Generation childless
We nearly top table in the West for women over 40 who haven’t had children
WOMEN are more likely to end up without children in Britain than almost anywhere else in the West, a report has found.
An international league table has found that a fifth of British women are childless in their early 40s – a figure exceeded only by Spain and Austria.
And the rate of childlessness among UK women is increasing sharply; up by almost 50 per cent since the mid-1990s.
Experts say the phenomenon is down to women increasingly delaying motherhood – perhaps to pursue careers.
Britain was a trailblazer in the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s, meaning its women were far more likely than their European counterparts to enter the world of work.
The average woman in the UK also has her first child at the age of 30 – much later than in most other countries. Last night one family rights group blamed Britain’s showing on the declining status of motherhood and the ‘contraceptive culture’.
A study by the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development, which represents industrialised nations, shows that the rate of childlessness in women in the UK aged between 40 and 44 rose from 14 per cent in 1995 to 20 per cent in 2010.
This compares to just 16 per cent in Australia and 13.4 per cent in Sweden. In only two countries is the rate exceeded – in Spain, with a figure of 21.6 per cent, and Austria (21.5 per cent).
Britain’s level of childlessness exceeded the US (18.8 per cent), New Zealand (15 per cent) and Israel (11 per cent). Data was not available for several major countries, such as France and Germany.
The OECD said: ‘Rates of childlessness at age 40-44 or around are increasing in most of those OECD countries where data are available for both time points.
‘The postponement of parenthood over the last decades, which can be gleaned from the declining percentage of childless women at different points over the life cycle, has increased the possibility for adults to remain childless.’ Last night Norman Wells, from the Family Education Trust, said: ‘There are doubtless a number of reasons why couples are choosing not to have children, including economic pressures, the suppression of traditional roles within the family, a lowering of the status of motherhood and the fact that children are seen as a threat to maintaining a high standard of living.
‘ But another factor may be that so much sex education has placed such a strong emphasis on how to avoid pregnancy, that it has frequently presented a very negative image of childbearing and of motherhood.
‘The contraceptive culture can all too easily blind us to the joy that the birth of a child can bring to the parents and to their wider circle of family and friends.’
In November, the Office for National Statistics published separate figures showing that at the age of 45, some 18 per cent of British women are childless. The ONS said women were increasingly likely to postpone ‘decisions about whether to have children until it may be biologically too late’.
‘Negative image of childbearing’