Mature-age motherhood study - participants needed

• Swinburne University of Technology

19 August 2010Can an older mother enjoy motherhood with meaningful paid work sidelined while her children are young? Or pay the price of juggling if both are to take centre stage? What is it like to contemplate being in your fifties or sixties and caring for a teenager when your friends and family who started earlier are retiring and leading ‘the good life'?

These are hard questions with no easy answers that Marie Roberts, a psychologist and doctoral student at Swinburne University, is exploring in her research into delayed motherhood.

"Australian birth statistics reveal an increasing trend to delayed motherhood with the number of births to women aged over 30 years having doubled to one in two over the past two decades," Roberts said.

"Despite our economic sophistication and relatively liberal lifestyle, attitudes to women and the roles they should play in Australian society still remain somewhat ambiguous.

"In the 1950s there would have been little real choice - a woman's lot in life was marriage and generally full time motherhood."

Women now have a choice, rather than a purely biological imperative in bearing children and many are increasingly choosing to become mothers much later in life or not at all.

"For those who do want to choose motherhood, the issue becomes one of timing," Roberts said. "Is there a right time to have a baby, closely followed by the question of how is a mother to find a balance between her past and future life?"

The average age of women giving birth now hovers around 31, with women aged 30-34 experiencing the highest fertility rate of all age groups. Births to women over 35 are the highest they have been for more than 60 years.

"At this age, a woman often has more confidence to know what she wants, and has developed the organisational and people skills to get it," Roberts said. "But that doesn't always mean that her choices will be endorsed.

"Many older first time mothers I have spoken with resented being mistaken for their child's grandmother and report that later life parenting, despite its joys, is not without its challenges."

Roberts is interested in learning more about the experiences of other older mothers. If you were 36 years or older at the time of your first birth and your child is now attending school, and you would like to participate in her study, please contact her at marie.psych@live.com.au for further information.