in the world of nature, n'est-ce pas?  It would seem to me that would have been weeded out by evolutionary factors by this time, and women wouldn't become fertile until they're about 18 - 25 yo?

Maybe because we're pack animals, and would all help raise the baby? I'm guessing. I've no idea.

There's a good deal of evidence (no, I don't remember the sources, unfortunately) that girls become fertile at a much younger age than they did generations ago.  Now, it's not by a huge amount - fertility in 2010 at age 12 or 13 is not all that different from fertility in 1810 at age 15 or 16 - but Cranefly's point is very valid (reproduction by someone whose brain is still physiologically developing is not a good situation).  Teen pregnancy isn't just bad for the baby (healthwise and sociologically) - it's much harder on a teen girl's body than it is on a 20something woman's body.  Particularly, pregnant teens stop growing taller at an earlier point than they would if they weren't pregnant, and there can be other issues due to the conflicting demands of adolescent growth and fetal growth.  Teen moms are much more likely to have low-birth-weight babies, in part because their health habits are not ideal, and in part because their bodies aren't fully ready for the burden.  Teen moms are also much more likely to not have big enough hips to handle a vaginal delivery than 20-something or older moms.

Why is this happening?  Some evidence points to the increasing amount of reproductive hormones and hormone mimics that pretty much everyone in the developed world is exposed to.  Other evidence suggests that our improved diet and overall health due to vaccination and other major public heath efforts, compared to more historical generations, allows faster fat accumulation to allow the onset of fertility.

There's also a HUGE amount of variation among women.  Many women in earlier generations of my family (i.e. before effective birth control) had successful pregnancies well through their 40s and into their 50s, and the kids turned out fine (no Down's syndrome, etc.).  Lots of women in their 40s have perfectly healthy babies, and plenty of younger moms have babies with serious developmental issues.  35 as gyno-geriatric is an arbitrary cutoff.  The risk of genetic defects due to imperfect egg formation in "older" mothers increases with age starting at the onset of fertility.  It doesn't jump from zero to high upon hitting 35 any more than gray hairs pop up magically at age 40.  Doctors *should* take things like individual health and family history into consideration before simply stating "you're old, thus you're high risk" as it makes a little sense as putting everybody over age 30 on a statin or an arthritis medication.

On preview, I chime with Karmann's observation.