It’s not news that more and more women are delaying having their first child. What is new, though, are the high-tech options available to a potential parent, or at least to one with means.
Since 1975, the proportion of first births to women aged 30 years and older increased from 5 percent to 24 percent in 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. In the latest recording period, the average age of first-time mothers jumped to 26. That’s up from 21 in 1970.
But as more people try to have children later in life, more also struggle and some find out that they can’t. The World Health Organization declared infertility to be the third most serious disease worldwide in the 21st century, behind only cancer and cardiovascular disease.
It’s a fact known all too well by serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, who has founded a new, $200 million start-up looking to circumvent the biological realities of a decision that has become increasingly complicated.