Sequels to the Baby Boom

Sequels to the Baby Boom

Birth rates are off for women i their twenties, but not for older women

Thinking about having a baby? For most women the decision has never been more complicated. The social, medical, and economic trends that have led to later marriages, greater job opportunities, and career pressures for women, easier contraception and abortion, and new techniques for treating infertility have all contributed to pronounced shifts in the demographic profile of child-bearing women over the last decade.

Although women in their 20s continue to bear the most children, the sharpest increases in birth rates since the late 1970s have been among women aged 30 or older. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the rate for women aged 30 to 34 increased 31 percent during the 1980s before dipping slightly in 1992, which is the year with the most recent data.

Even sharper increases occurred among women aged 35 to 39 (up 60 percent during the 1980s) and among women in their 40s (up 50 percent for the decade). While the birth rate for women in their mid to late 30s nearly leveled off in the yearly 1990s, the rate among older Baby Boomer women, aged 40 to 44, continues to rise.

Meanwhile, teen birth rates, which grew at rates of 20 percent or more in the late 1980s, were flat, or in the case of girls aged 15 to 17 even slightly down in the early 1990s. According to National Center for Health Statistics, “The leveling off of the sharp rate of increase in teenage childbearing during the 1980s may reflect a similar leveling off since 1988 in the proportion of teenagers who are sexually active, especially among the youngest teenagers.” Among teenagers who are sexually active, contraceptive use seems to be on the rise, the government researchers reported.

Baby Boom. Photo by Elena

Despite the rise in birth rates among older women, far more women in their 30s remain childless than was true two decades ago. In 1975 about one in nine women aged 35 were childless; it is now about one if five. The group tends to be far better educated than the general population. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that in 1992, 49 percent of first-time mothers aged 30 to 45 were college graduate; that was double what it was for other women that were in this age group.

Infertility problems may affect many older women who still plan to have children. According to one major government survey, a third of childless women aged 35 to 44 were found to have fertility problems in 1988. Yet many previously unthreatened fertility problems can now be addressed, even among older women.

The combination of more women in the workforce with later marriages and childbearing has also meant smaller families. During the era of the Kennedy presidency, it was not at all uncommon to have as many as four children. Today the average is two. In 1980 the proportion of families with four or more children under the age of 18 was 7.8 percent. In 1990 it was only 5.7 percent, and over 4 in ten families had only one child.

When it comes to birth trends today, “less is more” and “better late than never” appear to be the watchwords