on Yahoo!TORONTO - The ranks of older mothers with preschool children have swelled in the last 20 years, with the rise in later-in-life motherhood apparently linked to the pursuit of higher education, according to a new report from Statistics Canada.
Figures from the 2006 census found that of the 1.3 million women aged 40 to 44, 8.9 per cent were mothers of at least one child aged four and under. That's more than double the proportion in 1986. And the report found highly educated women - particularly those with university degrees - are much more likely to have children when they're in their 30s and 40s.
The study released Thursday found that 13.8 per cent of women aged 40 to 44 who had a bachelor's degree were mothers to a young child, compared with 6.4 per cent of women with a high school diploma or less. The proportion was 19.8 per cent for women who had a doctorate.
"We know that there's a strong link between level and education of women and the likelihood that they become a mother later in life," said Statistics Canada researcher Martin Turcotte, who co-authored the report.
"We can see a pattern and we can expect given that the share of women with university degrees is still growing that this trend in later motherhood will continue in the next years."
News of later-in-life pregnancies is hardly uncommon, particularly among the celebrity jetset. Celine Dion recently announced that she was again with child at age 41. Other A-listers who have given birth in their 40s include actresses Halle Berry, Salma Hayek and "Desperate Housewives" star Marcia Cross.
But for everyday women who don't necessarily have the luxury of time or money to take long periods off work or studies to devote to motherhood, the decision to have children later in life may come as a result of having few other alternatives.
The report found that occupations with the highest proportion of older moms with young kids were those that required a high level of skill and education, including physicians and lawyers - positions that involve years of intensive preparation.
"To be a lawyer or professor or doctor, it's years of training and then establishing yourself in your career," said Andrea O'Reilly, founder and director of the Association for Research on Mothering. "Before you say 'I feel OK where I am and I've established myself' you are in your late 30s by that time. Then they say 'Now it's the time for motherhood,' so they haven't excluded that possibility of doing both."
But O'Reilly, who is also an associate professor of women's studies at York University in Toronto, said the trend towards later-in-life motherhood is a shift that is happening primarily among middle-to upper-class women rather than across the board.
"Middle-class women are having babies later because they are middle class," she said. "To be middle class that means you've got to go to school for seven years to achieve some middle class professional career and lifestyle. So women who do not for choice or circumstance do that are having the children younger."
"But it's chicken and egg for both reasons," she added. "If you want (a professional career), you have to have your baby late."
O'Reilly, 48, who had her first child at 23, said she is an anomaly among many of her peers. The majority of women in her profession have kids after age 35, she noted.
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