How Old Is Too Old To Get Pregnant

Focus on education or career, housing instability, ambivalence, hasn't met the right man, struggles to conceive, endometritis, IVF, early menopause, mental health issues, bereavement, partner isn't ready, she isn't ready, unhappy relationship, happy relationship, fertility problems, money problems, other caring responsibilities, lack of maternity and paternity provision, family medical history, multiple miscarriages, desire to travel, unfulfilled ambitions…

Or she may simply not want to.

"There is something threatening about a woman who is not occupied with children," Sheila Heti writes in Motherhood. "There is something at-loose-ends feeling about such a woman. What is she going to do instead? What sort of trouble will she make?" Motherhood is, to an extent, a novel about a woman who is battling against the notion that biology is destiny, that a woman cannot be fulfilled without a child. The narrator is approaching 40. "I know that 40 is just an idea in the mind – a finish line that isn't one", she says.

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As women we are raised to think of our bodies in terms of finish lines. That is what is so maddening about the comments of those who, upon seeing a woman in her thirties who has not reproduced, think she should be "getting on" with it. "Oh, really?" this woman might retort, were she feeling particularly sarcastic. "Thanks for reminding me. I had forgotten." Because as Nell Frizzell writes in her book The Panic Years: "These years are compelled by the eternal question: should I have a baby and, if so, when, how, why and with whom? That question creeps into every area of your life. It is the rat-tat-tat of the tracks beneath your feet. The bassline to everything. Whether you want to be a parent or not..."

As well as the ticking biological clock and the myriad challenges and factors influencing this biggest of decisions, a woman contemplating motherhood also has to confront the mixed messages with which she has been raised. For many of us, this was that getting pregnant too early would ruin your life, that one missed pill could put an end to any hope of a career, that you must have all your ducks in a row first – secure employment, a house – yet those things feel less achievable than ever. Women who have children on a low income are shamed in the same newspaper pages that scream panic about falling birthrates. It's very confusing.

I wish it were less socially acceptable to cast judgment on if and when women decide to have children. I wish there was more understanding of all the factors that can shape that choice, and a desire to support families of all shapes and sizes, genders and sexualities, in making that choice (or not). I wish the horror story of the Woman Who Waited Too Long was consigned to history, replaced instead by proper reproductive education and supportive political policies. But most of all, I wish people would keep their judgments to themselves and simply let us live.