Fertility By the Numbers

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How long does it usually take a woman to get pregnant in her 20s? 30s? 40s? And how much does fertility decline at various ages? Not sure? You're not alone.

The Scoop

Time for a pop quiz! What are a woman's chances of getting pregnant in any given month when she is 30? How about at 40? These are just two of the questions a group of 1,000 women were asked as part of the Fertility IQ 2011 Survey, a fertility awareness survey conducted by researchers from RESOLVE, the National Infertility Association.

Think you know the answers? Most of the women who participated in the survey did not. According to researchers, less than half of survey participants correctly answered at least seven out of 10 basic fertility questions. What had women stumped? Questions that asked how long it takes to get pregnant—and how fertility declines at various ages.

For example, most women who participated in the survey thought that a 30-year-old woman had a 70 percent chance of conceiving after a month of trying. If your answer came close to this, sorry Mama! In reality, the chances of getting pregnant in any given month at this age are closer to 20 percent. Most respondents also thought that a 40-year-old woman would successfully conceive 60 percent of the time after trying for a month—researchers say this number actually hovers right around 5 percent. Women were also wrong when it came to younger moms. According to survey results, most participants believed that a 20-year-old woman typically becomes pregnant after less than two months of trying, rather than the average of five months.

"We were not at all surprised," says Barbara Collura, executive director of RESOLVE, about survey results turning up widespread misinformation (via MSNBC). "This is what we experience every day."

Your Fertility

Time for fertility class? Health experts say yes.

"People kind of think now at 40 what they used to think at 30," says Dr. William Schoolcraft, medical director of the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine in Denver and two other locations (via MSNBC). "People do yoga and they run and they do all these healthy things. They assume that means 'I'm not aging.' But their eggs don't know that."

Collura thinks the connection between age and fertility needs to be underscored, especially because women receive so many mixed messages from the media attention placed on Mariah Carey, Kelly Preston, Marcia Cross, and other celebrities who have babies in their 40s. "It is important for women to know that as you age, it may become increasingly difficult to conceive, and conception rates are not as high as most people believe," says Collura. "This is science and biology 101."