New research published today says that wanting to stay in education is NOT the primary reason why women delay having children.
In recent years numerous studies have found that women postpone motherhood largely because they want to go to university before starting a family. However a new study from the University of Oxford published today says that the role of education is much smaller in delaying motherhood than previously thought.
The researchers, who are part of the
Sociogenome research project, compared the fertility histories of more than 2,700 female twins, and found that a woman's family background was a more important factor than education. By using the UK's adult twin register, which was set up in 1992, the research team were able to isolate the effects of different levels of education between siblings in pairs of twins who share so many other characteristics.
The average age of first-time mothers increased by as many as four to five years at the end of the 20th century throughout Europe and the United States, when compared with the end of the Second World War. Educational attainment for women also increased over the same period, say the researchers.
The study highlights that the average age of women when they left education rose steadily throughout the 20th century, however, the age of first-time mothers did not follow the same pattern but formed a U-shape instead. New mothers were still relatively young after World War Two during the so-called 'baby boom' but were also generally becoming more highly educated, says the paper.
Only from the 1960s did women start to delay motherhood; this development coincided with the introduction of the contraceptive pill, notes the research. Women born after the 1960s postponed motherhood by around 2.7 years on average, compared with women born at the end of the Second World War, but longer educational enrolment only accounts for six percent of this delay.
The study's lead author Dr Felix Tropf, from the University of Oxford's department of sociology, commented:
"Our research casts doubt on previous studies that claim a strong link between educational expansion for women and the postponement of motherhood. We find that both education and a woman's fertility choices seem to be mostly influenced by her family background, instead of education influencing fertility behaviour directly.
For example, families provide social and financial support, and pass on genes affecting reproductive behaviour. A large part of the observed association between education and age at first birth in other studies can actually be explained by the family environment. In isolation, education has a much smaller effect.
We hope this important finding that a large part of the link between educational enrolment and fertility postponement is not causal but spurious may inform those forecasting future fertility trends or shaping family policy."
Dr Tropf's research calculates that for every extra year of educational enrolment after the age of twelve, a woman delayed pregnancy by an average of six months. However, the paper concludes that family environment - a combination of a woman's social, economic and genetic factors - is more significant, with education alone contributing to only 1.5 months of the total six-month delay.
Did you wait until later in life to have a baby? Let us know your thoughts on this new research in the Facebook comments.
