Want to live longer? Have your children later

Women who have their children late in life are often castigated or bombarded with health-related fear-inducing reports.

If it is not the health of the baby that is at stake, it is their own health. But a silver lining has appeared for women looking to have or who have had their children in their later years.

A recent study found that women who delay having children until or after the age of 33 years are more likely to live longer than women who have their children before that age. 

The researchers compared and analysed data on 461 women.

Of these, 311 women who survived up to the age of 95 years were compared with 151 women who died at younger ages. The researchers noted that there was a strong identifiable link between longevity and older maternal age.

Women who delivered their last child at the age of 33 years were two times more likely to live to the ripe age of 95 years or older in contrast to the control group who had their last child by the age of 29 years.

GENETIC FACTORS

This study appeared to agree with a 2010 study derived from the New England centenarian study. The study found that women who gave birth after the age of 40 were four times more likely to reach the age of 100.

In the new study, the researchers analysed data from the long life family study, which included a bio-psycho-social and genetic study of 551 families, and an international collaboration to review the genetics and familial components of exceptional survival, longevity, and healthy aging.

The case-control study was published online in the journal Menopause.

The researchers further noted that having more than three children moderated the association between increased child-birth age and longevity.

The cause of longevity could be attributed to the older woman’s beneficial genetic variants that allow her to remain fertile.

According to lead researcher, Dr. Thomas Perls, women should nonetheless not wait to have their children at older ages in order to improve their chances of living to celebrate their 95th or 100th birthday.

“The age at last childbirth can be a rate of ageing indicator. The natural ability to have a child at an older age likely indicates that a woman’s reproductive system is ageing slowly, and therefore so is the rest of her body,” he adds.

But the benefits of having children late are not only expected to thrill older women alone. In 2012, American biologists found that delayed fatherhood may also offer longer survival benefits.

Apparently, children of older fathers appeared to be genetically programmed to live longer.