Having kids later in life is actually linked to longer-living grandparents
While you may think having kids at a younger age correlates with them being able to spend more time with their grandparents, new research has found that it’s actually the opposite.
A new study analysed fertility and life expectancy rates across 37 countries, and found that children born to older mothers are more likely to have longer-living grandparents.
Chile and France were found to have the highest rates of time that children could spend with grandparents, according to the research from The Calculator Site.
However, the reverse was also found to be true: the shorter the life expectancy, the younger the mothers. So, the countries where kids spent the least time with their grandparents were Hungary, Croatia, and Bulgaria.
"There are so many myths around whether it is good or bad that women delay having children, whether richer nations are going through a generational crisis on the backdrop of older mothers and ageing populations, and of the widening gap between generations," Alastair Hazell of The Calculator Site, says.
"We were very surprised to learn that no two contributing factors – delayed births and shorter life expectancy – occur simultaneously in any of the evaluated countries. So it would appear that there is no country generally losing out because women tend to delay having children."
The research also found that the average age for a woman to become a mother in developing or developed countries is 29 years and 3 months, but in Korea, Spain and Italy the average age is 32 and 31 for the latter two.
The youngest mothers live in Bulgaria with 26 and a half as the average first age of giving birth, followed by Turkey at 26 years and 7 months.
Japan was found to have the oldest grandparents with an average life expectancy of 87 years and three months, while it is in Estonia where grandmothers outlive grandfathers by an average of five years – the widest gap in the study.
Hazell continues, saying it is an "unsubstantiated claim" that grandparents spend less time with their children if their daughters decide to give birth later.
"This is more related to life expectancy, not the age of new mothers," he adds.
"The one thing we did establish is that people in richer countries live longer and thus country wealth is one factor that aligns perfectly with how lucky grandkids are with respect to time shared with their grandchildren. And, vice versa: how unlucky grandkids in less wealthy countries are, where they tend to become ‘grandparentless’ faster than their richer neighbours."
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