Rorinthas wrote:
Wouldn't waiting to have kids raise or balance out the median age or haven't we reached that point yet.
Not necessarily, depending on quantities. During the 90s, vast quantities of women were putting off having children.
If you have a set that looks like this: {1, 3, 15, 42, 45, 45, 45}
The median is 42
The mean is 28
The mode is 45
All three numbers are "averages."
The median is simply the number right smack in the middle of the set once you arrange them in order of value. A few young pregnancy ages can bring the mean down (or up) in a much more pronounced manner than the median. Now, the median does drop to 15 if I chuck another single-digit number into the set. However, in a dataset such as pregnant women in the United States, you have several million entries in the 25-30 range. A few high or low values do not have such an impact on either form of average. Any way you slice it, calculations for determining an "average" age for bearing children are dominated by the habits of grown, adult women. Teenage pregnancies are statistical outliers.
This isn't to say that teenage pregnancy doesn't happen, that there aren't large numbers of them, or that they aren't a problem - just that the statement that women are having children at younger and younger ages is misleading. While it is true that the average age for pregnancy is down compared to ten years ago, there are other factors. A great many women put off children for a career, only to find that they couldn't conceive once they finally decided to have kids. You may recall that infertility was a really big deal over the last decade? Birth defects became more common as women attempted to have children after they had already used up most of their "good eggs." As a result, more young couples in their early to mid twenties decided to have children now rather than waiting. In short, the average age of childbirth is down largely because of mature and responsible adult decisions, rather than irresponsible adolescent behavior.
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