Band 5+: Many men and women are making the decision to have children later in life. Why is this trend occurring? What are the impacts of this development on both family and society?

In today’s world, it is observable that many men and women decides to have children in later stages of their lives, rather than having children in early phases as it used to be the situation twenty or thirty years ago. This situation is strongly linked with rapidly changing lifestyle of humankind and it possess some considerable effects on family and society.

Firstly, career success seems to be the primary objective for most of the people nowadays. This fact yields a singificant impacts on family planning since neither man or woman feels eligible to struggle responsibilities of children. Therefore, couples tend to delay their family objectives in order to ensure their career success and satisfaction before having a baby, both for their peace of mind and increasing the quality of life of their children. Furthermore, life expectations are quite longer in comparison to the past and it leads to make couples think they have long time ahead, which constitutes another delaying effect.

Effects of this behaviour, on the other hand, is likely to be unfavorable. The more gap between ages of children and parents, the less possibility to construct a healthy relationship in between. Elder parents generally suffer from having enough energy to fulfill children’s expectations such that a child having a 50 years old father may never play football with his father and his/her reminiscenes will be limited to going fishing or concerts. Children in such cases is likely to idealize his fathers and mothers as grandfather and grandmother, respectively. In a society point of view, it also seems problematic because family satisfaction generally leads to an inner satisfaction for a child, and a child having suffered some insufficient fulfillment of emotional needs will likely to experience some difficulties in adapting to the society at his/her early interactions.

Taking everything into consideration, necessities of today’s world somehow forces parents to have children at later stages, however, this situation may have vital effects on children’s lives.