The Ticking of Your Biological Clock: Fertility Age Education or Scare Tactics?

Quite a stir has been created by a recent study out of University of St. Andrews and Edinburgh University on women's optimal fertility age.  The study, which was meant to help with research to extend women's fertility age and help young women who have undergone cancer treatments regain their fertility, ended up spawning headlines like the one on ABC's website last month: 

"For Women Who Want Kids, 'the Sooner the Better': 90 Percent of Eggs Gone By Age 30".  

Fertility age statistics have had a major update with this study, which cataloged egg count from conception to menopause. However, there are two ways to look at the numbers. As Carolyn Butler of the Washington Post says:

"...the absolute last thing that any woman of steadily advancing childbearing age wants to hear when she flips on the morning news shows is: Women lose 90 percent of their eggs by age 30."

Another way to look at is at age 30, a woman has around 30,000 eggs left (down from 300,000). 30,000? Well, that's not so bad. This less dramatic approach to the numbers also tells us that for women past thirty, conceiving may be more difficult, but they are not past their fertility age just yet.  In a far more neutral article out of the UK's The Journal the author writes:

"New evidence suggests a woman’s egg supply peaks some 20 weeks after conception, while still in the womb, and gradually declines for around 50 years..."

So clearly, "the sooner the better", as ABC says, isn't exactly accurate.  Women shouldn't be basing their family planning entirely around egg reserve numbers, or we'd all be trying to make babies the second we hit puberty! On a very level headed note, Marie-Eve writes in her blog:

"I think pressuring women even more about their biological clock is a little useless....Had I known 10 years ago that I would not be able to get pregnant easily, I still wouldn’t have changed a thing. ... I couldn’t have been a mother in my early twenties. I would have been a disaster, and most importantly, any guy I was with wouldn’t have been right..."

As a society, we have to make important decisions on how we present this information to women. Should women receive more education on when their optimal fertility age is at a young age so that they don't wait until its too late? Or would pressuring women into building families they're not ready for only create greater problems than a lower fertility rate?