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Year
Changes of Mothers’ Age at Childbirth
Distribution of mothers’ age (%) Average age
bearing first child
– 19 20 – 24 25 – 29 30 – 34 35 – 39 40 +
1975 0.8 25.2 53.4 16.8 3.3 0.5 25.7
1985 1.2 17.3 47.7 26.6 6.5 0.6 26.7
1995 1.4 16.3 41.5 31.3 8.4 1.1 27.5
2000 1.7 13.6 39.5 33.3 10.6 1.3 28.0
2007 1.4 11.6 29.7 37.9 17.1 2.3 29.4
Table 2: Changes of Mothers’ Age at Childbirth
Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan. 155
In 2009, according to the National Social Security and Population Research
Centre, a third of all women in the country’s thirty-to-thirty-four years of
age bracket were also still virgins. 156
This is extraordinary given the
expectations noted only a decade ago by Tipton that Japanese girls were to
marry and conceive a first child by their mid twenties.
As early as 1996, Yasuko Aobuchi wrote:
Women’s view on marriage has drastically changed. Marriage used to be the goal
of life for women, and those who remained single were suspected of having some
unknown defects or disadvantages, which prevented them from getting married.
Sometimes they were called “high misses” or “old misses”, which meant
“dropouts” in the marriage race. But nowadays 40% of women in the age group of
25 – 30 remain single, and 14% are still unmarried in the 30 – 35 year age group.
They are not “left on the shelf”. They remain single by choice. The reasons they
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