The childless generation

How one in six women born in 1970 haven’t become mums

AN explosion of opportunities for women born in the 1960s and 70s has led to a generation who have grown up childless, an official breakdown found yesterday.

Young women began to put education and career over a family, and as a result they did not become mothers or had smaller families than their mothers and grandmothers, said the Office for National Statistics.

By 1970, 17 per cent had had no children – around one in six. This is the highest level of childlessness since the generation of women whose lives were disrupted by World War Two.

Among their mothers’ generation, gauged by the ONS as women born in 1943, some 12 per cent went childless, about one in eight. The average number of babies for women born in 1970 was 1.91 – down from the 2.42 for the previous generation, the report said.

The ONS recorded the childbearing history of women born in 1970, who reached the age of 45 last year and are regarded by statisticians as having completed their families. Their lives have been heavily influenced by new opportunities for careers, by the decline of marriage, the price of a home, and the increasing acceptability of what the report described as a ‘childfree lifestyle’.

In some cases women just left it too late to become mothers, the ONS said.

No age group has had fewer children since modern records were first compiled to cover women born in 1920.

However, there has been a small increase in fertility among younger women – those born between 1979 and 1985, the last of whom reached 30 last year, the report said. One reason for this is immigration – the addition to the population of women born abroad who are having more children than UK-born women of the same age.

The introduction of benefits such as tax credits and additional maternity and paterthan nity leave may also have encourage women to have more children.

But the ONS said this was a ‘slight upturn’ and that ‘overall levels of childlessness have been higher for women born between the mid 1950s to 1970 for earlier generations. The report said: ‘Average completed family size peaked at 2.42 children for women born in 1935, and has been falling since.’

Laura Perrins, a commentator on family life who is coeditor of the Conservative Woman website, said: ‘Birthrates are falling for a host of reasons, but the key is the amount it costs to raise a family in the UK.

‘This country has one of the most anti-family tax systems in the world and house prices are out of control.

‘Government after government have failed to get a grip on it. They need to get real and introduce a tax allowance for children.’

Women who delay starting a family are more likely to live longer, a study suggests.

Those who had their first child after the age of 25 were 11 per cent more likely to survive into their 90s than women who first gave birth at an earlier age, scientists – who looked at the records of 20,000 US women – found.

The researchers, from the University of California San Diego, found that being pregnant may have a protective effect on health. Women who had been pregnant were more likely to live into the 90s than women who had never been pregnant.

‘Anti-family tax system’