Women in mid-30s buck trend for smaller families

IT HAS become one of the great constants of the modern world – guiding everything from party policy to marketing strategies and town planning – that families are getting ever smaller.

But new official figures contain intriguing evidence that the long-term decline in the number of children British couples have might be over. Analysis published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirms that family size has declined overall over several decades, with the typical British brood shrinking by almost a fifth in a single generation, as women are having their first child later than ever.

It shows that one in six women born in 1970 reached the age of 45 last year without having had any children, compared with only one in eight in their mothers’ generation – effectively a 41 per cent rise in childlessness.

Yet despite the long-term trend, the report also notes a “slight upturn” over the past few years in the number of children women have had by the time they were 30, which is now the average age of childbirth.

More strikingly, tables published alongside the report show a steady increase in family size for women in their mid-30s since the time of the financial crisis. Overall a typical 35-year-old woman in England and Wales now has 1.57 children. That compares with 1.56 a year ago and 1.55 a year before that. Although the annual increases are small, family size for women on the cusp of middle age has been on an upward curve for the past eight years, from a low of 1.51 children for women born in 1972 and 1973, who turned 35 in 2007 and 2008.

It is the first time that families have been growing since the early Seventies when women born in the late Thirties were around 35.

Some commentators remarked around the time of the recession that more women appeared to be opting to have a second child than previously, possibly because of the sluggish job market. But the latest figures show a continuing, if small, increase in family size by age 35 since then.

Emily Knipe, an ONS statistician, suggested there could be a combination of factors at work, ranging from the economic situation and immigration to improved government support for childcare and a growing awareness of the risk of leaving childbearing too late. But she said it would only become clear when those now in their mid-30s reach 45, the age after which statisticians assume that women are unlikely to have any more children, whether the pattern is a blip or a new trend.

She said: “We will have to wait for another five to 10 years until those 30 to 35 year-olds finish their childbearing to know whether it was just a spike for them and that everything settles back in to trend or whether this continues.”