Explaining the curvilinear relationship between age at first birth and depression among women
Research highlights
►This study aims to explain the curvilinear association between age at first birth and depression among women. ►Deviating from expected age at first birth, both early and late, increases depressive symptoms among first time mothers. ►The curvilinear association of age at first birth with depression for women is largely spurious and due to birth mistiming.
Introduction
Recent studies provide preliminary evidence of a curvilinear relationship between mothers’ age at first birth and depressive symptoms suggesting that entering parenthood at both young (age 20 or younger) and older ages (after age 30) negatively affects mothers’ mental health and that these effects persist throughout the life course (Koropeckyj-Cox et al., 2007, Mirowsky and Ross, 2002, Spence, 2008). Scholars have theorized that accumulated disadvantages and physical health problems associated with childbearing at young and older ages explain the curvilinear pattern, although empirical support for these hypotheses has varied. In this study I develop and test an alternative hypothesis: that the curvilinear relationship between age at first birth and depressive symptoms is explained by deviations from one’s expected age at birth and the effect such deviations have on mental health.
Substantial research and theory indicates that deviating from life course expectations can result in violations of social age norms (Neugarten, Moore, & Lowe, 1968) and identity discrepancies (Higgins, 1987, Marcussen and Large, 2003) that are, in turn, strongly associated with mental health (Alexander and Higgins, 1993, Higgins, 1987, Koropeckyj-Cox et al., 2007). If first births at young and older ages are mistimed, this may explain the elevated levels of psychological distress found at these ages. This would mean that the previously observed relationship between age at first birth and psychological distress is largely spurious, and primarily the result of births at younger and older ages being mistimed and/or non-normative.
Section snippets
Age at first birth and psychological distress
Births at young ages have significant negative consequences for mental health. Young parents (age 20 and younger) consistently exhibit lower levels of mental health and higher levels of psychological distress throughout life than those who enter parenthood later (Kalil and Kunz, 2002, Mirowsky and Ross, 2002, Spence, 2008). The primary explanation for this general pattern is that births early in the life course produce cumulative disadvantages which, over time, undermine mental health, in part
Method
Data for this study come from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), a nationally representative sample of 12,686 U.S. male and female youths age 14–22 in 1979. Each respondent was interviewed annually from 1979 to 1994 and biennially since. At first interview, respondents were asked a set of questions about their expectations for the timing of parenthood. Beginning in 1998, respondents who reached age 40 completed a one-time health module containing a seven-item portion of
Results
Table 1, Table 2 display descriptive statistics for the sample of mothers who expected children. On average, women in the sample had their first child just before turning 25 years of age, which was 1.5 years later than expected. These averages, however, mask a great deal of heterogeneity in age at first birth, timing expectations, and deviations from timing expectations.
As shown in Table 2, there was a great deal of variation in age at first birth. 25.1% of the sample had their first child
Discussion
The analyses provide substantial support for the central hypothesis that mistiming of first births, both early and late, account for the curvilinear relationship between age at first birth and psychological distress. Although women’s physical health, family formation, and socioeconomic status had some effect on the curvilinear relationship between age at first birth and depressive symptoms, the inclusion of measures for off-time deviations of first birth reduced the curvilinear effect of age at
Conclusion
Researchers know that mistimed births are problematic for mental health. Yet, the mental health consequences of birth mistiming had never been considered as a possible explanation for the association of age at first birth with mental health. The results of this study suggest that a primary reason young and older ages at first birth among women are related to higher levels of depressive symptoms is that they are likely to be off-time, and this is especially true for first births that occur at
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the American Sociological Association (ASA) Meetings and received the 2010 Graduate Student Paper Award from the ASA section on Aging and the Life Course. The author would like to thank Kristi Williams and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments in producing this article.
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