At 25 years ? At 35? Is it better to have a child sooner or later in this day and age?
When is the best time to have a baby? This is an obsessive question, sometimes embarrassing, but one that many couples and especially many women ask themselves. Becoming a parent is one of the subjects so complex in our time that this question is not trivial.
In France, the birth rate has reached its lowest level in more than 30 years and women are having their first child later than before, at 28.9 years. More and more people are choosing to have children late, in their late 30s or 40s, or not at all.
A sociological reality appears: women seek to find the balance between advancing age and reducing the chances of having a child and other factors linked to their life choices, such as career prospects, the wish to preserve their standard of living, the desire to invest in housing, etc.
Taken in this way, in its entirety, the question of “best time” resembles a complex equation. But answers emerge, as brilliantly reported by The Telegraph.
Is the best age in your twenties?
A recent Danish study found that young mothers fare worse financially: women who were 31 or older when they had their first baby had a higher lifetime income than women who had a baby before the age of 31. Women who had a child before the age of 25 have incomes almost twice as low as women without children.
However, research shows very clearly that women who try to have a child before the age of 30 have an 85% chance of doing so in less than a year. “The peak of fertility in women is around the mid-20s,” Cesar Diaz-Garcia, of the London Fertility Clinic in Portland, tells the Telegraph.
Statistics show that childbearing in the mid-to-late 20s impacts a woman’s long-term career and income.
Is the best age in your 30s?
More and more women are having their first child in their 30s, and for good reasons, including the likelihood of a higher salary, a more stable career and a more established relationship.
Certain statistics tend to demonstrate that, financially, the beginning of your thirties is the ideal time to have a first child: sociological data shows that age allows access to a higher salary, a more stable career and a better relationship. established. And the chances of getting pregnant are still high.
A woman aged 30 has just a little less chance of getting there than at the end of her twenties in reality: 75% chance in the year at 30, 66% percent at 35.
Is the best age in your 40s?
A New Telegraph Money analysis, reported by The Telegraph, found that women with children in their 40s are likely to retire with a lower pension than younger mothers.
Yet the birth rate of women in their early forties has increased every year since 1982, despite a scientific reality: after age 40, the chances of having a child within the year are 44% and the risks of complications are significantly higher.
Some experts put the chances of getting pregnant naturally in your 40s at 5% each month. For the British Fertility Society, the maximum age at which a woman should start trying to have a baby, if she wants to be 90% sure of having at least one child without assistance (PMA type), would be 32 years.
Of course, all this must be taken with the necessary perspective: each woman, each couple has their own baby plan and each has their own vision of the “best time” to have a child. But now we know what the experts think and what the statistics say!