[Prenatal diagnosis. A psychological study. II. Pregnancy after the age of 40 (author's transl)]

This article, which is the second installment of a study of the psychological aspects of antenatal diagnosis, presents the analysis of interviews with women (and with some of their partners) who were examined because of their age. The characteristics of these "late" pregnancies seem to be the following: 1. The question of a abnormality shifts the emphasis from the child to the pregnancy itself, which is often lived through as something abnormal; 2. knowing the sex of the child before its birth emphasizes the abnormality of the pregnancy and therefore draws attention to the problem of the age of the mother; 3. this last chance of pregnancy emphasizes the question, which is near in time for these women, of the menopause, of getting old and of death; 4. it also emphasizes in a most emphatic way the question of mourning, of loss, of the place of the future child in the history of the woman and in a more general way the question of the desire to have a baby.