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SUMMARY :
If there is a field in which the destinies of men and women differ, it is indeed the field of reproduction, especially as regards the time allotted to each sex for reproduction. In her early forties, the woman becomes aware that her capability of reproduction is coming to its end. Is there a woman who, verging on this "never again" period, does not feel a secret longing for this last (if not first) child? In France, the European country where the treatment of infertility and the resort to ART (Assisted Reproduction Technology) are the most important, we are disrupted by this longing which turns into a need and which is sometimes accompanied by an asolute "demand of child production". Late pregnancies are not the exclusive privilege of our century. In the XVII - XVIII centuries, 100,000 women a year had a child after 40, which amounted to 9% of childbirths, but these children were often the last of the family, and these pregnancies were not always "longed for" (16).

Thanks to birth control, the rate of late pregnancies in 1979 was at its lowest: 0,8%. However, since then, their number has been continually on the rise, so that it presently accounts for 5% of all births and it is estimated that it will amount to 9% in the year 2000. (10). There are two reasons for these figures: The first is that the women concerned are those of the baby-boom generation (1945-1965) and that they are now between 32 and 50. The second is that they were also the first to benefit from a birth control, and so throughout their sexual life.

The women of this generation were therefore able to devote themselves entirely to their socio-professional career by obliterating the very question of their desire to have a child. Doesn't our society extol the equality between the sexes? After long studies and a professional investment, the standard up-to-date woman gets married at 30 or so and considers the problem of her fertility after 35 only.