Today people do not always have the children they want, but rather the ones they can. If you ask a woman and a man how many children they have and how many they would like to have, surely there are few who tell you the same number: “I have two, but I would have liked to have three”, “I have one, but I would have liked have two “, etc.
The reason? It may be a matter of space (they do not fit at home) or economic (they do not see it feasible to feed another mouth) or it may be a matter of age, of having started having children too late. To prevent this from happening, researchers have managed to decipher the age at which a woman should be a mother depending on whether she wants to have one, two or three children .
If you want to have a child
Motherhood has lagged behind in recent years quite clearly. In the previous generation, that of our parents, children were born when they were in their early twenties, but now the first child usually arrives when the woman is about 30 years old.
The researchers, from the University of Rotterdam, and after analyzing data on the natural fertility of 58,000 women up to the 1970s, calculated that those who want to have only one child should try to have it before the age of 32 . Up to that age the chances of getting it are 90%. If they wait until they are 37 years old, the chances of having a child drop to 75% and by 41 years only 50% of women will achieve it.
If you want to have two children
If you think that one child is not enough and that two are better, keep in mind that the second should arrive some time after the first (the ideal minimum time between pregnancies is 18 months). So, as the second will come some time after the first, to maintain the percentages the age must go down. The 32 years from before no longer work.
If a woman wants to have two children, she should have the first at the age of 27 . This way you will have a 90% chance of fulfilling your dream. If, for whatever the first, he reached 34 years of age, then the percentage would decrease to 75%. And if I had it at 38 years old, the chances of having a second child would go up to 50%.
If you want to have three children
The last of the hypotheses they worked on was the possibility of deciding to have three children . There are many couples who would like to have them, but not all of them succeed, or not all of them comply (because sometimes, as we have said, wanting is not power).
According to the researchers, if a woman wants to have three children, she would have to have the first at 23 years of age . That way she would have a 90% chance of being a mother of three. 23 years? It is too early! Well, don’t forget that we are talking about percentages. As the years go up, the percentage goes down, but fear not, because it doesn’t actually go down as fast as we might think. It is not until the age of 31 (to have the first) when the percentage of probabilities drops to 75%. This means that between 23 and 31 the chances of success are quite high. Now, if motherhood is delayed until the age of 35, then the dream of having three may not be fulfilled, because at that age the probability of having three children is 50%.
To see it more graphically
If you want to see all the data graphically, in this image that you have below, as a calculator, you have it all:
Via | Daily Mail
Photo | iStock
In Babies and more | The best age to be a mother (in biological terms) is 25 years old. The best age to have the first child is between 25 and 29 years old. What is the ideal age to have a child?
