Outdated studies feeding false panic about older pregnancies, claims expert

It is often said that it becomes hard to have a baby after 35, but experts have claimed that a woman can have a baby even after turning 40.

Jean M. Twenge, author of 'The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant' said that the data we all consider is based not on statistical analyses of modern women trying to conceive, but on French birth records from 1670 to 1830, the New York Post reported.

She said that relying on such studies is some what similar to calculating our chances of contracting polio based on data from an era in which "medicine" meant dandelion tea and leeches.

Twenge, who is a psychology researcher at San Diego State University, looked for documented research and found that the scant studies about fertility decline rooted in modern realities paint a more optimistic picture, with evidence that for women who have sex at least twice a week, 82 percent of 35- to 39-year-old women conceive within a year, compared with 86 percent of 27- to 34-year-olds.

According to advocates for delayed motherhood, a societal stigma against older moms has allowed these fertility myths to continue.