Scandinavian women want to be mothers even if they are 45 and more, say the figures from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. As ScienceNordic understood, putting off parenthood is a continuing trend among Nordic women and men.
The number of mature mothers is also growing in the other Nordic countries, women over 45 are ready to give births and enjoying the mature parenthood. In Oslo, the average age of women giving birth for the first time is 31 years old but Nordic women are waiting longer to have children. According to the statistics from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway, 138 women over age 45 had children – twice as many as ten years earlier.
Norwegian first-time mothers were on average 29 years old in 2017, the same as in Sweden in 2016. More women are also having children well into adulthood. The Danish celebrity Brigitte Nielsen had her fifth child last year at age 54.
The new European trend: more women over 45+ giving birth
In Sweden, the number of babies born to mothers aged 45 or older has been rising steadily – from 22 in 2010 to 69 in 2017- while the Medical Birth Registry of Norway shows the same trend in Norway.
There are several reasons women are waiting longer to have babies, said adjunct senior lecturer and head physician Kenny Rodriguez-Wallberg at Karolinska University Hospital. Additionally, the different types of assisted fertilization have improved, so, a woman has more time to make the needed change in her life.
“Men and women value taking their education to a higher level and want to do a lot of different things before establishing a family,”
Kenny Rodriguez-Wallberg says.
However, the risks are increased when women decide to give a birth in 45 and older, say the doctors. Older women more often experience complications during pregnancy and more complicated births than younger women. Moreover, such women have three times the risk of having a Caesarean section compared to women in their early twenties.
