Completing the Pathway: The Transition to First Birth

Abstract

Following the traditional order of life course events in MENA countries, this chapter discusses the timing and determinants of motherhood. In Chapter 3, we highlighted the striking decline in fertility, maternal mortality, and infant mortality rates in MENA countries during the last two decades. The decline in fertility rates is largely due to delay of childbirth. In line with the increasing age at first marriage, the average age of transition to motherhood has increased in MENA countries more than in other developing regions of the world (Lloyd et al., 2005). However, the previous chapters showed that early childbirth is still experienced by a non-negligible proportion of women at younger ages, even before leaving education and before entering the labor market. Thus, it can be expected that the general trend towards delayed childbirth, in combination with the non-negligible incidence of teenage childbirth, has been accompanied by an increasing social differentiation in patterns of first childbirth within MENA societies.