Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — More women in the U.S. are waiting until they are older to have children and new research says this trend may prolong their life.
The study was done by the Boston University School of Medicine and published in Menopause: The Journal of the North American Menopause Society. Researchers found that women who gave birth naturally after 33 years old were twice as likely to live to 95 years or older than women who had their last child at age 29.
In 1970, the average age of a first-time mother was 21 years old and in 2008 the average age was 25.1, according to Baby Center.
The data for the study was gathered from the Long Life Family Study which compiled a biopsychosocial and genetic study of 551 families with many members living to exceptionally old ages.
"Of course this does not mean women should wait to have children at older ages in order to improve their own chances of living longer," co-author Thomas Perls, MD, MPH said in the study. "The age at last childbirth can be a rate of aging indicator. The natural ability to have a child at an older age likely indicates that a woman's reproductive system is aging slowly and therefore so is the rest of her body."
The research did not prove causation but found that women may be the driving force behind the evolution of genetic variants that slow aging and decrease risk for age-related genes, according to the study.
"If a woman has those variants, she is able to reproduce and bear children for a longer period of time, increasing her chances of passing down those genes to the next generation," Perls said. "This possibility may be a clue as to why 85 percent of women live to 100 or more years while only 15 percent of men do."
