By Twin babies are considered to be rare. There are more twins now than ever before. Twin babies mean twice the joy, twice happiness, twice love, and twice the blessings. Earlier twins were the sign of rarity but now they are actually becoming more common. As per Alexis C. Madrigal of The Atlantic, “From about 1915, when the statistical record begins, until 1980, about one in every 50 babies born was a twin, a rate of 2 percent,” after that the rate began to increase: by 1995, it was 2.5 percent. The rate crossed 3 percent in 2001 and later on reached 3.3 percent in 2010.
Several reasons can be identified as contributing to increased twinning. One study said that rising obesity rates increase in twinning, citing that overweight or tall women are more likely to have twins.
Women under the age of 25 give 2% of births to twins. But as per scientists, this trend is due to the fact that older women tend to have more twins, and women are choosing to start families later. Fertility treatments such as in-vitro fertilization likely to play a major role in twinning.
Further reason can be Fertility treatments. Fertility treatments play a major role in the increase in twins. The study said that infertility treatments are responsible for about two-thirds of the increase in the twin birth rate from 1980 to 2009. Fertility therapies include the taking of fertility stimulating drugs and procedures to assist conception, such as in-vitro fertilization. The influence of fertility treatments is related to the issue of advanced maternal age as women over the age of thirty are more likely to seek fertility assistance, as per the study.
In the three decades during which twin birth rate data was studied, medical technology made fertility therapies more successful and more accessible. The use of reproductive assistance became more prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the processes have been changes in recent years to restrict the number of multiple births that result as an outcome of fertility therapy, recognizing that multiple births result in more health risks with greater health care costs.
