Nowadays, more and more people decide to have children later in their life. What are the reasons? What are the effects on society and family life?

It is not until middle age that married couples in today’s society are delaying having their babies. This trend is attributable to many factors in life, and it certainly will have great impacts on society in general and family life in particular. Looking more closely into the matter, there are some possible causes of people’s avoidance of being parents. A prominent reason could be that married couples, especially young ones are becoming more independent in their decisions in contrast to their predecessors. As a result of their freedom of choice, they tend to spend more time advancing the career or pursuing higher education before finally having any newborn family members. In addition, many prospective parents could avoid pregnancy owing to the fact that they are unable to support their family financially, and raising a baby is sometimes too costly for parents to afford. Therefore couples are likely to wait until they have earned more income in preparation for their babies to appear. As more people are hesitating to have children, both society and domestic life are subject to many negative impacts. Firstly, the increasing age of pregnancy usually entails higher health risks for the mother as well as the baby, as suggested by some researchers, which will undoubtedly adversely affect family life. Secondly, the older parents are, the more likely that the generation gap will widen. By the time the late babies are grown up, they might encounter difficulty adapting to their parents’ ways of life. Thirdly, the reduction in the rates of birth can lead to a shortage of the labour force nationwide, hindering the development of the national economy.