Portrait of maternity in Europe

Women in European countries have their first child, on average, at 29 years old.

This is indicated by the figures recently provided by Eurostat for the year 2016, when 5,148,000 children were born in the member countries of the EU, slightly above the 5,103,000 births of the previous year.

The European women who were mothers at an earlier age were those of Bulgaria (26 years on average), followed by those of Romania (26.4), Latvia (26.8) and Slovakia (27).

In contrast, the highest average age of first-time mothers corresponded to Italy (31 years), followed by Spain (30.8 years).

Around 5% of the first births in Europan countries corresponded to mothers under 20 years of age; On the contrary, 3% of the first births were of mothers over 40 years of age. The countries with more mothers who had their first child after 40 years were Italy (7.2%), Spain (6.6%) and Greece (5.3%).

1.6 children of average

In 2016, the average fertility rate in the European Union was 1.6 children per woman. The lowest rate corresponded to Spain and Italy (both with an average of 1.34 children), while the highest was that of France (1.92 children per woman), followed by Sweden (1.85).

On the countries that do not belong to the EU, Turkey is the one with the highest fertility rate, with an average of 2.11 children per mother.

The countries with the highest percentage of mothers with four or more children are currently Finland (10.1%), Ireland (9%), the United Kingdom (8.5%), Slovakia (8.1%), Romania (7, 7%) and Belgium (7.6%).