Half of women don't have children at 30 in record first
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Half of women in England and Wales do not have a child by their 30th birthday for the first time since records began, Office for National Statistics figures (ONS) show.
Some 50.1% of women born in 1990, the most recent cohort to reach 30, remained without a child by this milestone birthday.
This is the first time this has happened since records began in 1920, when just a third of women had not become a mother by the age of 30.
Amanda Sharfman, of the ONS' Centre for Ageing and Demography, said: "We continue to see a delay in childbearing... Levels of childlessness by age 30 have been steadily rising since a low of 18% for women born in 1941.
"Lower levels of fertility in those currently in their 20s indicate that this trend is likely to continue."
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The age of a mother has been increasing since the mid-1970s, reaching a record high of 30.7 years in 2019 and 2020.
The most common age to have a child is now 31, based on women who are assumed to have completed their childbearing years in 2020. This is in comparison to 22 years for their mothers' generation, baby boomers, born in 1949.
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Meanwhile, the most common age of childbirth for their grandmother's generation, born in 1921, was higher at 26, perhaps due to the Second World War.
The percentage of women who remained without a child in 2020 (18.1%) by the end of their childbearing years, has stayed fairly consistent since the late 1950s. This, ONS reports, suggests women are delaying childbearing rather than not having children.
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The report also showed that the average number of children born to women remained below two, at 1.92.
Sharfman added: "The average number of children born to a woman has been below two for women born since the late 1950s.
"While two child families are still the most common, women who have recently completed their childbearing are more likely than their mothers' generation to have only one child or none at all."
