Advantages of later motherhood

Abstract

BackgroundIn high-income countries childbearing has been increasingly postponed since the 1970s and it is crucial to understand the consequences of this demographic shift. The literature has tended to characterize later motherhood as a significant health threat for children and parents.ObjectivesWe contribute to this debate by reviewing recent evidence suggesting that an older maternal age can also have positive effects.MaterialsLiterature linking the age at parenthood with the sociodemographic characteristics of the parents, with macrolevel interactions, and with subjective well-being.MethodsComprehensive review of the existing literature.ResultsRecent studies show that there can also be advantages associated with later motherhood. First, whilst in past older mothers had low levels of education and large families, currently older mothers tend to have higher education and smaller families than their younger peers. Consequently, children born to older mothers in the past tended to have worse outcomes than children born to younger mothers, whilst the opposite is true in recent cohorts. Second, postponement of childbearing means that the child is born at a later date and in a later birth cohort, and may benefit from secular changes in the macroenvironment. Evidence shows that when the positive trends in the macroenvironment are strong they overweigh the negative effects of reproductive ageing. Third, existing studies show that happiness increases around and after childbirth among older mothers, whereas for younger mothers the effect does not exist or is short-lived.ConclusionThere are important sociodemographic pathways associated with postponement of childbearing which might compensate or even more than compensate for the biological disadvantages associated with reproductive ageing.

Parental Age and Offspring Childhood Mental Health: A Multi‐Cohort, Population‐Based Investigation

“…The finding that the negative relation of parental age and externalizing problems became weaker when SES was taken into account, indicates that the relatively high SES of older parents, or SES‐related selection effects (Robson & Pevalin, ) at least partly explained why their children have a decreased probability of externalizing problems. Myrskylä, Barclay and Goisis () argued that there are indeed important socio‐demographic pathways associated with delayed parenthood in more recent birth cohorts. Older mothers tend to have better health behaviors during pregnancy, for example, with respect to smoking during pregnancy, which is an established risk factor for offspring externalizing problems (Dolan et al, ).…”

“…In the Saha et al study average maternal and paternal ages were 24.8 and 28.4, respectively, whereas in our samples average maternal‐ and paternal ages were around 31 and 33 years. Older mothers from earlier birth cohorts tended to have low levels of education and their offspring had many older siblings (Myrskylä, Barclay & Goisis, ). In later birth cohorts, older mothers had higher education than younger mothers and their offspring had fewer older siblings.…”

“…An indication that the negative consequences of high parental age may stretch beyond clinical diagnosis is provided by Tearne et al (, ), who found that high maternal age predicted symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress in daughters, and by Janecka, Haworth, et al () who reported a negative association between advanced paternal age and social development. In contrast, in several population‐based studies, offspring of older parents, particularly of older mothers, perform better at school and work, score higher on intelligence tests, report better health and higher well‐being, use fewer drugs, and have fewer behavioral and emotional problems than offspring of younger parents (e.g., Carslake et al, ; McGrath et al, ; Myrskylä & Fenelon, ; Myrskylä, Barclay & Goisis, ; Orlebeke, Knol, Boomsma, & Verhulst, ; Tearne et al, ).…”

Does extreme maternal age still act as a risk factor for adverse perinatal outcome? Evidence from Poland 20 years after the social and economic transformation

“…Literature has emphasized this fact with regard to European countries (e.g. Myrskylä et al 2014Myrskylä et al , 2017Barclay and Myrskylä 2016). The economic conditions of Poles between 2000 and 2015 significantly improved, which translated into the fact that mothers who gave birth to the first child in 2015 were beneficiaries of better economic conditions than those in 2000.…”

How do reproduction, parenting, and health cluster together? Exploring diverging destinies, life histories and weathering in two UK cohort studies

“…Given that widespread contraceptive use also decouples age at first sex from age at first birth, reproductive traits that occur before conception, such as pubertal onset, may be more reliable indicators of later reproductive and parenting behaviour (Milne and Judge 2012). Yet the increased time between sexual maturation and age at first birth as women place more emphasis on resource acquisition is another example of modern society severing expected links between reproductive behaviours (Myrskylä et al 2017). This perspective is in contrast to our expectation that reproductive traits would cluster together.…”