“I am a more confident mother raising my children at 45”

The adventure of motherhood is just beginning for Mathilde – her two-and-a-half-week-old baby Salome discovers “humbly” His rhythm in the family apartment in Ruil-Malmaison (Hautes-de-Seine) – and “young” Mom, an adjective she herself has some fun with, is well aware that, at 41, ten years past the average age of first child, she lists the perks of being a mother. “with maturity”.

“In my family circle, among friends, Also with midwife colleagues (a profession she has been practicing for over twenty years), I have a lot of feedback on pregnancy but also, on parenthood in general. She reports on condition of anonymity, as do all the witnesses cited. I can share my questions about children’s rhythms, physical tools and children’s education with those of my generation who are already there. »

Not to mention all kinds of donations, which she emphasizes, have poured in: “My partner likes to say that we have clothes until the little one is 5…”

The forty-year-old is one of numerous participants in our call for testimony on late motherhood. Until then, unlike the overall birth rate, late births had not stopped rising since the 1980s. Since that decade, fertility has steadily increased, an INSEE note dedicated to the topic in January 2022 noted, first for women aged 40 to 42, then in the 1990s for women aged 43 to 45, and finally, in the 2000s, for those aged 46 or older. for. a “Continuously Sliding” across the ages “always high”Especially thanks to the use of medically assisted reproduction (MAP), doctors specializing in reproduction observe on their scale.

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Is this the end of the trend? In 2023, for the first time, births in this age group will also mark the time. These births represent less than 5% of the annual total. Keeping ratio in terms of decline, even regular, in average age – 31 years today – in all pregnancies.

“Tell yourself “I can still do it””

It is difficult to know how many of these babies are the result of the last pregnancy – after many babies – or the very first. Demographics say more, on the other hand, about “reasons” Which leads these women, these couples to delay in planning to have children. “Many factors contributed to this postponement, such as the extension of studies for women and men, the establishment of women’s careers, more dynamic unions, with more frequent meetings and divisions than in the past…”

Demographer Eva Beaujoen of the Wittgenstein Center at the University of Vienna explains.

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