(Newswire.net — December 21, 2015) — Age limit for having babies has drastically moved up. Today it is no wonder that mothers are in their forties when they have their first child, which is very likely to be the only child, too. It is all due to lifestyle and mother unfriendly human relations policies, which are quite discouraginig.
Double burden issue is a very big problem for working mothers and they can’t seem to be able to find balance between work and family. One of these two always seem to suffer. If the social policies are also unfriendly and if the daycare system is not developed enough, they further delay giving birth or decide not to have children at all.
Nevertheless, there may be some additional reasons which should make mothers decide to have their children earlier than planned.
A new study shows that women in their thirties, if they decide to have a family, are more likely to have healthier and more clever babies than if they were in their twenties or forties.
The Millenium Cohort Study which has been keeping records of the development of 18000 British children, examined what the impacts of mothers’ age on their children were.
Researchers at the London School of Economics determined that the highest cognitive scores were achieved by children whose mothers were in their thirties. Their results were much better than the results of children whose mothers were in their twenties and a little bit better than children whose mothers were in their forties.
The researchers also noted one other thing, that mothers over 40 do not play with their children a lot, which may be the reason why their children are more prone to obesity.
“A possible interpretation of this is that first time mothers aged 40 and above have less energy than younger mothers and may therefore be less likely to engage in recreational activities”, the researchers noted. They also said that when it comes to this group of women, it required much more research since the group covered consisited of only 53 women; therefore the results are not definite.
Alice Goisis, LSE researcher told the Times: “First-time mothers in their 30’s are, for example, likely to be more educated, have higher incomes, are more likely to be in stable relationships, have healthier lifestyles, seek prenatal care earlier and have planned pregnancies”.
What was also noted was that they were mostly non-smokers, they mostly chose breastfeeding and read to their children a lot.
Since 1980, the average age of women in the United Kingdom who give birth to their first child has increased from 24.5 to 28.1. Analysing the results, Dr. Goisi thought that socio-economic reasons greatly affected them.
“Although the results are unable to support the argument that this occurs because of the health risks associated with giving birth at advanced maternal ages, they suggest that there is need to more closely investigate the potential trade offs involved when births are delayed toward older maternal ages”, the study says.
The research was published in the Biodemography and Social Biology journal.