Advanced Maternal Age and the Continuation of Employment of Women at Birth

: Focus on the Continued Employment of Women Pregnant with Their First Child

Abstract

Although the need for women in Japan to continue employment has long been recognized, many women continue to leave jobs before and after giving birth for the first time. Despite the high number of quits resulting from first childbirths, the conditions of women who continue to work during the perinatal period have not been adequately explored in previous studies.

In this paper, we focus on the continued employment of women pregnant with their first child. We use the results of a questionnaire survey of mothers in the second trimester ; the survey was conducted at a mother’s class in Osaka from November 2014 to February 2015.

According to Vital Statistics in Japan-Trends up to 2016, the average age of mothers in Japan having a first child in 2016 was 30.7, 5.0 years higher than in 1975. With more people starting to have children later in life, an increasing number of couples have to rely on fertility treatments to conceive. While giving attention to the factors contributing to later childbirth, we examine the effect of advanced maternal age on women’s employment during the perinatal period.