Globally, in several nations couples prefer to have children in their later phase of life in comparison to the past. The primary reason behind this phenomenon is shifted focus on career growth, while its consequences includes decline in population rate and rise in nuclear family structure.
The most plausible reason behind the rise in the child bearing age of parents is substantial importance given to a stable career than family planning. In other words, financial stability is pivotal to provide a stable life for family in future, and that can be achieved through a high paying and balanced profession. Nowadays, inflation is soaring and the prices of essential requisities such as grocery, education, and insurance are proliferating. Subsequently, before starting a married life people prefer to spend extensive time in establishing good career and for settlement that happens in early to late 20’s usually. In earlier days, the primary goal was to built a family and then concentrating on career. Whereas the situation has completely reversed in the contemporary world. For instance, a study conducted by The Harvard University revealed that by 2030, in many nations people will get married after 35 years of age to built a strong career. Therefore, it is evident in the coming years a growing number of people will not plan child in their early days of life.
However, this situation has two prominent repercussions, Primarily, it will cause a plunge in the population growth rate. To elaborate, the right age to concieve a child is when adults have high fertility rate, and that is between 20 and 30. Whereas when citizens during this age will concentrate on professional stability, this age will pass and in the later phase the chances of having a child will decline. As a result, fertility and birth rate will dramatically fall, causing low population rate. Secondly, when the number of residents in the country will decline, the size of the family will also drop considerably. In past days, when population was exploding there were generally 8-10 members per family, while in the current scenarios there are hardly 3-4 members in the family. Moreover, this number will also shrink with rise in infertility rate among men and women due to late family planning. Japan is a prime example, where adults are not marrying and planning children due to high work pressure, causing rise in the number of elder citizens. The size of the families are dropping and young population is on the verge of extinction.
To conclude, there is a global trend of bearing children in later age, which was not usual in the past. The key factor behind this is shift in focus from family to career development, whereas it will cause detrimental impacts including decline in population rate and change in family structure.