A surprisingly large number of women are waiting to become mothers and giving birth at age 40 or older in an expensive California city, a new study found.
In 2023, 10.9 percent of women in San Francisco had babies when they were 40 or older, according to a new study from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The average age of a Bay Area woman who gave birth that year was 33.6 years old – and one in 10 women were 40 or older when they became mothers, the data showed.
That came in as the highest age out of all U.S. counties with a population of at least 100,000 that were included in the data.
Although Marin County, California, came in at number one with 11.3 percent of women giving birth at age 40 or over, its average age came in at 33.5 years.
Among all the Golden State counties in the study, Solano County came in with the lowest average age at 30.4 years.
The average age of a mother nationwide sits at 29.6 years, and overall, 4.1 percent of women aged 40 and over had a child in 2023 – the first time that more births happened among older women than teenagers, according to the data.
There are likely a lot of reasons for this drastic shift, including reproductive advancements like egg freezing and vitro fertilization, Lusine Aghajanova, a clinical associate professor in Stanford Medicine’s obstetrics and gynecology department, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
‘We see a lot of patients after 40, even at 45 [giving birth],’ Aghajanova said. That age range included both women trying to get pregnant for the first time and those looking to have their second or third child.
Another expert, Sarah Hayford, a sociologist at the Ohio State University and director of the Institute for Population Research, told the outlet that women aren’t the only one’s looking to postpone parenthood.
‘Men are also waiting later,’ Hayford revealed.
Meanwhile, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said people who live in cities are specifically taking their time welcoming a child into the world.
‘People definitely wait longer in cities … especially in expensive cities,’ Guzzo said.
‘Child care and housing in major cities is both scarce and expensive, so that also means folks wait longer in the hopes of making “enough” money.’
The Bay Area alone is home to 20 of the priciest cities to live in America, according to a study by SmartAsset.
Teen pregnancies have noticeably decreased in recent years, and although there is no solid reason as to why, Hayford said teens have opted for effective contraception and fewer are having sex.
Although it is commonly said that women who have children at an older age expose them to a higher risk of miscarriage and their children to a higher chance of disabilities, Aghajanova said ‘times change.’
She explained that a 25-year-old obese woman with diabetes and high blood pressure could actually have a higher chance of complications than a 40-year-old female with medical issues who maintains a healthy weight and diet.
Other than California, other counties across the country also made their mark with older women having babies.
In New York County, New York 9.4 percent of women 40 and over had babies in 2023, while 9.3 percent did the same in Arlington County, Virginia.
In fifth place, 8.7 percent of women in San Mateo County, California gave birth.
Women in Westchester County, New York also made the list, with 8.4 percent of them having babies at an older age.
Montgomery County, Maryland also came in at 8.4, the District of Columbia at 8 percent, Alameda County, California at 7.7 percent and Bergen County, New Jersey at 7.7. percent, the data showed.