6 Minute English / Too old to have a baby?

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Neil.

And I m Beth. Women today are having fewer babies. More women are delaying having children until their forties - the period of ten years in life between 40 and 49. And some women are giving birth in their fifties, their sixties, even their seventies!

There are many reasons behind the trend for older mums including better access to education and careers. But there are also health risks to having children later in life, so in this programme we ll be asking: when are you too old to have a baby? And, as usual, we ll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

But first I have a question for you, Neil. In 2019, Mangayamma Yaramati gave birth to twins in the state of Andhra Pradesh, South India. But these were no ordinary twins because Mangayamma was the oldest recorded woman ever to give birth. So how old was the oldest ever mum when she gave birth. Was she:

a) 53 years-old?b) 63 years old? orc) 73 years old?

Hmm, I'm going to guess 63.

OK, Neil, we ll find out the correct answer at the end of the programme. Professor of reproductive science at University College London, Joyce Harper, has been studying the trend of women choosing to have babies later in life. Here she shares her discoveries with BBC World Service programme, Global Story:

Prof Joyce HarperTen, twenty, thirty years ago, women were having children at a much younger age. Now it s become quite normal for women in their thirties, as we see with the world data, there s many countries where women have their first birth over the age of 30. But this is quite a new phenomena that s why this term geriatric mother unfortunately still lingers.

Professor Harper uses the word phenomena to describe the trend for older mothers. Phenomena are unusual or significant facts and events that exist and are talked about. People often get this wrong, but the plural form is phenomena and the singular is phenomenon.