Pew report: More women waiting to have children

By Jamie Gumbrecht

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Moms, you've done a lot of growing up these past 20 years.

A new report from the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project compared characteristics of U.S. mothers who gave birth in 1990 and in 2008. Among the most striking findings: mothers of newborns in all race and ethnic groups are now older than their counterparts 20 years ago.

Fourteen percent of births in 2008 were to women ages 35 and older, and 10 percent were to teens. This reversed the stats from 1990, when 13 percent of U.S. births were to teens, and 9 percent were to older women. The report's data and information came from the National Center for Health Statistics, the Census Bureau and a Pew parenthood survey.

In Georgia, the birth rate among women ages 35-55 increased from 10.6 in 1997 to 12.8 in 2007, the most recent data available from the Georgia Department of Community Health. In the same period, the birth rate among women age 10-19 shrank from 33.7 to 27.8.

“Medical technology and fertility treatments have made it possible, to not only have babies, but to have healthy babies" later in life, said D'Vera Cohn, one of the report's co-authors. “The larger trend, I think, is that Americans are achieving the traditional milestones of adult life at later ages than they used to.”

People might spend more years on education, wait until they finish college to marry and then wait until they’ve established a career to have children, Cohn said.

The data didn't surprise Atlanta Parent magazine publisher Liz White.

"When we’re at festivals, even on the playground, if you just look at the makeup of the moms, you have your 20-somethings and your 30-somethings and your-40 somethings, too," White said.

Among the Pew report's other findings:

• In 2008, a record 41 percent of births were to unmarried women, mostly younger than 25.
• White women were 53 percent of mothers of newborns in 2008, down from 65 percent in 1990. The share of births to Hispanic women grew to one-in-four.

One thing has remained the same, according to the survey: when Americans are asked about the ideal number of children for a family, the answer is two -- just as it has been since the 1970s.