Women are waiting longer to start families. What are the pros and cons of motherhood at 20, 30, 40 and beyond?

Should women delay motherhood? The answer is, it all depends.

If you are intent on birthing offspring with your own genes, delaying is probably not the best idea. During the last 30 years, the number of childless women ages 40 to 44 doubled. In 2006, according to census data, 20 percent of women in that age group were childless compared to only 10 percent in 1986.

Delay -- but not for long -- if you intend to adopt or foster a child, or if you're comfortable gambling on expensive fertility treatments, like in-vitro fertilization or egg donation. The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal I.V.F. failure rates as high as 68 to 78 percent in women ages 35 to 40, and 88 to 95 percent among women 40 to 44.

The world is full of inaccurate information about women's and men’s fertility. Temper your optimism toward well-intentioned advice offered by friends, the Internet, your mother and the news media. Maintain a healthy skepticism when people tell you that getting pregnant is easy if you just sit back and relax, take your temperature, inject yourself with hormones, practice yoga or freeze your eggs.

Every woman is different. Before making any big decisions, learn if deferring childbirth is even an option for you. Test your hormone levels when you are young, and keep testing them. Seek the opinion of more than one independent reproductive endocrinologist who has no ties to pharmaceutical companies, fertility clinics or donor egg agencies.

You need to protect your fertility. You can do that by becoming a discerning and informed reproductive health consumer. 

Source: The New York Times