Delayed Childbearing: Do Young Women Really Understand the Facts?

摘要

In a culture with ever-increasing educational opportunities I and expectations, more young women are choosing to further their education and secure their career paths before undertaking parenthood. For most women with these career objectives, schooling keeps them busy until at least their mid-twenties. Although the reasons why women delay childbearing are varied and complex, the growing trend of putting off parenthood for career establishment may help to explain the increase in mater- nal age for first-time mothers over the last several decades. One in every one hundred births in 1970 was to a woman aged 35 or older (1). In 2006, that number had increased to one in twelve (2). Over the same time period, the average age of first-time mothers has steadily increased from 21.4 years in 1970 to 25.0 years in 2006 (3).