Women throughout the world are investing more time in education and training before having children according to a new study.
The research, which was carried out in the University of Southampton, looked at women in Britain and France and discovered that finishing education and training was the priority of the majority.
In turn, women are having children later in life.
Professor Maire Ni Bhrolchain who conducted the research said: “Later childbearing has been a major feature of fertility trends in recent decades, both in Britain and other developed countries.
Women are having children later in life because of higher education and training
According to the Irish Independent she said: “A large number of explanations have been suggested for the trend towards later parenthood, but our study is the first to show that the major influencing factor is that people have been staying on longer in education and training.”
According the research, the average age for a woman to have her first child in 2004 was 27, while in 1975 the average age was 24.
“The data we have examined shows that, in the past several decades, young people have been starting their full adult lives around two years later on average than in the recent past and this has meant family life starting later too,” said Professor Ni Bhrolchain.
“If we start the clock when young women leave full-time education or training, the delay to motherhood, compared across the decades, is much less than looking purely at the differences in their ages at their first birth,” she finished.
