Actor Hilary Swank recently announced she is expecting her third child at age 52. Within a day, social media users had delivered their verdict: irresponsible, selfish, too old.
But one 39-year-old fan commented that Swank had given her hope that the family she wanted “could still happen”. Swank’s reply was simple but encouraging: “It can!”
I understand that fan. For as long as I can remember, I have planned to become a mother later in life.
As a first-generation college student, I know that I want to finish my education, build a stable career and be financially secure enough to give my children what my parents worked so hard to give me. In my 20s, I was able to get my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, live and work in Yellowstone National Park and gain a decade of public health experience.
Now, at 37, I’m working on my doctorate. And for almost as long, the people closest to me have warned me not to wait too long.
I have heard it at family gatherings, from friends, from people who love me and mean well. They express sentiments like, “You won’t be able to chase after or play with your kids!” or “How will you relate to them?”
Friends who started early talk excitedly about how young they’ll still be when their children turn 18 and leave for college. They don’t mean it as a criticism. But these comments sting a little as they transmit the same message: There is a right time to become a mother, and I am missing it.
Photo Courtesy Of Vanessa Cummings
When this happens, I think of Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, stomping her foot on the porch to show Vinny her biological clock ticking away. It’s a funny scene. Living it is less funny.
Out of worry, last year, I requested and took an anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) test, which estimates approximately how many eggs a woman has left. My result fell right within the normal range, and my provider told me that she was very confident about my fertility.
Despite the pressure and stress, I am glad I’ve chosen to wait. And I’m tired of that choice being treated as a mistake. My reasons have never been careless. Not only do I want to be able to afford my children; I want to be emotionally mature enough to raise them well. I also want to be stable enough in my career to actually be able to spend time with them.
I am not alone. A CDC report released in 2025 found that in 2023, for the first time in U.S. history, more babies were born to women 40 and older than to teenagers. Teen births have fallen 73% since 1990. That drop is one of public health’s quiet success stories, the result of decades of education, access to contraception and investment in young people.
At the same time, births to women 40 and older nearly tripled.
We should be proud of both trends. Fewer teens are becoming parents before they are ready, and more women are becoming parents when they are ready, later in life. The ability to freeze their eggs or use other assisted reproductive technology has contributed to greater reproductive autonomy for these women.
Yet many are still treating the second group as a problem to manage.
Waiting to have children is not a failure to plan. For many of us, it is the plan.
In medicine, a pregnancy after age 35 is still labelled “advanced maternal age.” Not long ago, the term was “geriatric pregnancy”, and some still use this stigmatising term. To be clear, fertility does decline with age, and some complications, like preeclampsia and gestational diabetes, become more likely. But risk is not destiny, and a birthday is not a diagnosis.
The risks deserve honest conversation, empathy and good care for the individual women in the exam room. When we lead with a stigmatising label, care stops being personal, and may mean more interventions, earlier inductions and potentially risky caesarean births that are not medically necessary.
For Black women, the label can have even more consequences. Black women in the U.S. die from pregnancy-related causes at roughly three times the rate of white women, and research shows that education and income do not erase that gap. Too many Black women describe the same experience: telling a provider something is wrong and not being believed.
This needs to change. We need to enable all women to speak up and be heard, and then we need to listen to them.
Women in the public eye who chose later motherhood speak of it with gratitude, not regret. Janet Jackson became a first-time mother at 50, with what her spokesperson described as a healthy, stress-free delivery. Eva Mendes, who had healthy pregnancies at 40 and 42, has called the idea that women should have children in their 20s “asinine.” Eva Longoria, who became a first-time mother at 43, says she brings more wisdom and patience to parenting than she could have earlier.
Yes, celebrities have money and access to care that most of us don’t. That is exactly the point. What protects older mothers is support, preparation and care that treats them as individuals.
Photo Courtesy Of Vanessa Cummings
So, I am asking for three things to change the narrative.
To providers, stay open: Look at the woman, not just her age. Explain risks plainly, then make decisions with her, not for her. To doulas, midwives and other birth workers: Keep empowering and educating women on what their bodies are doing; help older first-time mothers, especially Black mothers, prepare to advocate for themselves before they reach the delivery room.
To our close friends and families: Stop counting down the clock. It’s already on our minds, along with all the other pressures that go along with being a woman. Ask your daughters, sisters and friends what they want for their reproductive future, and then support them in that.
Waiting to have children is not a failure to plan. For many of us, it is the plan. It’s time that people start respecting that, just as they would any other reproductive choice.
Vanessa Cummings, MPH, MCHES, is a 2026 Public Voices Fellow on Public Health with The OpEd Project and Blue Shield of California Foundation.
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