{"id":53071,"date":"2013-01-03T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2013-01-03T17:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/familyinequality.wordpress.com\/?p=5071"},"modified":"2013-10-31T04:40:25","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T09:40:25","slug":"poverty-poses-a-bigger-risk-to-pregnancy-than-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/01\/03\/poverty-poses-a-bigger-risk-to-pregnancy-than-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Poverty Poses a Bigger Risk to Pregnancy Than Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Family Inequality<\/a> and\u00a0The Atlantic<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The problem of income inequality often gets forgotten in conversations about biological clocks.<\/p>\n

The dilemma that couples face as they consider having children at older ages is worth dwelling on, and I wouldn\u2019t take that away from\u00a0Judith Shulevitz\u2019s essay<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0New Republic<\/em>, \u201cHow Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society,\u201d which has sparked commentary from\u00a0Katie Roiphe<\/a>,\u00a0Hanna Rosin<\/a>,\u00a0Ross Douthat<\/a>, and\u00a0Parade<\/em><\/a>, among many others.<\/p>\n

The story is an old one \u2014 about the health risks of older parenting and the implications of falling fertility rates for an aging population \u2014 even though some of the facts are new. But two points need more attention. First, the overall consequences of the trend toward older parenting are on balance positive, both for women\u2019s equality and for children\u2019s health. And second, social-class inequality is a pressing \u2014 and growing \u2014 problem in children\u2019s health, and one that is too easily lost in the biological-clock debate.<\/p>\n

Older mothers<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, we need to distinguish between the\u00a0average<\/em>\u00a0age of birth parents on the one hand versus the number born at\u00a0advanced<\/em>\u00a0parental ages on the other. As Shulevitz notes, the average age of a first-time mother in the U.S. is now 25. Health-wise, assuming she births the rest of her (small) brood before about age 35, that\u2019s perfect.<\/p>\n

Consider two measures of child well-being according to their mothers\u2019 age at birth. First, infant mortality:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
(Source: Centers for Disease Control)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Health prospects for children improve as women (and their partners) increase their education and incomes, and improve their health behaviors, into their 30s. Beyond that, the health risks start accumulating, weighing against the socioeconomic factors, and the danger increases.<\/p>\n

Second, here is the rate of cognitive disability among children according to the age of their mothers at birth, showing a very similar pattern:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
(Source: Calculations made for my working paper)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Again, the lowest risks are to those born when their parents are in their early 30s, a pattern that holds when I control for education, income, race\/ethnicity, gender, and child\u2019s age.<\/p>\n

When mothers older than age 40 give birth, which accounted for\u00a03 percent of births<\/a>\u00a0in 2011, the risks clearly are increased, and Shulevitz\u2019s story is highly relevant. But, at least in terms of mortality and cognitive disability, an average parental age in the late 20s and early 30s is not only not a problem, it\u2019s ideal.<\/p>\n

Unequal health<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the second figure above hints at another problem \u2014 inequality in the health of parents and children. On that purple chart, a college graduate in her early 40s has the same risk as a non-graduate in her late 20s. And the social-class gap increases with age. Why is the rate of cognitive disabilities so much higher for the children of older mothers who did not finish college? It\u2019s not because of their biological clocks or genetic mutations, but because of the health of the women giving birth.<\/p>\n

For healthy, wealthy older women, the issue of aging eggs and genetic mutations from fathers\u2019 run-down sperm factories are more pressing than it is for the majority of parents, who have not graduated college.<\/p>\n

If you look at the distribution of women having babies by age and education, it\u2019s clear that the older-parent phenomenon is disproportionately about more-educated women. (I calculated these from the American Community Survey, because age-by-education is not available in the CDC numbers, so they are a little different.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Most of the less-educated mothers are giving birth in their 20s, and a bigger share of the high-age births are to women who\u2019ve graduated college \u2014 most of them married and financially better off. But women without college degrees still make up more than half of those having babies after age 35, and the risks their children face have more to do with high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and other health conditions than with genetic or epigenetic mutations. Preterm births, low birth-weight, and birth complications are major causes of developmental disabilities, and they occur most often among mothers with their own health problems.<\/p>\n

Most distressing, the effects of educational (and income) inequality on children\u2019s health have been increasing. Here are the relative odds of infant mortality by maternal education, from 1986 to 2001, from a study in\u00a0Pediatrics<\/em><\/a>. (This compares the odds to college graduates within each year, so anything over 1.0 means the group has a higher risk than college graduates.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This inequality is absent from Shulevitz\u2019s essay and most of the commentary about it. She writes, of the social pressure mothers like her feel as they age, \u201cOnce again, technology has given us the chance to lead our lives in the proper sequence: education, then work, then financial stability, then children\u201d \u2014 with no consideration of the\u00a066 percent of people<\/a>\u00a0who have reached their early 30s with less than a four-year college degree. For the vast majority of that group, the sequence Shulevitz describes is not relevant.<\/p>\n

In fact, if Shulevitz had considered economic inequality, she might not have been quite as worried about advancing parental age. When she worries that a 35-year-old mother has a life expectancy of just 46 more years \u2014 years to be a mother to her child \u2014 the\u00a0table<\/a>\u00a0she consulted applies to the whole population. She should breathe a little bit easier: Among 40-year-old white college graduates\u00a0women are expected<\/a>\u00a0to live an average extra five years compared with those who have a high school education only.<\/p>\n

When it comes to parents\u2019 age versus social class, the challenges are not either\/or. We should be concerned about both. But addressing the health problems of parents \u2014 especially mothers \u2014 with less than a college degree and below-average incomes is the more pressing issue \u2014 both for potential lives saved or improved and for social equality.<\/p>\nPhilip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality<\/a>. You can follow him on Twitter<\/a> or Facebook<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in TheAtlantic.com. The problem of income inequality often gets forgotten in conversations about biological clocks. The dilemma that couples face as they consider having children at older ages is worth dwelling on, and I wouldn&#82…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2083,349,29,135,345,55,252,778,272],"class_list":["post-53071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortionreproduction","tag-ageaging","tag-class","tag-demography","tag-disability","tag-gender","tag-healthmedicine","tag-intersectionality","tag-marriagefamily"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53071"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58061,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53071\/revisions\/58061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}