One in five women won’t ever be a mother

Childlessness doubles in a generation with large families also in decline, ONS finds

THE proportion of women who never have children has doubled in a generation, figures revealed last night.

Almost one in five women are childless by the age of 45 – the age the Office for National Statistics (ONS) defines as the end of their childbearing years.

This compares with just 9 per cent of women from the previous generation who reached the age of 45 without giving birth. The ONS said women were increasingly likely to postpone “decisions about whether to have children until it may be biologically too late”.

The change “may be due to a decline in the proportion of women married, changes in the perceived costs and benefits of child-rearing versus work and leisure activities, [and] greater social acceptability of a child-free lifestyle”.

The research looked at women born in 1971, who reached the age of 45 last year, and compared them with women born in the Forties. Having no children is now as common as having one child, whereas in 1944 having no children by the age of 45 was the least likely outcome. In fact, more women had four or more children than none.

By contrast, having no children by the age of 45 is now the second most common situation. The proportion of women with no children is almost double that of women who have four or more children, at just 10 per cent. Overall, the average number of children women have has fallen from 2.2 to 1.9 over the same period.

Statisticians said women were less likely to be married and more likely to be putting off having children.

Two-child families were most common, and younger women were much more likely to have no children or one child than their older counterparts. Large families were also in decline, and women having a two-child family had fallen by 7 per cent in 20 years.

The ONS report tracks women born in each calendar year to examine how many children they have and when. It found that women have become slightly more likely in recent years to have had a child before they turn 30, with rising migration said to be the most probable explanation.

The average family size for women at the age of 30 has also crept up, rising from a low of 0.98 children in 2007 to 1.03 children this year.

Professor Sir Cary Cooper, of Manchester Business School, said the trend could reverse as younger women become more comfortable with combining a career and a family.

“When you think about women going into any job 20 or 30 years ago, she was entering a male domain and had to be 100 per cent committed, and had very little time for relationships,” he said. “Now we have parental leave laws, flexible working is on the agenda, and things are going in the direction of saying people should have a better work life balance.”