According to the Long Life Family Study (LLFS), a collaborative research piece conducted by Columbia University, women who have children after the age of 33 have a higher chance of living to the top fifth percentile compared to those who have children before the age of 29.
The study came to this conclusion after analysing the length of women’s telomeres: the caps at the end of each strand of our DNA that protects our chromosomes. Telomeres, as reported by SBS, are parts of human cells that affect how cells age.
What this study’s findings suggest is that those women who had children after the age of 33 had longer telomeres than those who had children in their twenties.
“With longevity and the ability to bear children at an older age associated with longer telomere length, this study suggests that a higher maternal age of successful child bearing may be a marker of healthy aging,” Dr JoAnn Pinkerton, the North American Menopause Society executive director states.
However, this new research discovery comes up against numerous reports having a child later in life can bring on a myriad of health issues, including the higher probability of developing breast cancer than those who choose not to have a child when they’re older than 35.
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And it is these factors, plus other social and personal elements, that Dr Pinkerton says that “may not have any relation to either a woman’s ability to bear children at later ages, longevity, or telomere length.”
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