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Comment by whorleater | Hacker News Reader

>Waiting too long to have kids can involve problems for both mother and child. (Among other things) An older mom can require fertility treatments to get pregnant at all and there is higher risk of certain birth defects in the child.

This seems like it's stretching the article though, the average age of birth for women with college degrees (currently) is ~30. While that's certainly older than the non-college degrees, it's still well below the 35 cutoff which most people seem to regard as when birth complications becomes a serious risk.

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My sister and I were both STAR Student (highest SAT score in our graduating high school class, top 20% GPA) and won National Merit Scholarships to UGA, one of the top two colleges in our home state. She took her scholarship and got her degree. I turned mine down, got married at age 19 to another 19 year old and spent two decades as a homemaker.

My sister began trying to have kids in her late twenties. She was 36 iirc when she finally had her only child. She has also miscarried multiple times.

She and I are no longer close, but we were at one time. We talked about the possibility of me serving as her surrogate if she couldn't have a child on her own.

Through her, I know quite a lot about fertility issues. I don't think I'm stretching anything. More like giving the nutshell version of many decades of knowledge.

>Through her, I know quite a lot about fertility issues.

I empathize with your sister, but I think it's wrong to generalize a single data point over the population. On a broad level, birth rates in the US from 25-29 are at 104.3, whereas 30-34 is at 101.5[1]. This is a change, but far less in comparison to the dropoff at 35-39, where birth rates fall off a cliff to 51.8.

If we take the article's premise at face value (college educated women in current times typically give birth at ~30 years old, vs non-college educated women at ~23), it would appear that the birth rate differences are negligible.

[1]: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/NCHS-Birth-Rates-for-Females-by-Ag...

It's absolutely the case that it is easier for a younger woman to get pregnant than an older one (talking about a scale of years) .

Fertility doesn't decline in a linear fashion but it does decline and to my knowledge, it doesn't ever increase over time.

I think you need to reexamine what the stats you are quoting are really about.

I think it could increase, if someone gave up smoking, drinking, started eating non-junk and sleeping.

Haven’t looked at the science tho.

Are you married? I really hope your wife never experiences fertility issues. Fertility is much more complicated than data points.

Yes, let's ignore evidence based medicine because there might be some emotions involved. Nobody is arguiung that fertility is not complicated - there are multiple factors, but if you want to look at the effect of one particular factor (age) while controlling for others, I have no idea how to do it without data.

> UGA, one of the top two colleges in our home state

Hello, fellow Georgian! Having attended the other of these two colleges, I will avoid mentioning which one belongs in the #1 spot and which belongs in the #2 spot, and will instead just say that I have very much enjoyed reading your comments on this topic today.

Data point N=1.

You are misinterpreting my comment. She read quite a lot about fertility issues while pursuing fertility treatments. She forwarded me many articles on the topic and we talked a great deal about the subject.

She's currently a high ranking employee at the CDC.

There is no "serious risk" with pregnancy until at least 40 or older unless there are unrelated health issues. There is a small increase in risk and decrease in fertility through the mid 30's but 35 is an extremely young age to consider risky.

The fecundity of women decreases gradually but significantly beginning approximately at age 32 years and decreases more rapidly after age 37 years [1]. A woman over 35 is nearly 2.5 times more likely than a younger woman to have a stillbirth [2].

[1] https://www.asrm.org/globalassets/asrm/asrm-content/news-and...

[2] https://yourfertility.org.au/for-women/age/

You are not contradicting the post you replied to because you're taking about increases in risk and the parent is talking about absolute risk. The base rate matters; a 2.5x increase in stillbirth probability may not be persuasive if the base rate is low.

(I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you aren't convincing.)

You're right as far as the post I replied to is talking about mortal health risk to mother or child, which doesn't seem to be a huge issue at 35. I was also thinking about the risk of not being able to have kids at all, or having less serious issues like Downs which is pushing 1% of live births before age 40 (https://www.aafp.org/afp/2000/0815/p825.html).

Question : why do doctors refer to a first pregnancy at 35 years of age for the woman, as a "geriatric pregnancy"?

Health risks are not the only issue with age. The older you are as a parent, the more difficulty you have in relating to your children and communicating with them.

The context in which I was replying was clearly related to health risks.

This is extremely harsh and your complete ignorance tells me you are not a woman.

Fertility in some women declines as early as 28. Most women do not talk publicly about how difficult it is to conceive, because people like you think they should have it easy at age 27-30. Guess what? It can get really hard as soon as you're in your late twenties.

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