In some countries around the world men and women are having children later in life. What are the reasons for this development? What are the effects on society and family life?
Basic Idea Plan
| Reason one for this development | University and career ladder |
| Reason two for this development | Higher cost of living |
| Effect on society | Declining birth rate-too many pensioners |
| Effect on family | Stability and maturity of parents. |
Band 9 Model Answer
In some countries around the world men and women are having children later in life. What are the reasons for this development? What are the effects on society and family life?
In many developed countries, couples are choosing to start a family at an older age than they used to. This essay will outline a couple of the main causes of this change and will examine the consequences for society and families.
It is undeniable that millennials are choosing to prioritise their university education and climbing the career ladder. As a result, this has possibly reduced the importance of having children in their twenties. To illustrate this point, many graduates have spent their twenties completing further education courses and trying to progress to a managerial position. Another factor behind the delay in having children is related to the high cost of living. This is more notable in developed countries where it can take several years to save for a house deposit . This explains why many couples prefer to delay having children until they feel ready to provide for them.
Children being born later has resulted in some substantial changes in society especially the falling birth rate. This may create a situation in which the number of senior citizens could outnumber workers. If this issue is not resolved, governments could be faced with a challenging situation to pay for pensioners retirement costs without the benefit of taxpayers contributions. Despite the aforementioned societal issue, there is a clear benefit for family life that parents have more life experience when raising children. Having babies at an older age may allow more stability for their offspring because their parents should be more adept at handling a variety of situations.
To sum up, there is no doubt that many millennials are placing more importance on becoming successful as an individual first and this is contributing to them having children in their thirties or later. This situation is posing problems for governments in many countries including dealing with a falling birth rate, on the other hand, there are some potential benefits for the future of family relations.
Exercise 1
Highlight all words related to people. You will notice that the word people is not used in the essay. This makes the essay more formal and you should aim to learn how to refer to people in different ways.