THEn many American cities, in the delivery rooms where uninterrupted cries once resounded, today a new silence dominates. It’s not immobility: it’s waiting. The expectation of women who reach motherhood later, around 40 years oldoften with an already full life baggage and a biological time that seems to run faster than theirs. And it is precisely in this suspension that the news is hidden: for the first time in the United States, but in Italy it is no different, women who give birth at forty and over, exceed those of the very young. An overtaking that is rewriting Western demographics.
Mothers over 40: time suspended
What is surprising is the research data of National Center for Health Statistics carried out in 2023, from which it emerges very clearly that, in the USA, mothers over 40 had more children than mothers under 20. This is not just a statistical reversal, but a real cultural leap. It means, in fact, that childbearing age has pushed beyond the boundaries imagined by previous generations and that medical technologies, from in vitro fertilization to embryo preservation techniques, have expanded the margin of the possible.
The overtaking that reshapes the demographic curves
In specialized clinics, the average age of patients is no longer surprising: there are centres, such as those in New York, where half of the women in treatment are over 45 years old. And the examples, now known to American public opinion, show an increasingly close relationship between technology and biology: embryos frozen in the last centurysaved by a chemical time rather than a biological one, which develop again decades later.
From the United States to Italy, the center of gravity of motherhood shifts towards older ages (Getty)
Italy: a fact that weighs more than a single figure
With different tones, but with the same trajectory, Italy too discovers itself to be part of the same silent revolution. Within the country’s deep and constant demographic decline, a fact emerges that changes the way we look at the phenomenon: in 2024, those born to mothers over 40 surpassed those born to mothers under 25. According to Istat, the first ones were 34,254; the seconds 29,262. A change that tells of a society that builds parenthood with a delayed time, often imposed rather than chosen.
New technologies and PMA lengthen the wait
There PMA, medically assisted procreationwas obviously an active part of this change: its existence and the possibility of postponing pregnancy, it is an essential piece for many of these pregnancies. This does not alter the fact that Italy presents a particular picture: the average age of Italian patients who use the couple’s oocytes and sperm is 36.7 years, among the highest in Europe, while those who use donated oocytes reach 41.9 years. The European Registry confirms the anomaly: over 80% of Italian ART patients are at least 40 years old, compared to 17.2% in Sweden and 21.9% in France. But if the numbers are clear, so are the reasons: Italian motherhood always takes place later because everything else in lifework, economic stability, home, relationships, comes much later.
The world turned upside down: while we slow down, elsewhere it speeds up
It’s not like this everywhere, this must be said. If, in fact, in the West we talk about “demographic winter”, just move your gaze to see the opposite season. The African continent, 1.5 billion inhabitants today, potentially 4 billion by the end of the century, is growing at a rate that will redefine global balances. A surge that doesn’t come out of nowhere: it is the result of better care, lower infant mortality, widespread health progress. In short, the earth seems to live in two times: a slowed down one, made up of few births and increasingly adult mothers; an accelerated one, in which children are born in such numbers as to redraw economic and political maps.
Mothers over 40: the challenge is not the number of births, but their future
The overtaking of mothers over 40 does not speak so much of the female body, but of the environment that surrounds it: of the protections that are missing, of life choices that become longer, of career paths that often leave room for parenthood much later. The question, in fact, no longer concerns only when one becomes a parent, but what material, social and economic conditions allow one to do so. And it is precisely on this ground that today the difference between those who succeed and those who give up is played out.