Chapter 5: When Age Matters: The Statistics and Biology of Fertility Decline in Clinical Choreographies

I am chatting with a friend in her kitchen as she prepares the meal. She is sharing her experience of infertility, explaining to me why she does not want to turn to assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and how she is trying to resist the pressure of other people taking the ‘biological clock’ very seriously, while she actually thinks that she still has time ahead. While outwardly nodding in agreement, I keep thinking to myself that if she really wants a child, then she should consult a reproductive medicine specialist. She is over 40, they have been trying to have a child for several years and she has already suffered a miscarriage. In fact, I do not really understand her decision. When going home later, I keep thinking about this discussion and realise how my ideas about age-related infertility and ARTs have changed since I started my research. Before, I would probably have agreed with her, saying that she was right to trust herself and her body, that statistics on fertility decline were just part of a general discourse stressing women and normatively pushing them to have a child at the supposedly right moment. Now I was taking fertility decline to be serious enough to think that she probably did not have much of a chance left and should seek medical assistance.