Why are women being shamed for the age they have children?

Last week, Kourtney Kardashian announced her pregnancy with Travis Barker at a Blink 182 concert he was performing at. It was a fairly cute affair really – she held a sign up to the band’s drummer during their smash track All The Small Things, which read “Travis I’m Pregnant” (a fun parallel, seeing as a fan does just this in the 1999 music video for this song).

The happy news has been somewhat sidelined, though. Kourtney has been met with criticisms for the way in which she announced her pregnancy – she’s been called “attention seeking” and accused of the moment being “staged” – and has also been hit with online backlash for using her “old eggs” to make a baby. As if it’s anybody else’s business.

Kourtney is 44 years old. She has three children with her ex-boyfriend Scott Disick, all of which are aged between 13 and eight – meaning Kourtney had her first child in her early 30s. Does that make those pregnancies somehow more legitimate when it comes to society’s expectation of childbearing?

One online critic has commented: “44 and pregnant? Old eggs are not good for making healthy babies”, with another tweeting “Any pregnancy after 25 is high risk”.

Others have just been plain abusive, with one commenting “she’s too old to be breeding”.

It seems that too many people in this world, particularly on the Internet, feel that they are justified in making judgments on a woman’s choice or ability to get pregnant, with age being a factor that causes even more outrage. After all, how dare a woman create and carry a baby after the age of 40?

This attitude is a gross continuation of the idea that women are past their prime by 25, or need to be married by 30. Adding any kind of fixed timeline to your life is a shaky plan at best, and applying this expectation to another’s life is irresponsible and cruel.

We saw a similar story play out on Love Island last night, when Leah told Mitchel about her plans to have children at 37 years old. His response was a mess of internalised misogyny and ageism of course – he asked her “don’t you want to be a cool mum?”.