Once upon a time, a woman's ovaries were her own private affair. Aspiring mothers struggling with fertility issues whispered to their doctors about their travails, took drugs to stimulate their follicles and crossed their fingers. Today, aging eggs and donor sperm are the topic of open conversation on blogs, on Oprah and in movies like "Baby Mama" (storyline: a 37-year-old businesswoman hires a surrogate after being told her chance of getting pregnant is just about nil). Even politicians are in the fertility limelight. Sarah Palin's baby, Trig, was born when she was 44. And the newly appointed New York senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, cast a vote in Congress the day before giving birth to son Henry at age 41 last May.
And yet, despite the outing of the female reproductive system, many young women still don't fully understand the facts about age as a risk factor for infertility. Their Ob-Gyns don't always tell them. And 40-plus Hollywood mothers (some of whom are presumably using donor eggs to get pregnant) and cases like Palin and Gillibrand reassure them. So this week, the American Fertility Association (AFA) is launching "Manicures & Martinis" at the Dashing Diva Nail Salon in Manhattan, the first in a series of one-hour conversations about reproductive health. The event, targeted at women in their 20s and 30s who want to have children someday but aren't ready now, features a leading fertility expert, who'll talk about the reality of the biological clock and other risk factors for infertility. Yes, there'll be martinis—an offering criticized by some health advocates as irresponsible— but there will also be an organic alcohol-free "fertilitini."
Corey Whelan, AFA's director of development, says this is the kind of program she wishes existed when she was trying to get pregnant in her 20s and 30s while suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome. "I wanted to create a program that was soft, that was light and that was non-threatening," says Whelan, now 53 and the mother of 13-year-old twins conceived through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). The goal is to inform women so they can explore their options at an earlier age, she says, and the message is "one of hope, not one of doom and gloom."
To get the word out, AFA is joining the world of social marketing, advertising the event on Web sites like Facebook.com and Meetup.com. Whelan's hope is that women who attend will spread the word to their friends in person and electronically—a girlfriend-to-girlfriend experience, as opposed to some dreaded medical information session that few young women would be inclined to sign up for. "We would not be able to bring this particular demographic into a lecture hall or symposium," she says. "They wouldn't be interested and it wouldn't work."
But will women show up? AFA's Manhattan event is fully booked, with 25 women signed up and more than 30 on a waiting list. The confirmed participants are all single and between the ages of 21 and 34. One woman registered her daughter, her niece and her daughter's best friend, says Whelan, who plans to offer similar events in other venues (cheese shops, billiard halls) across the country in 2009.
Talking to women about age and motherhood is always controversial. No matter how public the topic of reproduction has become, an individual woman's fertility and the choices she makes about when and how to have children remain highly personal. While many women and health-care providers believe that informing women about age as a risk factor is empowering, others say that harping on the topic smacks of paternalism and is unfair to women who are still in search of a partner.
