Meghan Markle and the royal pregnancy announcement: media mis/reporting of advanced maternal age

ABSTRACT

Although Meghan Markle has been both championed and challenged for negotiating extant representations of marriage and romance, race, class and feminism, more recently the former actress found herself at the centre of a debate over in/fertility and ‘geriatric’ motherhood.

Using Markle as a case in point, the women’s magazine, health, beauty and celebrity entertainment sector demonstrated concern for the high alarm strategies being presented in relation to older motherhood. With this in mind, this article will look at the gendered magazine sector and question the ways in which their narratives of advanced maternal age in general, and their commentary on Markle’s successful royal pregnancy in particular can be understood as either a productive or problematic step in opening up a debate about advanced maternal age, pregnancy and age-related in/fertility.

KEYWORDS:

• Meghan Markle
• ‘geriatric’ pregnancy
• age-shaming
• advanced maternal age
• age-related in/fertility
• women’s magazines

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No financial interest or benefit has arisen from the direct applications of your research.

Notes

1. NHS fertility specialists in the UK have been heard lobbying for better education on age-related infertility in schools (Adams, 2015; British Fertility Society, 2018a, 2018b; MFM, 2018).

2. A survey based on women who had spoken to their medical provider about fertility discovered that less than half of all respondents could successfully answer basic questions relating to ageing and fertility (Shapiro, 2012).

3. ‘Subfertility is a delay in conceiving. Infertility is the inability to conceive naturally after one year of trying. In subfertility, the possibility of conceiving naturally exists, but takes longer than average’ (Santos-Longhurst, 2019).

4. The phrase ‘advanced maternal age … is the accepted term in the medical community, according to a spokesperson for The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ (Kindelan, 2018).

5. Evidence suggests that many women remain poorly informed about the impact of age on fertility (Shapiro, Mazza, 2011, p. 140; Author 1, 2019, p. 101–132).

6. The fashion industry, marketers and media environment have started to tell audiences that ‘40 is the new 30ʹ (Michault, 2005), or that ‘40 is the new 20ʹ (Cosmopolitan cited in Author 1, 2014) due to the ways in which fashion-forward celebrities are seemingly defying the ageing process in terms of both their physical appearance and sartorial choices. Likewise, the cosmetics and cosmetic surgery industry both continue to flourish as recent statistics reveal year on year growth for women committed to maintaining youthful faces and physiques (Townley, 2019).

7. While those women who choose not to mother may struggle against reductive definitions of womanhood as motherhood as they circulate in contemporary society, women affected by pregnancy disruption and infertility are left to navigate the ‘shame and stigma’ that is said to follow a diagnosis (Edge, 2015, p. 100). One woman speaks for many when she ‘recounts finding out that she cannot have a child … as a loss of her womanhood’ (Bronstein & Knoll, 2015). These feelings are common because infertility and loss are seldom discussed in polite conversation; it is routinely overlooked by those without first hand experience and it is rarely commented on by those affected.

8. The quality of the sperm also has a bearing on how likely a miscarriage is to happen with age being a prime factor here (Allan Pacey cited in Anna Keel 2016).

9. Chrissy Teigen and her husband John Legend are the rare example of a couple who not only shared their pregnancy loss story online but introduced the world to a photo of their stillborn son, Jack. Accompanying news and medical media did take this opportunity to foreground miscarriage and stillbirth rates, but as Tiegan was on the cusp of her 35th birthday, there is no information about the risks associated with maternal age here. The couple are also unique in their statement that Tiegan will not look to get pregnant in the future. This does not rule out family building via surrogacy, but nonetheless, it stands against a tide of celebrity miscarriage stories being revealed as part of a new pregnancy or birth announcement (Author 1 2019, p. 143–188).

10. Even before the official royal wedding photos had been released, talk of family building emerged, and this is problematic because of the assumptions that it makes about appropriate femininity and a woman’s place in society (Author 1, 2012; Author 1, 2016). The fact that royal watchers were already playing the pregnancy guessing game before any official announcement was made, then those self-same watchers actively committed to what has elsewhere been termed ‘bump watch’ is unsurprising in this regard (Westnedge, 2012). Moreover, the emergence and continuation of a growing number of Markle pregnancy ‘Truthers’ who were and continue to be convinced that the royal pregnancy was staged while a surrogate gave birth to the royal baby is relevant to note and worthy of future research on the topic of acceptable pregnancy and appropriate motherhood (Efrem, 2019).

11. Furthermore, for those women who look to IVF on the back of an infertility diagnosis, it is important to note that ‘the chance of getting pregnant from an individual IVF cycle in Britain stands at about 21% if you’re under the age 35 – and that your chances are even lower if you’re older’ (Winston, 2018).

12. The ‘public health perspective’ on later maternal age is seen to be so conclusive that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists … issued a statement about it. After noting that ‘[b]iologically, the optimum period for childbearing is between 20–35 years of age’ and reviewing the relatively unfavourable outcomes for conception rates and pregnancy outcomes above that age, the statement cautioned: ‘For these reasons, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and doctors would encourage women to consider having families during the period of optimum fertility’ (ONS cited in BPAS, 2019).

13. High alarm strategies have been explored by the NHS in their ‘Behind the Headlines’ response to a Daily Mail article that suggested women should have a baby before the age of 35 or ‘risk missing out on motherhood’ (NHS, 2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Feasey

Rebecca Feasey is Senior Lecturer in Media Communications at Bath Spa University. She has written book length studies on masculinity and television (EUP 2008), motherhood and the small screen (Anthem 2012), maternal audiences (Peter Lang 2016) and infertility in the media (Palgrave Macmillan 2019).