Terri White: It’s Time To Cut The Crap About Older Motherhood

After men tell a survey that 36 is ‘too old’ to become a mother, Terri White says we need to ditch the misconceptions.

‘Ding ding,’ the stranger shouted merrily, ringing an imaginary bell. ‘Last orders!’ The man we’d met five minutes before in a pub beer garden had just asked me and my boyfriend if we had a kid.

The ding ding was, apparently, the death knell for my eggs as he grimly warned us there wouldn’t be many left. Get ’em while they’re hot! Ish!

Aside from the white-hot rudeness and myriad of assumptions this stranger had made about my life and uterus (who said I wanted a baby? What if I couldn’t have one?), the message was clear: 39 was officially too old.

So, I was desperately unsurprised with the results of a YouGov survey in which 46% of men said women between 36-40 are ‘too old’ to become mothers. Which is surely a smack in the chops to the one in five new mums who are currently over the age of 35 (and yes, statistically, some of those YouGov guys will have impregnated one of those women they deem ‘too old’).

It’s not just the lads in the survey though, let’s be clear. After I got pregnant at 40, just months after the bell-ringing incident, there were reminders everywhere that I was Just Too Damn Old to be having a baby. Especially my first baby (sharp intake of breath). The ‘Very Geriatric’ on my maternity medical notes. The At-Risk category I was put into by the consultant. The school friend’s mum on Facebook who said, ‘You left it a bit late, didn’t you.’ The people who’d wince when I said it was my first baby, advising me to ‘crack on and hurry up getting the rest banged out’ like I was a car factory in an old industrial town about to shut up shop.

No one considers the other multitude of factors that had absolutely nothing to do with age. My career. My desire to live in another country. My endometriosis. My mental illness. My lack of savings. My selfishness. My terrible taste in men. My economic insecurity. The fact I just wasn’t sure and figured, if I just wasn’t sure, I could be sure that I shouldn’t have a baby. After all, there’s no option to return to sender.

The ‘peak’ childbearing age we hear so much about often doesn’t tally with a woman’s peak life. I spent my 32nd birthday in a blackout after a night of drinking and pill-popping; I spent my 42nd pulling the weeds out of my garden wearing the gloves that were a gift from my 16-month-old son. Which version of me is the better one to be a mother?

The fact is that 32-year-old me would have been a terrible mum. There are some things you can only acquire, can only heal, with time. And that’s the great gift of ageing: time. Getting older, the miles marching up on the clock. What each new year on this earth brings to you in experience, intelligence, character and emotional robustness. I couldn’t have had my son at 32. Or 35. 37? Maybe. 40: definitely.

And most men totally understand the benefits that age can bring: in the same survey, 71% thought 36-40 was ‘about right’ for them to become dads. Come on, lads, you’re one step away from getting it!

And what age do they think is ideal for a woman? 28. Which speaks to a big misconception of when our ‘peak’ childbearing years are (probably, as with most things, it’s conflated with youth).

A study published in the Journal Of The American Medical Association in April showed that a woman’s reproductive lifespan (the years in which she can have a baby) had actually increased, from 35 to 37.1 years.

And while yes, your fertility does decrease as you age (the same for men’s swimmers), it doesn’t plummet off a cliff on to the rocks below the second you turn 35.

Babies demand much, but one thing more than any other: sacrifice. We cannot have it all. It’s impossible. And the sacrifice still largely falls on women. We will be asked to make sacrifices when it comes to our bodies, our career progression, our earning potential. Society is still not built to support women who have children: the cost of childcare, the working hours baked into corporate culture, the unpaid labour at home.

Imagine if the YouGov guys felt as passionately about making life easier for women to make the right choice for themselves, at the right time, as they do about pointing out the imagined cobwebs on our wombs.