Home » Where the obsession with female fertility is born and the number 35 – Arwa Mahdawi

Where the obsession with female fertility is born and the number 35 – Arwa Mahdawi

by admin

April 26, 2021 5:36 pm

Good news, sir! They have officially guaranteed us another two years of useful life. According to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the number of reproductive years for women in the United States has jumped from 35 to 37.1.

The research looked at sixty-year trends in reproductive life cycles and found that the average age of menopause has risen as the age of first menstruation has declined.

The study was referring to the reproductive years, not the woman’s age, but it still sparked a debate about the meaning of the number 35 and fertility. For a long time, the 35-year mark was treated as a kind of fertility precipice. Once they reach that age, they are officially defined as “advanced maternal age” or “elderly primiparous”. There have been tragic warnings about how difficult it will be to get pregnant and about all the problems that mother and baby could have in case of pregnancy, which is immediately labeled as “high risk” and subjected to additional tests and tests. Trying to become pregnant after the age of 35 is a process often fraught with stress and judgment.

Data to be updated
The quality of the eggs decreases with the years, this is quite clear, but the current obsession with the 35 years as a fertility threshold is exceeded and has no scientific basis. For example, consider the cited statistic that one in three women between the ages of 35 and 39 will fail to become pregnant after a year of trying. Do you want to know where this data comes from? From 1700 France.

The researchers looked at a handful of parish registers with data on people whose life expectancy was around thirty years and drew these statistics from them. In any other scenario, those researchers would have been ridiculed. But since these data serve to shame women and instill fear in them, they have been repeated over and over again. Incidentally, more modern and much more comforting data is available.

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Apparently, the idea is still ubiquitous that humans do not have biological clocks and can become fathers at any age

Research published in 2004 looking at 770 European women found that, having sex at least twice a week, 78 percent of women between the ages of 35 and 40 conceive within a year, compared with 84 percent of women. between 20 and 34 years. The Atlantic highlights how these encouraging data were excluded from the opinion expressed in 2008 by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) commission on the age and fertility of women, based instead on “more sinister historical data”. A few years earlier the ASRM had also launched a controversial advertising campaign to remember that “women between the ages of twenty and thirty are more likely to conceive”.

Our current obsession with the number 35 as a kind of fertility precipice is not only scientifically unfounded, but also of little use. As a gynecologist recently wrote in Slate: “This monolithic thinking generates stress and prejudice.” Because doctors use this upper limit to guide patients’ care, the result is that after the age of 35 people are subjected to a barrage of additional, sometimes unnecessary, testing and therapy. The result is often a “cascade of cures” that can do more harm than good.

The seed also ages
Do you know who is not treated as inexorably in decline after age 35? The men. Apparently the idea that humans don’t have biological clocks and can become fathers at any age is still ubiquitous. However, I fear that sperm does not age as well as good wine; the quality of the sperm drops with the age of men.

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There are studies showing that children born to older fathers are more likely to have health problems, psychiatric problems and cognitive impairments. According to a study, men could be solely responsible for 20-30 percent of infertility cases and contribute 50 percent of all cases. But there are many men in their thirties obsessed with the idea of ​​freezing sperm to maintain quality, right?

We should also blame the plastics sector

Mind you, I don’t want to suggest that it would be fair to blame men who have waited “too long” before having a child. But the time has come to stop blaming women. If organizations like ASRM want women to have children sooner, they should think about how to make parenting more affordable instead of devising scare campaigns.

And instead of pointing to women as the culprits of infertility, we should blame the plastics industry. It has been speculated that the increase in infertility rates could be due, among other things, to the fact that we all ingest as much plastic as a credit card every week. Fertility is complicated; it is influenced by a variety of factors and varies from individual to individual. But let’s just stick to 35, huh?

News on patriarchy from the world

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Pakistani prime minister blames women’s clothing for rape. There has been an increase in rapes in Pakistan. According to Prime Minister Imran Khan, this is a natural consequence in “a society where vulgarity is on the rise”. His comments outraged anyone with brains.

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Tishaura Jones is the first black woman elected mayor of St. Louis. Louis. A historic victory that came in the wake of another historic victory. A year ago in Ferguson, Missouri, about fifteen miles from St. Louis, Etta Jones was the first black woman and the first woman to be elected mayor.

Meet some women who really like meat. The Facebook group Women carnivore tribe (the tribe of carnivorous women) has 27,000 members and members. According to some, a meat-based diet counteracts gender stereotypes. Personally, I’m not entirely convinced that eating steak is a constructive way of practicing feminism.

Interview with the man who keeps uploading a photo of a journalist’s feet to wikiFeet. I had no idea what wikiFeet was before reading this disturbing (but brilliant) article, and my life was better.

The week in pain-triarcato. In Texas, a woman who had the longest fingernails in the world – at one point they were nearly 5 feet long – finally cut them after thirty years. A painful and disgusting way to get your name in the history books, but happy with her …

(Translation by Giusy Muzzopappa)

This article appeared in the British newspaper The Guardian.

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