Spanish women putting off having children

SPAIN is the European Union country where women delay motherhood for the longest. According to statistics published by Eurostat, 8.8 per cent of Spanish women have their first child after the age of 40.

This puts the country top of the European list, with the most first-time mothers over the age of 40,taking over from Italian women, who are now in second position. Spain is also among the countries in the Union with the highest percentage of births amongst mothers aged 50 and over.

Top is Italy, with 306 births, then the United Kingdom with 157 then Spain, with 130 births to mothers of that age. Of the 194,465 births in Spain in 2017, a total of 117,198 were to mothers aged between 30 and 39. According to data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadísitca (NIE), by 2018 the average age for first time mothers in Spain had risen to 32.2 years.

In addition, the fertility rate in Spain is also among the lowest: 1.25 children per woman. In Bulgaria and Romania, maternity is in the opposite situation with many early pregnancies. In both countries, mothers between the ages of 10 and 14 account for more than 0.3 per cent of the country’s births. In Spain, this age range accounted for 41 births in 2017, which represents only 0.02per cent of all births that year.