First-Time Mothers after 40: an Emerging Phenomenon Where Diverse Life Paths Converge

Alberto Del Rey Poveda , University of Salamanca
Mengyao Wu, University of Hebei and Autonomous University of Barcelona
Jesús García-Gómez, Universidad de Salamanca
Guillermo Orfao, University of Salamanca
Lidia Bonilla, University of Salamanca

The aim of this study is to analyze the transition to motherhood after the age of 40 in a low-fertility country. Over the past decades, Spain has experienced a sharp decline in fertility, alongside a significant postponement of the reproductive calendar and an increase in the number of women reaching the end of their reproductive period childless. While the total number of births in Spain fell by 19.4% between 2000 and 2023, the number of births to mothers aged 40 and over increased by 240%. This increase has been more pronounced among first-time mothers, highlighting the lengthening of the transition to motherhood and the emergence of a new sociological and demographic phenomenon. To conduct this study, we used the 2018 Fertility Survey from the Spanish National Statistics Institute. The analysis was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, we applied multichannel sequence analysis to reconstruct women’s employment and partnership trajectories from ages 18 to 40 on a monthly basis, allowing us to identify the profiles of women who reached age 40 without children. In the second stage, we applied discrete-time survival models to examine the likelihood of having a child between ages 40 and 45 for these childless women’s profiles. Our findings highlight, first, the heterogeneity of employment and family trajectories leading to the postponement of motherhood; and second, the key role of the timing of leaving the parental home and the age at union formation as the main factors behind a late transition to motherhood.

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 Presented in Session 107. Childlessness and Late Parenthood