Why do people get so much angrier at women having babies over 45 than men?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think what bothers me is when women have their first in their mid 40: (especially celebrities) everyone says "I totally believe it was natural, my grandmother had her 10th baby at 48."

The reality is that having your first without intervention in mid 40s is like lightening-bolt rare. I worked at a DMV IVF clinic and we were doing hundreds of donor egg IVF cycles per year on middle age women and there are hundreds of clinics worldwide like ours.

This is not an anti IVF screed. My own kids are the result of ART. I just hate when people pretend that most women can have kids naturally for 3 decades. It does not help women.

Ok but plenty of women can get pregnant naturally in their 40s. I also have a great grandmother that had her last baby in her 40s in 1931. Clearly not the result of reproductive assistance.

If you want to help women, be open and honest about every fertility FACTS, so they can advocate for themselves.
Getting pregnant naturally for the first time in your 40s, and keeping the pregnancy, is the exception, not the rule.

How about we assume women are not stupid?

I don't know anyone who tried to get pregnant in their 30s without atleast telling their doctor and getting checked out for health. I'm sure they will get all the statistics they need.

Apparently, there are still women who need to be informed. This is from October 2025

"Obgyn pushy about hurrying to conceive at 39 .. I thought this was not an uncommon conception age?"
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1295982.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Using age as an overall metric for the mother's health galls me. The OB for my 2nd birth at 42 would regale me with a new vivid account of some risk I was running. He tried to get everyone to induce early since he was a single MD practice with no one covering for him. I always had to google to ascertain that all the gory pictures he was painting had warning symptoms that I didn't have. I don't think a marathoner from a long lived family who conceived in two months at 42 should be lumped in with the general population of 42 year olds.

THIS is the arrogance I am talking about.

Somehow, this one individual is immune to the researched and evidenced risks of AMA.

Give. Me. A. Break.

That’s actually my problem with many women who waited until their 40s to have kids. They tend to think they know better than all of us who had kids in our 20s and 30s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are crazy. I know so many people (including myself) that had healthy babies after 40. Yes, the risks for everything goes up - by a few percentage points. For instance, the risk for preeclampsia goes from 2.5% in younger women to 5% in those over 40. And a lot (not all) of those risk factors are greatly mitigated by the overall health of the mother and family history.

The overall rate becomes a few percentage points, but the increased risk is huge. Chromosomal abnormalities are 25 *times* more likely in mothers aged 45 years old compared to those 30 years old.

If you're going to try for kids at advanced age, you need to test and be prepared to terminate.

Right, so by the time someone announces their baby’s birth, they have presumably done all of that. So lay off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Using age as an overall metric for the mother's health galls me. The OB for my 2nd birth at 42 would regale me with a new vivid account of some risk I was running. He tried to get everyone to induce early since he was a single MD practice with no one covering for him. I always had to google to ascertain that all the gory pictures he was painting had warning symptoms that I didn't have. I don't think a marathoner from a long lived family who conceived in two months at 42 should be lumped in with the general population of 42 year olds.

THIS is the arrogance I am talking about.

Somehow, this one individual is immune to the researched and evidenced risks of AMA.

Give. Me. A. Break.

That’s actually my problem with many women who waited until their 40s to have kids. They tend to think they know better than all of us who had kids in our 20s and 30s.

Or they simply didn’t have the same opportunities that you did. Why do women always have to be divided into warring tribes? Stop falling for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t get it.

No one bats an eye if a man is 48 but if a woman is then it’s somehow unacceptable

Since when have women been able to do anything with their bodies and especially their reproductive organs without people having opinions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If a woman has too many kids people get angry.

If a woman has one kid people get angry.

If a woman has kids when she's too young people get angry.

If a woman has kids when she's too old people get angry.

If a woman has no kids people get angry.

If a woman stays home with her kids people get angry.

If a woman goes back to work after having kids people get angry.

Tune it out (which incidentally, also makes people angry).

This can all be shortened to “if a woman, people get angry”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not natural. And it's not healthy for the mom or baby.

This.

Men can safely reproduce much longer than women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Literally every woman we know who had a child around or after 40 has a child with health complications - from allergies to extreme disabilities.

Health issues with the child are nowhere close to the same with the fathers over 40.

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is simply yet another, glaring, daily indicator of the dominance of Western capitalist cisheteropatriarchy.

That last word is not a real word.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids go to a catholic school where lots of families have the last kid born in the mom’s early 40s and those youngest kids are all athletic and popular… way more so than my kids born in my 20s! Maybe being part of a big family makes you more adept socially?
I don’t know of any late kids who have problems like you are stating.

I think youngest babies born naturally to an older mom who started having babies earlier in life is a lot less risky than someone having their first baby at middle age or late 40s/50s using other women's eggs or invasive interventions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids go to a catholic school where lots of families have the last kid born in the mom’s early 40s and those youngest kids are all athletic and popular… way more so than my kids born in my 20s! Maybe being part of a big family makes you more adept socially?
I don’t know of any late kids who have problems like you are stating.

Ha! Same. My 80+ year old aunt gave birth natural conception/delivery when she was 43.

In addition to being very fertile, we all go through menopause on the late side too (late 50s). Correlation?

People are different. I got pregnant on first try with all 3 of my kids—last one at 38. I sure wasn’t risking pregnancy until I was fully in menopause at 57.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think what bothers me is when women have their first in their mid 40: (especially celebrities) everyone says "I totally believe it was natural, my grandmother had her 10th baby at 48."

The reality is that having your first without intervention in mid 40s is like lightening-bolt rare. I worked at a DMV IVF clinic and we were doing hundreds of donor egg IVF cycles per year on middle age women and there are hundreds of clinics worldwide like ours.

This is not an anti IVF screed. My own kids are the result of ART. I just hate when people pretend that most women can have kids naturally for 3 decades. It does not help women.

Ok but plenty of women can get pregnant naturally in their 40s. I also have a great grandmother that had her last baby in her 40s in 1931. Clearly not the result of reproductive assistance.

A fertile woman having her last baby in her 40s is completely different than a middle age woman using interventions to try to kick start her ovaries that are shutting down to try to have her first kid.

Also, your great grandma conceiving and birthing children pre 1960s did not have unnatural synthetic hormone pharmaceutical birth control in her body system to prevent conception or the release of eggs from the time she had her first period until she tries to conceive for the first time in perimenopause.

Those 2 situations are soooooo different biologically that you can't compare them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Using age as an overall metric for the mother's health galls me. The OB for my 2nd birth at 42 would regale me with a new vivid account of some risk I was running. He tried to get everyone to induce early since he was a single MD practice with no one covering for him. I always had to google to ascertain that all the gory pictures he was painting had warning symptoms that I didn't have. I don't think a marathoner from a long lived family who conceived in two months at 42 should be lumped in with the general population of 42 year olds.

The science is clear that pregnancy and birth in your 40s is risky and increases exponentially every year you age.

Just because you don't like hearing something doesn't make it untrue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Literally every woman we know who had a child around or after 40 has a child with health complications - from allergies to extreme disabilities.

Health issues with the child are nowhere close to the same with the fathers over 40.

This is a ridiculous statement and wildly contrary to the data on infant health issues by maternal age.

[Anonymous]

There is a massive stigma around artificial reproductive technologies. People assume a woman in her 40s is using them, but its not so obvious with a man.

DH and I were diagnosed with male factor infertility in early 30s after failing to conceive. We had our kids years later with ivf and after several ivf miscarriages. The things people who knew said to me! I just stopped telling anyone. We were in our late 30s when the kids were born, but some people also judge that as late.