Advanced Maternal Age - History

History

Having children later was not exceptional in the past, when families were larger and women often continued bearing children until the end of their reproductive age. What is so radical about this recent transformation is that it is the age at which women give birth to their first child which is becoming comparatively high, leaving an ever more constricted window of biological opportunity for second and subsequent children should they be desired. Unsurprisingly, high first-birth ages and rapid rates of birth postponement are associated with the arrival of low, and lowest-low fertility.

This association has now become especially clear since the postponement of first births in a number of countries has now continued unabated for more than three decades, and has become one of the most prominent characteristics of fertility patterns in developed societies. A variety of authors (in particular Lesthaeghe) have argued that fertility postponement constitutes the ‘hallmark’ of what has become known as the second demographic transition.

Others have proposed that the postponement process itself constitutes a separate 'third transition'. On this latter view modern developed societies exhibit a kind of dual fertility regime, with the majority of births being concentrated either among very young or increasingly older mothers. This is sometimes known as the 'rectangularisation' of fertility patterns.