Always amusing to see men (or rather boys) trying to use declining fertility of women by showing fertility rates to justify that women should marry young.

Firstly, reproduction is not the only purpose in life or partnerships/marriage.

Secondly, they are reading the data wrong.

Fertility rates (broadly) is defined as avg number of children born by a woman in her reproductive years over her lifetime. It measure a period, not the cohort’s metric.

And number of children born means u need the man as well, so the equal & opposite cohort to see is the men.

Blaming women biology for low fertility rates or high risk pregnancies in older women is lazy & ignorant.

Fertility rates drop in older women because their male partners are older too, therefore time to conception is later.

And men fertility is not constant throughout his life. That is a myth.

There will be decrease in male fertility as he age too. Changes in sexual function like erectile dysfunction, deterioration in sperm quality (motility, number, morphology).

Sperm quality affected by environmental/lifestyle factors; sedentary lifestyle, smoking, poor diet, pollution, stress.

Men also have lower testosterone after 40. It’s called andropause. A whole host of stuff affects men.

And poor sperm quality is known to cause birth defects.

Back to women, age does not define when the woman should or should not conceive & is not the real cause of birth risks. Age does not matter actually.

In fact, children of mothers in older maternal age group have better socio-behavioural growth.

There is a significant advantage of older maternal age group mothers: maturity.

But the most important factor of all, to give women good education. Good education = mature mothers = mentally/physically healthy children = better society.

So please, boys, if you don’t fully understand factors affecting fertility of both men and women, don’t lazily pluck 1 graph and try to justify what is an archaic mindset of women have to marry young.

Just main jauh-jauh lah. /end