Why mothers younger than 35 are becoming increasingly rare in Sydney

Mothers younger than 35 are becoming increasingly rare in Sydney.

Almost half of the city’s women aged 30 to 34 (48 per cent) have never had a child, new analysis of census data shows. That compares with 42 per cent a decade ago. Among 25 to 29-year-olds, 73 per cent have never had a child, up from 67 per cent in 2011.

Also on the rise is the share of Sydney women in their late 30s and 40s with only one child.

Mellissa Santoro and her 22-month-old daughter Genevieve.Credit: Brook Mitchell

West Ryde mother Mellissa Santoro, 36, says “pretty much everybody” she knows is having kids in their mid-30s or later. She wanted to become as financially secure as possible before starting her family.

“I didn’t want to fall behind in career opportunities; I didn’t want to miss out,” says Santoro, who is a manager in the public sector. “For me, the crucial part was securing the job I wanted, and then taking maternity leave … I wanted to make sure I could give [a child] everything they need – and Sydney is a very expensive place to live.”

Once Santoro decided to have a baby, her plans were delayed by a medical condition.

“By the time I fell pregnant with my daughter, Genevieve, I was 34,” she says.

Professor Nick Parr, a Macquarie University population expert who analysed census birth age data, says the growth in the proportion of women aged under 35 with no children over the past decade signals a substantial demographic shift.

“It remains to be seen, to what extent this will lead to a larger proportion of women who never have children over their lifetime,” he says.

The share of Sydney women aged over 50 who have never had a child has already edged higher during the past decade, the figures show.

A range of financial factors contribute to decisions to delay parenthood, including the cost of having a child (especially childcare), attaining suitable housing and the effects on career advancement and future earnings.

‘We would love to give our daughter a sibling, but then we think about the reality of the cost of living in Sydney.’

Mellissa Santoro, 36

Research by Sydney University’s Gender Equality in Working Life Research Initiative shows women are significantly more likely than men to be influenced by these financial factors when thinking about the number of children they expect to have.

Parr says research shows there are also many “non-material” reasons for delaying motherhood including not having a suitable partner; a sense of “busyness” or not having the necessary time and energy to raise a family; and alternative lifestyle priorities such as travel.

“Some people also give reasons which are related to their concerns for the wider global context, for example, climate change and the state of the environment, or a view that the world is overpopulated,” he said.

Worries about climate change are having a disproportionate effect on how young people think about family formation. The University of Sydney study found 44 per cent of female workers aged 18 to 30 said climate change had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of influence on how many children they expect to have.

In 2011, there were 71,000 women aged 30 to 34 in Sydney who had never had a child, but by 2021 that had jumped to 101,000, an increase of more than 40 per cent.

The number of Sydney women aged over 35 with an only child also rose sharply in that period. The proportion of 35 to 39-year-olds with a single birth jumped from 17 per cent in 2011 to 21 per cent in 2021.

Like many mothers in her age group, Santoro is considering whether to have another baby.

“I have this conversation nearly every other day with my husband,” she says. “It’s a really challenging question: we would love to give our daughter a sibling, but then we think about the reality of the cost of living in Sydney.”

She says cheaper childcare is one thing that would help allow her to have another baby.

“If I knew that I didn’t have to pay for daycare I could happily have another child,” she says.

Another powerful incentive would be having full superannuation paid while she was out of the workforce or working reduced hours to care for an infant.

”If I knew my super contributions were still being made, or subsidised through the government, that would also be a driving factor for me to have another child,” Santoro says.

The executive director of The Parenthood lobby group, Georgie Dent, says fertility trends underscore how difficult it has become for couples to start a family.

Georgie Dent of The Parenthood speaks at the jobs summit in September 2022.Credit: James Brickwood

”Having a baby is an incredibly expensive undertaking and while there are some families who absolutely get the support they need, a lot of families don’t,” she says.

Dent says men and women are put on different paths from the moment a baby is conceived, a pattern entrenched by parental leave policies, childcare costs and the nature of the tax system.

“That makes it really difficult for families to approach their family life in a sort of truly equitable fashion,” she says.

The upshot is that women tend to bear a disproportionate share of the financial cost of raising children.

Dent says more generous paid parental leave provisions that facilitate greater involvement of fathers in the care of infants would help shift the balance.

“That sets up the expectation that caregiving is something that both men and women participate in,” she says. “It is such a huge signal about the role of men and women in raising families; at the moment we overlook the important role that dads play.”

Sydney’s fertility rate, which measures the number of births per woman, has fallen from 1.85 in 2011 to 1.62 – well below the 2.1 “replacement level” rate needed to maintain a stable population, not including migration.

During the past decade, the number of births per woman has declined sharply in parts of the city which have traditionally had high fertility rates.

One example is the inner south-west suburb of Lakemba where the fertility rate has dropped from 3.13 in 2013 to 2.45 in 2021.

In 2013, there were 95 Sydney suburbs (with a population over 2000) with a fertility rate above the 2.1 replacement level but by 2021 that had fallen to 49 neighbourhoods.

Parr says there are suburban pockets with rising fertility rates in newly developed high-growth areas on the city’s north-west and south-west fringes.

”We’ve seen families moving into those areas anticipating having additional children,” he says.

The median age of women who gave birth in Sydney during 2021 was 32.4 years, almost a year older than in 2011 (the median being the midpoint of all birth ages).

The eastern suburbs had the oldest median age of women who gave birth in 2021 at 34.6 followed by North Sydney and Hornsby (34.4) and the northern beaches (34.1).

The region with the youngest median age of women who gave birth in 2021 was Sydney’s outer west and Blue Mountains (30.6) and Sydney’s outer south-west (30.8).

Although Sydney’s fertility rate is below replacement level, Parr says overseas migration will ensure the city’s population continues to grow.

“If the replacement level for fertility is adjusted to consider the level of migration we have ... Australia’s fertility is far above the migration-adjusted replacement level. This means if birth rates, life expectancies and net migration were to remain unchanged the population would grow towards a much larger than current size.”

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