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When I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter, Sophie, I was weeks away from turning 29. I remember thinking how old that was in comparison to my mom, who?d had my older brother at 26, and my grandma, who?d had my mom at 22. But when I announced our impending bundle of joy, so many of my work friends were totally surprised and said, ?Wow, you?re going to be such a young mom!? I remember being dumbfounded by that statement, because at some point in the not-so-distant past, 29 was considered downright ancient.
And while I wasn?t exactly thinking about my career?more about my potential for fertility challenges, and needing to have age on my side?I certainly thought, ?Okay, so hopefully I?ll have two in relatively quick succession and can then refocus on my career. I?ll be able to deal with any lost promotions and missed salary bumps at that point.? Well, it turns out I was technically kind of wrong, at least according to a new study out of Washington University in St. Louis, which says women who have their first baby at 30 or younger are more likely to have lower lifetime incomes than women who have their first child at 31 or later. To estimate how a woman?s age at the birth of her first child impacts her lifetime earnings, the researchers analyzed a slate of data, including work experience and birth statistics, of nearly 1.6 million Danish women ages 25-60, from 1995 to 2009. Education was factored into the research and uncovered the starkest res...