How Age Affects a Mother's Care for Her Children
Older mothers have become increasingly common in delivery rooms in recent decades. More women are delaying child bearing and having their first child later in life. It is also becoming more common for women to add to their families later in life, such as when a woman decides to have children with a second husband. A number of studies have shown distinct benefits to children in having an older mother, benefits that often relate specifically to the care older mothers offer their children.
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Fewer Serious Injuries
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Older mothers tend to be more conscientious in preventing accidental injury. Their children were found to be less likely to suffer injuries requiring hospital care, according to the results of a study published in the ̶0;British Medical Journal̶1; in 2012. Other studies have yielded similar results. Maternal age was found to be associated with the likelihood of a preschooler suffering a scalding accident, according to a May 2013 "Telegraph" report about a study done by University of Nottingham researchers and published in the journal ̶0;Burn.̶1; Preschoolers with a mother over 40 years of age were 70 percent less likely to suffer this type of injury than those with younger mothers.
Better Language Development
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The British study used data from 31,257 9-month-old babies, 24,781 3-year-old preschoolers and 22,504 children at 5 years of age. At 3 and 5 years of age, testing demonstrated a significant difference between the vocabularies of children with 20-year-old mothers and those with 40-year-old mothers. At 3 years of age, those with younger mothers tested at 0.22 standard deviations lower and 0.21 standard deviations lower at age 5. Studies have shown that mothers under 21 years of age tend to speak fewer words to their children. Older mothers are often better educated, using a wider vocabulary when speaking around or to their children.
Greater Level of School-Readiness
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Older mothers are more likely to read to their children regularly and do activities with them geared towards learning. Children of older mothers score higher on cognitive abilities tests and measures of social and emotional well-being at ages 3 and 5, entering school more prepared to succeed than the average child of a mother below the age of 21. These children were more likely to know their alphabet, be able to read simple stories, to recognize shapes and to be able to count.
More Prepared to Parent
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The differences in child outcome for the two groups lie in the degree of preparedness to meet the demands of parenting. Older mothers, in general, tend to be more mature and more knowledgeable about children. They are likely to have greater stability in their personal and financial lives, allowing them to invest more time in child rearing. Women who have delayed childbearing to establish careers may have to work harder to achieve pregnancy, using fertility treatments and other reproductive assistance, and are motivated to be good parents. Older mothers are better prepared, on the average, to parent than are those under 21 years of age.
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