Laura Juliana Castellanos Guevara

By: Laura Juliana Castellanos Guevara If at this very moment, we were to search on the internet what is the right age for women to have children we would get three different answers. A biological one that says it should be between 25 and 29, a social one that says after 30, and, a gender one that says whenever you are ready. Regardless of the country or type of upbringing, it is likely that most women have experienced social pressure to be a mother by hearing from their closest environment phrases such as: "Don't let it take you too late to have children", "And you, when are you ready?", "The older you get the harder it is". However, public policies on Infertility Prevention and Treatment reconfigure the presumption of the appropriate age for women to have children. There are many reasons why women should seek assisted reproductive treatments, among them being a single woman who wants a child, being a homosexual woman who wants a child, failures in the reproductive system, and, one in particular, to preserve motherhood. In February of last year, the Colombian Ministry of Health and Social Protection, under resolution 0228, adopted this public policy with a focus, as its name implies, on preventing infertility, which implies that research should be used to educate about sexual and reproductive rights to take advantage of all the possibilities that technology and current medicine offer so that each woman can decide when she wants to become a mother. According to research conducted by the Eugin Clinic in 2020, 59% of Colombian women are in favor of freezing their eggs for non-medical reasons, which means that they are willing to plan their maternity so as not to depend on the right age according to science or society to be able to conceive. Although every woman has a different life plan, it is more common nowadays for women to put their professional development before a family and, therefore, the stage to becoming mothers. I decided to ask my friends, young women of 21 years of age, about what would be the ideal age, and their answer, for the most part, was that beyond age, what they wanted was to have the necessary economic stability to support their children, but that they knew that "the clock was ticking" and that they could not wait that long. But one of them commented that we could still freeze the eggs so as not to feel conditioned and that she had already inquired about the subject. This is evidence that the reality has changed and that the idea of the appropriate age may begin to disappear, however, the fact that not enough is known about the subject among girls and young women limits the discussion. For this, it is necessary that regardless of socioeconomic level, education is offered in different environments about the options they have to prevent and treat infertility, but most importantly, that they can understand that there is no pressure at the moment of carrying out their maternity.