30% of women born in 1975 will end up childless

It is a matter of statistics, but they speak about trends in present day society. According to the latest study by the Centre for Demographic Studies of the UAB, with less than 10 years to be in their 50’s (age at which the demographic balance is closed) women born in 1975 will be the most infertile generation in the past 130 years. Precisely, between 25% and 30% of women born in the second half of the 1970s will be childless. We have to look back, specifically before 1922 to find so low infertility figures. And it is not just a matter of female infertility, but a series of social, economic and medical reasons.

The same study outlines five the reasons for which these women do not have children:

• Women who are unable to have children (primary female sterility)
• Women who do not want to have children ever, nor when young neither when getting older (voluntary childlessness)
• Women who can and would like to have children, but are not yet at the right social age to have them, they do not question it because they are too young (normative childlessness)
• Women who can and would like to have children and they are at right social age to have them, but they postpone this decision because they lack the economic and sentimental stability to deal with maternity (transitory childlessness)
• Women who, at the moment they decide to become mothers, cannot get pregnant, getting worse the situation if they are older than 35 (supervening childlessness)

According to the UAB, Spain leads the delay of motherhood in Europe, being the age of first-time mothers the highest in the world nowadays. The study itself states that the increasing infertility in Spain is basically associated with the delay of the age of women at the birth of their first child.

We would like to add a rising phenomenon that this study does not classify, and which is sure to lead the next demographic studies. It involves the single mothers profile, that is, those women who despite the lack of partner fulfil their desire to become mothers. This is a raising profile in IVI since the cases have increased by 58% during the past 5 years.