So What, Who Cares (vol 2, issue 83) Why American mothers are getting older

Hello and welcome to the weekend-to-be. Not going to lie: This has been the kind of week where I am forced to admit that my relationship with caffeinated beverages is a lot more fraught than I'd like. What about you all? What's your particular poison? Share via Twitter or email. I live in hope one of you is sitting on a cask of mead somewhere.

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Women in their 30s and 40s are driving the current uptick in baby-making -- and it's the result of younger women getting more education, focusing more at work and "adding to their family by choice, not by surprise." A full 54% of women with a master's degree or higher didn't begin having children until their 30s. And the overall number of women with higher education who have children has gone up a lot in the last 20 years: In 1994, 35% of women aged 40-44 with an MD or PhD did not have children; that number's dropped to 20% today. The Pew Research Center's conclusion:

This trend has likely been driven by demographic and societal changes. It coincides with women’s growing presence in managerial and leadership positions and suggests that an increasing share of professional women are confronting the inevitable push and pull of work-family balance.

So what? This trend is unlikely to reverse any time soon: More millennials are choosing to forgo having children, citing the modern American workplace's inability to recognize employees' wants/needs for control over their time or a life outside the office. Even if the snake people change their minds, they'll likely be older when they do.

Who cares? The fertility-industrial complex. I am tongue-in-cheek about the name, but an aging cohort of mothers is the kind of thing that will have fertility clinics kick-starting their ad budgets to play on fears that it's too late to have a baby. (Never mind that the "one in three women over age 35 won't be able to conceive" stat bandied about in popular media is based on French birth records from 1670 to 1830.)

And speaking of ad budgets: Older parents mean a whole different set of assumptions with regards to life milestones, career development and emotional development. It'll be fascinating to see how everything from minivans to life insurance is sold to an older cohort.

There is also a small but growing cottage industry of people coming out against the notion of delayed parenthood. Expect more pundits to start crafting arguments in favor of babies first, boardroom-track careers second, for the good of the U.S.A.

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L'Oreal is teaming up with San Diego-based biotech start-up Organovo to create the technology that would let 3D printers spit out sheets of human skin. The cosmetics giant already has perfected lab-grown human skin samples and it's got a ton of research on human skin; Organovo has the 3D printing know-how and experience in doing experiments on printing human organ tissue.

So what? Skin is a bodily organ, and by definition, made up of multiple layers of tissue which are held together via an extracellular matrix, or structured biochemical support. It's one thing to print out a thin layer of specialized skin cells; it's quite another to figure out how to fuse multiple layers of cells together into structurally stable tissue. This is a big deal for augmenting or replacing body parts.

Who cares? Buffalo Bill, who's going to start getting all hoity-toity about his slow-sewn skin suit and how artisanal, hand-crafted jumpsuits made from human skin beat the stuff you can rip off the 3-D printer?

I kid. The big deals here are twofold: First, when you can print off sheets of human skin, imagine what a game-changer this could be in treating severely burned people, many of whom are currently treated with grafted cadaver skin and a host of drugs that keep the body's immune system from rejecting the grafted organ. Imagine being able to print off your own skin and use it.

Second, think about how much money there is to be made in owning the 3D skin-printing appliance line-of-business that's used in hospitals or cosmetics labs. After all, Levi Strauss didn't get rich during the California Gold Rush because he struck a vein of gold; he made his money supplying everyone who was off in search of El Dorado. So you're going to want to set up a Google alert for the company Organovo, because they're doing some really interesting work in this area.

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Your pop-culture note of the day: Happy anniversary to the site Texts from Superheroes, which imagines the conversations that assorted heroes and villains have with one another, often while gently mocking comic book canon, poking holes in blockbuster movie plots or comparing property destruction totals, and showing that there's no escape from office culture anywhere.

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Are there typos? I apologize in advance. The only editing class I did not get an A in was copyediting.

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