04/11/2024

Why So Many Women Are Waiting Longer to Have Children

There are many reasons for it

Fifty four years ago, in 1970, the average woman in the U.S. had her first baby at around 21 years old. That’s hard to imagine now: new federal data published in April show that in 2022, the average first-time mother was a little older than 27—a record high for the country and a sign of a major demographic change.

This shift has been underway for years.

Now, teenagers and women in their early 20s are having fewer kids, while the opposite is happening among older age groups. In 2022, for the seventh year in a row, the birth rate among U.S. women in their early 30s was higher than the rate among those in their late 20s. Perhaps even more notably, the number of babies born to women 40 and older, while still low overall, rose considerably from 2021 to 2022: up 6 percent among women ages 40 to 44 and 12 percent among those older than 45.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.