Abstract
Maternal age effects on parenting and family outcomes are of increasing interest because of the demographic shift toward older maternal age at first birth. Maternal age is also of interest because of the greater use of assisted reproductive techniques (ART) to bypass age-related infertility in couples trying to conceive late in the reproductive life cycle of the woman. The aim of the present study was to investigate maternal age effects associated with delayed parenting by comparing families of mothers who gave birth at a younger (<31 years) or older (>38 years) age and to ascertain whether associations were linear associations by comparing these groups to women who had conceived in between these ages (i.e., >31 and <38 years). All children (4–11 year olds) were first-born and conceived using ART. Participants were recruited from one of 20 fertility clinics and mothers (n = 642) and fathers (n = 439) completed a postal questionnaire about demographic and reproductive characteristics, family environment as well as parent and child wellbeing. Our results demonstrate that parenthood via assisted conception later in the reproductive life cycle is not associated with a negative impact on child wellbeing. Despite maternal age-group differences on demographic (education, income) and reproductive characteristics (bleeding during pregnancy, caesarean rate, breast feeding), and parental warmth and depressive symptoms, child wellbeing was similar across mother age groups. We conclude that the parenting context is different for older mother families (more depressive symptoms in mothers and fathers, less expressed warmth in the couple) but that this difference is not associated with child wellbeing in early and middle childhood.
Highlights
The demography of parenting is changing and nowhere is this more evident than in the timing of parenthood
Older mothers have been found to share more parenting tasks and rely significantly more on their partner during early infancy than do younger mothers (Bornstein et al, 2006). These results suggest that some benefits found in older mother families could be attributed to their partner and to relational characteristics rather than to benefits arising from older age
Women in the older and middle age groups were more likely to have had bleeding during the pregnancy, a caesarean delivery and to have breastfed compared to women in the younger age group
Summary
The demography of parenting is changing and nowhere is this more evident than in the timing of parenthood. In 1963 the number of first births per 1000 women in the United States was 7.2 and 2.6 for age groups 30–34 and 35–39 (respectively) and this number rose to 28.6 and 10.3 in 2003 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tables 1,2, accessed 22.12.08). Given this demographic shift, maternal age effects on parenting and family outcomes have become of interest. The aim of the present study was to ascertain maternal age effects associated with delayed parenting by comparing families of mothers who gave birth at a younger (38 years) age on family environment and parent and child wellbeing. All children (4–11 years of age) were first-born and conceived with assisted reproductive techniques (ART)
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