It’s a fact that haunts most childless women under 30: between 35 and 40, your fertility drops dramatically.
At the age of 30, there are approx. one in five chances of getting pregnant per cycle. At 40, this drops to one in 20.
This is one of the reasons why many women choose to have families earlier than they want, sometimes putting their careers on hold.
Pop star Lily Allen spoke about the impact of this dilemma recently, commenting that her children, who came along when she was 26 and 27, ‘totally ruined’ her career.
‘It really annoys me when people say you can have it all because quite frankly you can’t,’ the singer told UK publication Radio Times.
But experts are increasingly saying it’s not just women who should worry about their biological clock.
Pop star Lily Allen recently made headlines for claiming women can’t ‘have it all’ when it comes to babies and careers
“For far too long there has been a widely accepted lie that fertility and the biological clock is solely a women’s issue,” Professor Geeta Nargund, Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and founder of Create Fertility, said recently. told Stylist.
“The risk of miscarriage for women whose partners are over 45 is twice as high compared to the rates for those whose partners were under 25.”
Sperm quality and quantity begin to decline after age 25 in men, according to the an analysis from 2015s of 90 studies, involving over 90,000 participants.
Still, much has been said about the rising rate of infertility in the United States and increasing maternal age.
According to recent analysis by Pew research, the number of couples seeking fertility treatments in the United States has increased by 33 percent over the past five years.
Mick Jagger is perhaps one of the most well-known older fathers who welcomed his eighth child with girlfriend Melanie Hamrick aged 73.
Robert De Niro welcomed his seventh child into the world in 2023, at the age of 79. But experts say famous fathers who have children in their 50s and 60s are misleading the public into thinking it’s easy and healthy.
Census data confirms that the number of men and women experiencing infertility has increased significantly over the past 30 years.
It is true that this is partly due to the age at which women now have their first child. In 1990 the median age of the mother at birth was 27, in 2019 it was 30.
But speaking to DailyMail.com, experts say the rising age of first-time fathers is a crucial issue that is not getting enough attention. According to the latest data, the average age of a new father is also 30 – compared to 27 in 1972.
“The contribution of men who are older when they have their first child has an important impact,” said Dr. Lisa Webber, an OBGYN from the UK who has been practicing for over 20 years, told DailyMail.com.
“We shouldn’t just blame women.”
A 2021 study from Belgrano University in Argentina found that when the man in a couple was forty or older, there were 20-40 percent more abortions than couples where the man was younger than forty.
For women, we know that fertility generally becomes complicated with age because the amount of eggs available for fertilization begins to decrease.
“For men, it’s a slower decline,” Dr. Scott Lundy, a urologist at the Cleveland Clinic, told Forbes. “As we get older, the testicles, like any other organ, don’t work as well as they used to.”
Researchers point to a number of factors why men’s fertility declines. Some of them, like loss of libido and erectile dysfunction, are obvious.
Then there are the molecular contributors. Sperm shape, concentration and flexibility decrease with age, according to research from the University of Colorado.
All of this can make it harder for sperm to successfully fertilize an egg.
Also, older sperm tend to have more DNA mutations, which experts say can result in birth defects.
“Advance parental age likely increases the likelihood of replication errors in the germline, resulting in an accumulation of mutations,” the Dutch researchers wrote.
Sometimes, the researchers said, these can then lead to miscarriage. Other studies have also linked sperm DNA fragmentation to pregnancy loss.
And since DNA fragmentation increases with age, the older the potential father is, the more likely a miscarriage is.
Finally, there are a number of things that can happen over a lifetime that can affect sperm quality—like if you smoked, got an STI, or were malnourished.
Confronting this reality can be uncomfortable, but it is necessary for men to consider, Nargund said.
“Men who are under the illusion that age will have no impact on their fertility health may struggle to conceive further down the line,” she said.
“The root of the problem is a lack of education about our own fertility health and the lifestyle choices that affect it, as well as its natural decline with age.”