60% Of Americans Think This Is The Magical Age To Have Kids, According To Research
Is there a 'perfect' age to have kids?
Arina Krasnikova | Canva Ah, America. The land of the free, the home of the brave — and the country where women are supposed to start popping out babies before the age of ... 25?
According to a 2013 Gallup poll, most Americans — to the tune of 58 percent — think the "ideal age" for women to begin having children is 25 or younger.
Scarily, in the same poll, there is no bottom cap for that range, which in theory means 58 percent of our great country may or may not support teen pregnancy.
Of course, those same expectations don't apply to men. Only 42 percent of Americans responded that they believe the ideal age for males to start procreating is 25 or younger. Most people, 52 percent in fact, think the ideal age for men to start having babies is 26 or older.
There were some differences when it came to education levels. According to the poll, reasons for delayed parenthood increase dramatically with education, with some of the sharpest differences in views toward women's ideal age for becoming a mother.
Americans who have higher levels of education were more likely than those with little to no college at all to believe women should wait until age 26 or older to have children.
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It turns out adults aged 65 and older are the most likely to say women should start having children before they are 25, 72% of them to be exact.
A solid majority of adults aged 18 to 29 and 50 to 64 also say this. Those least likely to believe women should start that young are those aged 30 to 49, at 49%.
Meanwhile, there’s this little thing called science, which recently debunked the theory that the risk of pregnancy complications increases with each year on the mother’s age. A study published in the Review of Obstetrics & Gynecology found that pregnancy in women above the age of 50 carried an equal amount of risk as in women in their 20s who got pregnant using donated eggs. So, what gives?
These age-old beliefs of women ideally becoming pregnant and giving birth before the age of 25 have nothing to do with science or facts, but rather with cultural indoctrination.
Our country has not gotten over a large chunk of history during which it wasn’t even considered appropriate for women to have jobs outside the home, as suggested by Wayne State University sociologist Heidi Gottfried.
A 2019 study found, "Reproductive control by others includes control or coercion over decisions about becoming pregnant and also about continuing or terminating a pregnancy. Reproductive control by others is separate from intimate partner violence but there are similarities and the phenomena overlap. Reproductive control by others is reported by as many as one-quarter of women attending sexual and reproductive healthcare services."
Let’s not forget that women got the right to vote a little over 100 years ago (that law passed in 1920, folks) — so it’s not all too surprising that a great many people still hold beliefs about “a woman’s place” that may or may not be archaic.
Ashley Papa is a writer, author, and digital editor for Fox News. Her bylines have appeared in MSN, Yahoo News, AOL, Insider, SheKnows, The New York Post, Reader's Digest, and Thrive Global, among many local news outlets.