30 AND CHILDLESS MORE COMMON, U.K. STUDY SAYS

Half of the women born in 1990 are childless at 30 years old for the first time, a U.K. study reveals.

“Lower levels of fertility in those currently in their 20s indicate that this trend is likely to continue,” said Amanda Sharfman, from the Centre for Ageing and Demography at the Office for National Statistics.

The reasons women delay parenthood vary, from wanting to focus on their careers, waiting to be more financially stable or deciding not to have children at all. The COVID-19 pandemic may also have played a part in prospective parents’ hesitancy.

“Concerns about the future of child care and school could also have an effect, especially for people who already have at least one child and see how the pandemic has upended their routines,” according to a Vox article.

The study’s findings in England and Wales are not exclusive to the U.K. In the United States, the average age of first-time mothers went from 21 to 26, a 2020 Forbes article said.

The same goes for Canadian women. A 2018 Statistics Canada study found that a third of women were waiting until their 30s to have their first child.

The most common age for women born in 1975 to give birth was 31 years old, the U.K. study said. This was a major leap in comparison to women born in 1949, when the most common age for childbirth was 22 years old.

Shrinking family size was another finding from the study.

“While two child families are still the most common, women who have recently completed their childbearing are more likely than their mothers’ generation to have only one child or none at all,” Sharfman said.