No country for young mothers - Irish among older first-time parents

Relentless human population growth — most other species are in accelerating retreat — and ever-more-demanding material appetites are the primary drivers of climate change. In 1960, there were just over 3bn of us. Today, there are nearly 8bn citizens dependent on this finite world’s resources. Scientists have warned that unless we better manage population growth — as in curtail — it will be all but impossible to avert escalating climate catastrophe.

At first, it may seem a leap to link that mutually assured destruction with some of the detail in today’s United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report, but maybe it’s not. That report finds that Irish women are choosing to become mothers later in life than their peers in all but nine countries. Irish women, on average, have their first child aged 31.4, making them the fourth-oldest first-time parents in Europe after Spain, Switzerland, Italy, and Luxembourg. In the wider world, only women in Libya, Korea, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, and Hong Kong leave motherhood until later in life. Looming climate change may not be a direct influence on this deferral, but the behaviours leading to it are.