More statistics that piss me off.

Apparently, the most fertile women in Australia are women in their 30s according to reports in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. In particular, women between 30-34 are fuelling the 'baby boom' bringing Australia's fertility rate to its highest level in 12 years.

This is not the statistic that pisses me off. In fact, this comes as no surprise to me personally considering the bulk of the women in my study are between the ages of 30-34 and a good number of my cohort are older than that, between 37-40. This can be attributed to a number of positive social changes: 1) more women are educated 2) more women are waiting to get married or enter a long-term partnership 3) more women are employed in the paid sector 4) women can 'control' (for want of a better word) fertility more easily

This statistic really pisses me off:

"...Victorian women are real laggers in the younger ages and there has been a substantial fall in fertility rates among 20-year-olds over the last five years," Dr Birrell [a demographer] said.

Isn't that a good thing? For once, certain women feel confident enough be positively selfish and put themselves before motherhood; to establish a career, become financially stable, gain life experience. And yet, now people want to complain that 20 year olds are not having babies any more?

Has anyone been reading the British newspapers? Teen pregnancy is the new black of moral panics. They are sucking off the welfare system. They are irresponsible. They are 'bad' mothers. Young pregnant women have never been well-received. In fact, wasn't it the 'young mothers' of Australia who were blamed for selfishly getting pregnant only to receive the Baby Bonus? And now people are complaining that 20 year olds aren't getting pregnant fast enough? Instead of positioning the growth of 'older' mothers as a great thing, the tables are turned against women for wanting to be better human beings in waiting to have children.

This is the kicker:

"Fertility Society of Australia spokeswoman Anne Clark warned that the decision to defer motherhood could have serious implications for national population growth: "This is not good news, because fertility levels change for women in their mid-30s and for men after 40, so you are going to have a lot of people pushing it to have more than two children."

Seriously, the boring adage that women's reproductive capacities completely deteriorate at 35 is so ridiculous and only reinforces the nature/culture binary which has plagued the representation of women's bodies in medicine for the last century. If women's bodies are positioned as unruly and chaotic, it is so much easier to justify that the minute a woman is 'old' she is no longer useful and this become a perfect means of social control. It's like 'Have a baby before 35 or else you will dry up, like the useless vessel that you are'.

I don't think any woman over 35 is not blinded by the cultural 'ticking' of her 'biological clock' . But if it means that more women can have full lives by waiting to become mothers (especially young women) then that seems like a great trade off to me. IVF has not become a default mechanism for late parenthood. IVF is so expensive it is definitely not as popular or easily accessible as the media would like us to believe. Women are not selfishly waiting to become mothers to screw over the nation; they are selfishly choosing to put themselves first, a rarity indeed.

Sources: http://www.smh.com.au/news/parenting/baby-boom-for-thirtysomethings/2007/10/29/1193618837109.html
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/median-age-for-mums-now-308/2007/10/29/1193618797586.html