When to have a child, if ever: The impact in later life

Updated 12:30 PM May 16, 2007

When to have a child, if ever: The impact in later life

By Diane Swanbrow
News Service

How does having children or not having them affect a woman's happiness in later life? A new study examining nearly 6,000 women provides an unexpected answer: It's not so much whether you have children as when you have them.

But even more important than when you become a mother is whether you have anyone else to love in your life.

"Whether a woman has had children or not isn't likely to affect her psychological wellbeing in later life," says sociologist Amy Pienta. "What is more important is whether or not she has a husband, a significant other or close social relationships in her life as she ages."

Pienta, a researcher at the Institute for Social Research, is co-author of a study analyzing the implications of childlessness, birth timing and marital status on women's psychological wellbeing in late midlife. University of Florida researcher Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox is lead author of the study and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill graduate sociology student Tyson Brown is a coauthor.

For the study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Aging and Human Development, the researchers analyzed data on women ages 51-61 from two different national surveys. These women were young adults in the 1950s, a time when most women married early and had first births between ages 19-24.

"These surveys included several widely used measures of psychological well-being," Pienta says. "The women were asked about their levels of happiness, their depressive symptoms and loneliness, and about their satisfaction with family life and life in general.

"If you just look at women who had kids compared to those who didn't, childless women reported being somewhat less happy and more depressed," Pienta says. "But when we factored in socioeconomic characteristics and marital status, there was no difference between the two groups."

Instead of only comparing childless women and mothers, the researchers examined how the late-life wellbeing of childless women compared to that of three different groups of mothers who had their first children at different times—women who became mothers early (before age 19), "on-time" (ages 19-24) or late (age 25 or later).

When they compared each group and controlled for sociodemographic factors as well, a more complex picture emerged that suggests how much the timing of motherhood matters.

Early mothers were the least satisfied and most depressed of all four groups, while delayed or late mothers were the most satisfied with their lives and the happiest.

All other things being equal, the childless women were about as satisfied and happy with their lives as the on-time mothers.

"In mid-life, being married or having a partner has a greater impact on a woman's well-being than whether or not she has children," Pienta says.

Early mothers were the most likely to be single and to have lower incomes—factors that largely explained their lower psychological wellbeing. Delayed mothers tended to have more education and higher economic status than other groups, and were much more likely than early mothers to be married.

"Most studies have shown that psychological wellbeing tends to decline when people have kids," Pienta says. "And it only rebounds much later, when the children have left home. So it was surprising to find the highest level of wellbeing among the group that was most likely to have children still living at home or still in college. It suggests that delaying motherhood may have some benefits for women—probably related to being more career focused and having higher social standing."

Today, younger women are opting to remain childless at much higher rates than women of the 1950s, Pienta says. "Rates of childlessness among women in their 40s doubled between 1980 and 1998 from 10 percent to 19 percent," she says. This study suggests that the outlook for psychological wellbeing later in life for today's childless women is quite good.

Women also are getting married and having children later, changes that Pienta's research suggests may benefit psychological health in later life. Her personal experience suggests that there may be earlier benefits as well.

"My mom was 40 when I was born and my father was 45," Pienta says. "As a consequence, I received Social Security benefits in high school, as a dependent of parents who were receiving Social Security. I enjoyed being a late-life child."

Pienta, 38, married at age 30—a little later than today's norm—and has two girls, ages 2 and 4.

Pienta is an associate research scientist and director of data acquisitions at the ISR Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

A podcast with Pienta can be heard at www.umich.edu/news/index_nr.html?podcast/podcast2.

When to have a child, if ever: The impact in later life

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