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Norwegian Women Are Waiting Longer Than Ever To Become Mothers

By ThorNews on November 24, 2015 • ( 0 )

(Photo: The Research Council of Norway)

More and more women in Norway are waiting longer to start having children.

The average age for Norwegian women having their first child has passed 30 years. In Oslo, 3.3 percent of the women giving birth for the first time have even passed the age of 40.

Recently published figures from the Medical Birth Registry by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health for 2014 show that the average age was 30.1 years, an increase from 29.9 years in 2013.

Nationwide, the percentage of women who were 40 years or older when they had their first child was 3.7 percent.

Mothers in Oslo are the oldest. In 2014, the average age of the primiparas in Oslo was 31.6 years, of which 5.2 percent were 40 years or older.

In the U.S., the average age of women having their first child was a record high of 26 years old in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics Report, Business Insider UK writes. That is an increase of 3.3 years since 1980, when the average age was 22.7.

See also: The Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study: One of the Largest Health Studies in the World

The figures from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health also show that a higher percentage of children are born between April and August than the rest of the year.

July tops the list with 9.3 percent of all births, while fewest children are born in December – ca. 7.2 percent annually. If all births were equally distributed throughout the year, each month would have 8.3 percent of the births.

At the same time, experts are worried about the steadily declining fertility in Norway. Now, Norwegian women only have 1.76 children during fertile age compared to 1.98 five years ago.

– If you want a different development for Norway in the future, there must be a focus on women having children at the beginning of the life cycle. More and more women prioritize education and career rather than having children, said former professor at NTNU and pediatrician, Dag Bratlid, in connection with fresh birthrates publicized earlier this year.

Text by: Anette Broteng Christiansen, ThorNews