If you’re a child-free woman, you may have heard the (obnoxious) warning that women’s fertility plummets in their 30s, despite the fact that this can happen for men too and many women start families in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s. In fact, more American women now have kids in their early 30s than in their late 20s. And this could be a good thing: A new study in the Journal of Public Health suggests that waiting until then to have kids improves your health.
Researchers from the University of Coimbra in Portugal analyzed data from 2004 to 2013 on women in 28 European countries, comparing their expected life spans at age 65 based on how old they were when they had their first child. Women who became moms at age 30 lived longer lives than those who did at age 20. “As the age of pregnancy increases, so does the life expectancy of the women at 65. In other words, the older the women are at birth, the longer they live,” the authors wrote, adding that “it may be justified
to promote pregnancy in the early 30s as a means to extend women’s life span.”
We can’t say for sure if waiting to have kids is what gave these women longer life spans, but regardless, there are a number of potential upsides to waiting until your 30s to have kids. Older moms also tend to be more patient with their children, and their kids have fewer behavioral issues, according to a Danish study published earlier this year.
