By Mike Schneider
Associated Press
For Allyson Jacobs, life in her twenties and thirties was centered around her professional career and enjoying New York City.
It wasn't until she was 40 that she and her husband began trying to have children.
They had one when she was 42 years old.
In the last three decades, stories like this have become increasingly common in the United States.
Birth rates have fallen among women in their 20s, and increased among those in their 30s and 40s, according to a new Census Bureau report.
This trend has pushed the average age of Americans giving birth from 27 to 30, the highest on record.
As an adult mom celebrating Mother's Day this Sunday, Jacobs feels she has more resources to offer her 9-year-old son than she would have when she was 20.
“There is definitely more wisdom, and definitely more patience,” explains Jacobs, 52, who is a patient services manager at a hospital.
“Because we were older [when she was born], we had money to hire a babysitter.
We may not have been able to afford that if we had been younger,” she noted.
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Allyson Jacobs, in front of her workplace in New York on May 4. John Minchillo / AP
While fertility rates fell across the board between 1990 and 2019, the decline is considered fairly stable compared to earlier times.
But the age at which women have babies did change markedly.
Fertility rates fell by almost 43% for women ages 20 to 24 and by more than 22% for those ages 25 to 29. And they increased by more than 67% for women ages 35 to 39, and by more 132% for ages 40 to 44, according to Census analysis based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
The decisions of college-educated women to invest in their studies and careers so that they can be better off financially by the time they have children, as well as the desire of working-class women to wait until they are more financially stable, have contributed to this change, according to Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland.
In the past, families often relied on their children for income, putting them to work in the fields, for example, when the economy was based primarily on agriculture.
But over the last century or more in the US, families have invested more in their children's futures, supporting them to go to school and grow into adults, he said.
“Having children later generally puts women in a better position,” Cohen said, “
they have more resources, more education
.
The things we demand of people to be good parents are easier to fulfill when you are older.
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Lani Trezzi, 48, and her husband had their first child when she was 38, then a daughter three years later.
Although she had been with her husband since she was 23, she felt no urge to have children.
That changed when she was about to turn 40, once she reached a comfortable point in her career as a retail executive.
“
It was an age where I felt safe in all areas of my life
,” said Trezzi, who lives just outside of New York City.
"I didn't have the confidence then that I have now," she said.
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Over the past three decades, the largest increases in the average age at which women give birth in the United States have been among those born abroad, from 27 to 32, and among black women, from 24 to 28 years old, according to the Census Bureau.
With foreign-born women, Cohen said he wasn't quite sure why, but noted it could be a "complicated story" tied to their circumstances or reasons for emigrating.
For black women, pursuing an education and career plays a big role in her opinion: “The average number of black women seeking higher education is getting higher,” said Raegan McDonald-Mosley, an obstetrician-gynecologist and director of Power to Decide, which works to reduce teen pregnancies and unwanted births.
"
Black women are getting very involved in their education
and that is an incentive to delay motherhood," he said.
Given that the number of unwanted pregnancies is higher among adolescents and women in their 20s, and the majority end in abortion compared to older women, the potential overturn of Roe v.
Wade (who recognizes the constitutional right to abortion) could advance the average age of motherhood, reversing the trend of the last three decades.
“The magnitude” of the potential impact of such a Supreme Court ruling is unknown, said Laura Lindberg, a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a group that supports abortion rights.
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But "the burden will fall disproportionately on women of color, undocumented immigrants, people who live in rural areas and in the South and Midwest," said McDonald-Mosley, who also previously served as Planned Parenthood's chief medical officer. Federation of America.
Motherhood has also been delayed in the developed countries of Europe and Asia.
In the US, this could contribute to slowing population growth, since the ability to have children tends to decline with age, said Kate Choi, an expert at Western University in London, Ontario.
In areas of the US where there are not enough births and where immigration is low, population declines can lead to labor shortages, skyrocketing labor costs and complicating financial support for retirees, he added.
"These changes will put significant pressure on programs meant to support seniors like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare," Choi said.
“Workers may have to pay higher taxes to support the growing number of retirees,” she added.
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Although the data in the Census Bureau report goes only as far as 2019, the coronavirus pandemic has further delayed childbearing for many women, with a 4% drop in US birth rates in 2020, the largest single-year decline in nearly half a century.
Choi said there appears to have been a small rebound in the second half of 2021 to levels similar to 2019, but more data is needed to determine the extent of this trend.
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During the pandemic, she added, some women in their late reproductive years may have given up on becoming mothers or having more children due to economic uncertainty and the increased health risks of pregnant women contracting the virus.
"These women may have missed their chance to have children," Choi said.
"Some parents of young children may have given up a second because they were overwhelmed with additional child care demands that have arisen during the pandemic, such as the need to homeschool their children."
