Spain is the European country with the most women who become mothers over 40 years of age. The economic factor and the fear that motherhood will take its toll at the work level are some of the reasons that lead to this late motherhood. Also the few direct aid to families, the difficulty in accessing housing and a social and work organization that does not facilitate conciliation are behind this trend. In addition, there is the pending issue of co-responsibility, which pushes many women to park their careers or put them on pause. There are also supporters of delaying motherhood who believe that maturity and living experiences are necessary as a prior step to facing this vital stage.
And when the moment seems right, the biological clock gives a shock of reality. Thus, women who want to be mothers increasingly arrive at motherhood later... and many others stay along the way. Many end up resorting to assisted reproduction treatments, a method that is physically and emotionally difficult and involves a significant outlay of money. Experts advocate for more aid to encourage women to be mothers whenever they want and also emphasize the importance of knowing and preserving fertility. We spoke with six of them.
Ciara Magdaleno (43) is a mathematician. Before becoming a mother, she was very focused on her career and was “scared” of the price she would have to pay for motherhood in a country, Spain, that does not facilitate conciliation. Later she was able to verify that her fears were founded. Despite this, with Txema, her partner, they reflected and there was a “change of priorities.” At 39 years old they decided to do it and Ciara got pregnant the first time. She gave birth to Gael, who is now three years old, a month after turning 40. This is the date that many women set as the limit for launching, although by then fertility is already very compromised (around 37 years old in 90 % of the eggs have disappeared or are of poor quality, the Spanish Fertility Society points out).
This Catalan was clear that motherhood is in many cases “sacrifice” and also loss of freedom. Although she also remembers how her mother Rosa de ella was a teacher, she made a great effort to maintain her professional and family life and preserve her “own space.” She currently finds it in reading or video games. And, yes, they maintain an active social life that includes Gael.
Her biggest fear was the work toll that being a mother entails. And she has confirmed it after 17 years working. It is something widespread among her friends who comment on the “frustration” they feel because men do not suffer this penalty. Today she has a small reduction in hours because “the conciliation in Spain sucks.” And she values that this right, much less used by men, allows her to have “quality time” with Gael.
Looking back, today she would have tried to be a mother a little earlier because one of the aspects that worries her is how she will be when her son is 20 or 25: “I'm afraid of not being there at important moments for him,” she confesses.
Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona Xavier Roigé points out that, although the lack of family policies or “socioeconomic causes, such as difficulty in accessing work and housing, are decisive,” they do not explain on their own “ the lengthening of the vital project of being a mother” and the low birth rates observed in Spain. Among them, the advancement of fertility techniques, as well as the emergence of new models of motherhood and families that end up arriving much later. This is the case of Marisol, who at 43 years old is four months pregnant with a girl thanks to the fact that at 37 she froze her eggs. She decided to do it with her partner then because it wasn't the time and she ended up being a mother with her current partner, although along the way, she considered being a mother alone. This nurse believes it is essential to “preserve the ovarian reserve” because she “gives you the option to choose when to become a mother.” An option in which she believes that “prejudices” must be left out.
“I met my partner late, at 38 years old,” explains Desirée Pastor, who was the mother of a girl at 41 years old and then of a boy at almost 45 years old. After a gestational loss from a spontaneous pregnancy, she gave birth to her two children after undergoing in vitro fertilization treatments. She feels that age gave her the tools to go through a complicated postpartum, after “having suffered obstetric violence” during her first birth and feeling that she was forced to follow certain protocols “as if it were a risky pregnancy,” just because of the how old he was and without any health problems.
“Even in public medicine, current protocols advise, just because you are forty years old, to end the pregnancy and induce labor at week 39. If the patient has not had any complications, I accompany them until they recover. birth,” explains the obstetrician and gynecologist at the Womer Center Merimer Pérez.
The complications that may be associated with a mature pregnancy are not minor, indicates the expert. “Assisted reproduction techniques have advanced a lot and are achieving pregnancies in increasingly older women, but there are also more and more medications they must take,” she explains. Pregnancies after forty - he points out - are associated with a greater probability of spontaneous abortions, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and a genetic alteration in the baby. “I love accompanying these mothers because they are normally more mature women in their heads. Normally it has taken them a lot to get there.”
“I have had situations where I have felt quite overwhelmed, especially with my first daughter, who had a horrible birth with a cesarean section and had terrible postpartum depression. I felt terribly alone. If it had happened to me much younger, I would have handled it much worse due to my lack of experience in life,” says Desirée on her part, although she clarifies: “I don't want to say that a thirty-year-old woman is not prepared.” She also feels that her age has helped her cope better with the friction that the arrival of a child produces in a couple, as well as “impertinent comments or unsolicited advice.” When she was younger, she had a harder time setting boundaries than she does now. “With age, I have become assertive,” she says.
“We have a fairly idyllic image of motherhood that then has absolutely nothing to do with what it is,” she says about the challenges of conciliation. Although she points out: “I think my challenges have been like those of any other woman, it doesn't matter if you are thirty or forty.”
He is from Valencia, but lives with his family in Benidorm. “Having family support is not the same as not having it, as is my case. “My husband and I are raising alone,” says Desirée. Without this help, her job options are reduced. “It conditions me to look for jobs that are only in the mornings,” she explains. In recent years, she has been alternating studies at the university and language school with temporary jobs as a clerk at the Post Office.
Motherhood sometimes doesn't come when you want it, no matter how much you think about it early and it's time to insist. This is the case of Noemí Catalán (49), who became Biel's mother at 45 after more than a decade of trying. She wanted to be one before she was 30 but “you put it off, you don't find the right partner or he doesn't want to and you end up at an age when you should have two children and you still don't have any,” she explains. She started trying at 33 and became a mother at 45. She started alone with two inseminations and after several couples and not achieving pregnancy, she opted for assisted reproduction. She has undergone a total of 14 treatments alone and as a couple and achieved 44 through embryo donation. She assures that it was not difficult for her to “give up genetics” although she acknowledges that she made a list of pros and cons. And the most important pro was that she was going to be a mother. She has never hidden it and she says that she found a lot of support in her environment. Only one friend questioned it, but she defends that motherhood is not “just an egg.” For her, the weight of genetics is not decisive because “you carry and bear the baby.” She decided to get rid of her “prejudices” and move forward. And, thus, at the age of 45, Biel arrived.
For her, everything is about the benefits of single motherhood because “as a couple you have to reach consensus and we women are the ones who think about each other,” she says. She is “happy” and she is pleased that “I decide everything important.” Her mother entered motherhood “too young,” at 22, and although Noemí had wished that hers had not been such a late motherhood, she believes that her age and the path she has had to follow has allowed her to make a reflection that young mothers cannot do. “From a cultural point of view there is a perception that she is not a bad age,” says Xavier Roigé. “Many people think that this is the best age to be a mother. You have already lived a whole stage of life, you have a more stable job, more resources to have a child, a lesser need to go out.”
Noemí wanted to be a mother so much that her career didn't matter as much to her. The only thing she worried about was not being able to support her son. She came from the tourism sector, while she was four months pregnant, she was fired. And the pandemic arrived, which caught her with a child who was only a few months old. She had to change jobs to “earn money and save” and in 2023 she made the leap to social networks with an Instagram profile (@noemicatalan_mamapordonacion) in which she helps women on the “path to infertility.” She makes a living from it and this job allows her to balance: “I do the live shows at nine with my son sleeping,” she explains. “I jumped into the pool in this too, I'm an expert in jumping,” she jokes.
He assures that neither his type of family nor his age determine his life. “I go to the park and make croquette with my son while younger mothers don't do it,” she says. He also assures that at his son's school "I don't feel like the old lady in the class and I am." He hopes to live until he is 85 and that Biel “will have me by his side.” Because this is one of the fears that late mothers and fathers face. In her case, with the addition of being a single mother, she has already made a will and assigned the person who must take care of her son if something happens to her. There are people who do not understand her decision, but believe it is important to “respect.”
“Many women who want to be mothers are forced to postpone the decision for economic, work or work-life reasons. The search for pregnancy begins in many cases between the ages of 35 and 40, which is when a woman's reproductive capacity decreases significantly," says perinatal psychologist Anaïs Barcelona, who clarifies that the fact that women tend to experience greater difficulties in getting pregnant naturally, it causes many women to “go through different assisted reproduction techniques, some losses and grief.”
“Could it be that at this age I can be pregnant?” Natalia asked herself, already with the fourth positive pregnancy test in her hand. She was 42 years old and she believed that her fertile years had passed. Today her daughter is five months old and a week ago she resumed her work with rotating schedules, one week she works in the mornings, and the next in the afternoons. “It's not more difficult because you are more or less organized, but because you have less energy,” says Natalia about being a mother after forty: “Before, after a full day's work, I would return home and it was time to rest. Now you come home and it's playing, cooking... working is your moment of rest, the moment in which you clear your head.”
She works as a sales assistant in a home textile store. Her partner is self-employed and they balance the days so that one of them is always with her daughter. They are both Argentinian, she has lived in Barcelona for 18 years and he has been living in Barcelona for just over five. “It's 24/7, because we don't have our family support network nearby,” she says.
Her mother came to help her during the girl's first months, when she went through postpartum depression. “No one talks about these things, everyone says how wonderful motherhood is, we see photos on the networks… but it is hard,” says Natalia. For her, both the company of her mother and the therapeutic sessions she attended at the Vall d'Hebron Hospital were decisive.
UB professor Xavier Roigé points out that the relationship with grandparents occupies a primary place. “What the Welfare State cannot cover rests largely on older people from another generation. Without them, surely the birth rate would be even lower,” he indicates.
“Many older mothers report that they do not have enough energy that parenting requires and they feel exhausted,” explains Anaïs Barcelona. “There is no scientific evidence that links older maternal age with depressive or anxiety disorders, while young maternal age has been related to these mental health difficulties.”
In his patients, he has observed that, on the one hand, they feel that “they are not missing anything,” since they have gone through many different experiences. On the other hand, “they are normally women who have thought a lot about the decision to become mothers, they are highly desired pregnant women. They are very involved and active mothers.”
Sonia Montoya had never wanted to be a mother. “She didn't have that feeling developed,” she explains. But Carlos, her husband, did want to start a family. So at 42 years old and after eight years of being a couple, they started trying. After a year and a half of trying, they decided to seek help. And so, she got pregnant the first time at 44 years old and weeks after confinement due to the pandemic. And that was also how this computer scientist who is now 47 years old discovered that being a mother was a real and strong desire. “I had losses and the shock made me realize how much I wanted to,” she explains. She also recognizes that when age “takes over” is when you consider things.
Now, approaching 48 years old and with a three-year-old child (Edahi), she does believe that it would have been worth trying younger, although not much earlier: at 39 or 40. “I still think that I would not have liked to be a super young mother,” she explains. “I have lived everything I have wanted and now I want to do all the experiences as a family,” she says. But she also regrets not trying sooner because starting late has made it impossible for her to give Edahi a brother. For her, having children later “gives you a point of maturity that youth does not give you, although you also become more tired and lose your patience more,” she confesses.
Far from what happens to many women, thinking that a child could be a brake on her professional career never crossed her mind. And she explains that her pregnancy has not taken its toll on her in the sense that she is not offered promotional positions. She, too, has not “paid tolls” for motherhood, she assures. But she recognizes that she is the one who rules out positions that involve having to be there at seven in the afternoon attending to an incident or that require her to travel.
She explains that, like many other women and few men, before becoming a mother she had to put up with the typical comment that “you're going to miss the mark,” but when she received them she did not have the desire for motherhood and they did not affect her. She admits that she tries not to think about the cons of late motherhood that weigh on her, such as “when my son is 30, what will my health status be?” For now, her moments of disconnection are escaping to the gym from time to time. And it doesn't bother her to give up part of one of her hobbies: windsurfing with her partner. They continue practicing this sport, but they take turns in the sand in Morocco or the Canary Islands to take care of the child.
Sonia says that in assisted reproduction clinics they tell you that you can have children until you are 50 and although she believes that that age is already extreme, she does not dare to judge that a woman considers motherhood beyond 40. “We have to do it. "Follow instinct and not think that you can't be a mother because you're late."
