Pregnant pause: ‘immature’ men impacting fertility rate

Hundreds of thousands of women are “missing out” on having children, partly because of a “delay” in young men maturing into adulthood, a report has claimed.

- REBECCA THOMAS

The Centre for Social Justice, a think tank founded by Tory MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith, said around 3 million women aged between 16 and 45 are projected not to have children under current trends. If birth trends were the same as their grandparents’ generation, then around 2.4 million women would not have children. It means around 600,000 fewer women are having children, it said.

The paper, published yesterday, cited a range of reasons for falling birth rates, including declining marriage rates and the later average age at which women are having children. But the report also suggests ‐male employment and education trends may play a role in falling birth rates‐.

The report said that, ‐in the past‐, a 24-year-old man would have likely been married, had a child and been working for a decade, but now men are only leaving home at the age of 25 on average.

One way to tackle the UK’s falling birth rate is to encourage marriage at a younger age and for men to ‐enter adulthood‐ earlier than 25, the report said.