Having a child later in life : a choice that is not without risk

Having a child later in life appears to be a choice that is not without risk , warned the High Council of the population and family during a press conference in Paris.
Better not wait long
Pregnancies are actually later , especially the first . Researchers and highlight the growing gap schedule constitution of the offspring. The average maternal age is now 29.6 years against 26.7 years 30 years ago , with an increase of the age of first pregnancy two years during the last decade.

In terms of health , the risks inherent in this situation are numerous and insufficiently covered , said the High Council of the population and family .

The best known is the risk of trisomy 21, which greatly increases when maternal age greater than 35 years. It is of the order of 1 % at 40 years and more than 2% to 45. However, screening reduces the number of children with this chromosomal abnormality births .

Moreover, the age of increasingly high mothers partly explains the increased frequency of multiple pregnancies , the development of preterm birth and growth rate of fetal death in utero ( 3 to 1000 before age 30 versus 9 1000 after 40 years).

Other problems relate to the health of women, although the risk of maternal death is reduced , death in childbirth between 40 and 45 years is not up to 30 mothers per 100,000 live births . But it turns out rate four times higher than the risk for women under 30 years. In addition, the number of caesarean sections and complicated deliveries increased significantly for women over 40 years.

However , the first deleterious effect lies in infertility. While the proportion of infertile women is only 5 % at 25 years and 10 % at 30 years , it approaches 30 % at 40 years and 50% at 45 years. The couple , of course, the opportunity to turn to the techniques of in vitro fertilization, but they are not without drawbacks or failures.

Inform and adapt social policies
The prospect of a longer life, the desire to extend the study to engage in a professional career or to check the strength of the torque can lead to delay the arrival of a child, even if the material and financial conditions are satisfactory.

The actions recommended by the High Council of the population and family are:
- Improve scientific knowledge of the consequences of this phenomenon in terms of health and psychological care;
- Organize a national consensus conference to propose measures for strengthening public health surveillance of late pregnancy and coaching methods of assisted reproduction;
- Put the issue of late pregnancy in the perinatal level and implementing regulations of the Public Health Act ;
- Training in this topic GPs and gynecologists ;
- Public awareness .

However, all constraints on the choice of couples for timing for the arrival of the child does not belong only to the private sphere . They still often take a series of social conditions : the difficulty of reconciling long study and professional life with family life, hardware problems ( including housing), financial or psychosocial difficulties .

Faced with these problems , the High Council of the population and family planning to reflect further on this subject during its mandate and to propose concrete measures for economic and social actors, who are already experienced in other European states.

All recommendations will be a new notice .