Age & Fertility
According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), age-related infertility is becoming more common. Approximately 20% of women wait until after age 35 to begin their families. Several factors have contributed to this trend:
- Contraception is readily available
- More women are in the workforce
- Women are marrying at an older age
- The divorce rate remains high
- Married couples are delaying pregnancy until they are more financially secure
- Many women don’t realize that their fertility begins to decline in their late 20s or early 30s
In addition, stories in the media may lead you to believe that you can delay getting pregnant and then use assisted reproductive technologies (ART) to get pregnant when you’re ready. However, age affects the success rates of infertility treatments as well as your natural ability to get pregnant. For example, if you are a healthy 30-year-old woman, you have about a 20% chance per month to get pregnant. By age 40, however, your chance is only about 5% per month. In many cases, these percentages are true for natural conception as well as conception using ART.
It is important to remember that your fertility decreases with age, particularly after age 35. Even though women today are healthier and taking better care of themselves than ever before, improved health in later life does not offset the natural age-related decline in fertility.
