Ah, yes, 35,

the age when the media tells us a woman's fertility rate supposedly plummets.

You've gotta get pretty serious about having kids before 35.

You're getting older and you know that clock is ticking.

By the time we're 35, fertility has decreased by 50%.

Aghhhh!

See! I gotta get baking now before this oven breaks down!

I mean, they have done studies...

Sure, but where those study got their data from is real weird.

Was it from a large well-conducted sample of modern women?

Nope! It came from world French census records from the 1600s.

(coughs)

No mud. No plague.

This must be heaven!

Seriously, I have been getting fertility advice from a bunch of 400-year-old French farmers?

Unfortunately, yes!

Oh Emily, this is Jean Twenge, the author of "The Impatient Women's Guide to Getting Pregnant"

and the researcher who discovered the truth about this data.

You know when I wanted to have kids in my late thirties,

I was as freaked out about these studies as anyone,

but I'm a researcher, so I looked into it. I found out nobody really noticed that these claims were based on such old data.

And that's a problem!

Because that means they come from a time before fertility treatment, antibiotics or modern medicine.

Yeah, there could have been a lot of reasons that these women weren't getting pregnant after 35.

Maybe their husbands had gone to war, maybe they had diseases, or—I don't know—maybe they just stopped having sex.

Umm... Yeah, I have a headache.

The truth is, in modern data (an) average woman, age 27, who's healthy,

has an 86% chance of getting pregnant within a year,

and that same woman at age 37, her chances are 82%.

It's like, barely a difference.

You know, if you don't have fertility problems already,

you could have a baby later than you think.

Age doesn't really affect fertility that much until you're in your forties.

Take it from me. I had three kids:

one at 35, another at 38 and then at 40.

Woo, congratulations!

Honestly, it was no sweat.

Okay farmers, let's get you back to the past where you belong.

Thanks, Jean.

But I read that by the age of 40, your chances of birth defects double.

(Screams)

You know, the hen house maybe working, but the eggs are going sour!

Not quite, miscarriages do become more common,

but your chances of having a baby with a birth defect only double from 0.5% to 1%.

That's like nothing.

Yeah, exactly! But if they say it doubles, it sounds way scarier, and sells more magazines.

All this fear mongering has caused a generation of women to panic that they're going infertile in their thirties.

And if you seen this show before, you know what happens when people get scared, Corporate America swoops in to take advantage.

Egg freezing industry.

Ice (nice) to meet you.

Egg freezing began as a way for women to save their eggs before undergoing chemotherapy,

but today it's grown into a vanity industry that preys on fertility fear.

Your eggs are rotting—fast,

so we're gonna freeze some now and thaw them out later when you're ready to have a baby.

What she failed to mention is that each of those eggs only has a 2-12% chance of resulting in a baby

and the whole shebang is gonna cost you upwards of 20,000 dollars.

20 grand?

Yeah, and all that money is usually wasted.

The vast majority of women who freeze their eggs never actually use them,

because, again, you can get pregnant in life later than you think!

You scammer!

Oh oh snow (no) !

That was awesome!

The truth is Emily, if you're in good health, through your early forties, you don't really need to stress that much about fertility.

I've been planning my whole life around the idea that we have to have a baby soon.

Well, you don't. If you're not ready to have a kid now, that's okay. You got time.

Man! I feel so much better.

You know what, why rush this? We should just wait to get...

PREGNANT?

Ah, we're gonna be parents!

Hey, Adam here!

If you liked that, be sure to watch all new episodes of Adam Ruins Everything every Tuesday at 10, on TruTV.