The problem isn’t just a lack of context; some of the arguments are heightened by partially omitting facts. Take Down syndrome, cited often by the press as a risk of having children late. It’s true that babies conceived by older women are at higher risk of Down syndrome. But it’s not a particularly high risk: Of children birthed by women in their 30s, 99 percent don’t have the mutation. The argument that younger women respond better to in-vitro fertilization, is also factually accurate. But rarely do stories include the fact that just one percent of American children are conceived through IVF. (This makes it particularly strange when Twenge concludes her piece by encouraging young women to freeze their eggs, so they may take part in IVF later on.)
There’s always room for wrist-slap reminder for journalists to examine the origins of statistics and the broader body of research. And these kind of techniques are particularly crucial in reporting on reproductive health where women make major decisions based on reports. It all worked out fine for Hewlett, who, despite all her hemming, conceived her final child—a healthy girl—at age 51. But who knows what kind of partially-informed sacrifices women have made in the name of family planning.
As Twenge points out, “we’ve rearranged our lives, worried endlessly, and forgone countless career opportunities based on a few statistics about women who resided in thatched-roof huts and never saw a lightbulb.”
Twenge botches her reading of Dunson so freakishly that one has to assume that anything else she says about what she read is similarly untrustworthy.
She claims that Dunson shows age differences don't matter because the chances of a 35-39 couple conceiving at 2 days prior to ovulation are the same as a young couple at 3 days prior. In fact, Dunson's data shows that on any given day, the fertility rate of the younger couples is much higher than that of the older couples. The overall likelihood of pregnancy in a cycle is much greater for younger couples (so much for the suggestion that looking at cycle viability produces different results). Yes, it's trivially true that the fertility rate for 35-39 couples at Day Ovulation-2 is the same as for 19-26 couples on Day Ov-3. But that doesn't erase the age difference; it highlights it. It's saying that at the very best, the older couple can only achieve a level of fertility that younger couples achieve and surpass earlier in the cycle.
For CJR, the lesson is that just because someone is contrarian doesn't necessarily mean that they're accurate. I'm guessing that Fitts might have been better served by taking her own advice and actually reading the sources that Twenge purports to describe.
#1 Posted by Tom T., CJR on Mon 15 Jul 2013 at 12:50 AM
In fact we do not include full citations in our patient education materials.
However, we have a number of reports from our Practice Committee which include a host of references and are available on our web site.
http://asrm.org/uploadedFiles/ASRM_Content/News_and_Publications/Practice_Guidelines/Committee_Opinions/Age-related_fertility.pdf
http://asrm.org/uploadedFiles/ASRM_Content/News_and_Publications/Practice_Guidelines/Committee_Opinions/Testing_and_interpreting_measures_of_ovarian_reserve-noprint.pdf
Sean Tipton
Director, Public Affairs
American Society for Reproductive Medicine
#2 Posted by Sean Tipton, CJR on Mon 15 Jul 2013 at 10:12 AM
Tom, Twenge doesn't use the Dunson study to prove that both age cohorts are identical; she uses it to show that the data behind conception is much more complicated than often portrayed. You can extrapolate from the study that while older couples may have to pay closer attention to ovulation cycles, it is not completely impossible for them to reproduce. Clearly there is a difference, it's just not a completely dire difference.
#3 Posted by Alexis Sobel Fitts, CJR on Mon 15 Jul 2013 at 10:12 AM
This kind of super-skewed reporting on women's fertility is skewered in Susan Faludi's Backlash - written in 1990.
#4 Posted by fleurdamour, CJR on Mon 15 Jul 2013 at 02:52 PM
Interesting piece. Thanks for writing.
#5 Posted by Karina Ioffee, CJR on Wed 31 Jul 2013 at 12:57 PM