Age differences within couples are of considerable importance for the power relations between partners. These age differences become particularly relevant when couples transition to having a(nother) child, as such an event often results in a renegotiation of the gendered division of labor. Surprisingly, the literature on female empowerment and fertility postponement has so far paid little attention to parental age differences. This paper makes use of a new data set to present a demographic analysis of trends in parental age differences at childbirth in 15 high-income countries, covering a period in which all of these countries experienced changes in gender relations and fertility postponement. The general trends in rising mean ages at childbirth have evolved quite similarly among men and women. However, we demonstrate that these similarities hide previously unexplored and highly gendered disparities in parental age differences. Older mothers report much smaller mean parental age differences than younger mothers, and this age pattern among mothers has further polarized over time. By contrast, older fathers report larger parental age differences than younger fathers, while the disparities by age among fathers have not changed much over time. We discuss the relevance of our findings at both the individual and the societal level.

中文翻译：

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高收入国家父母年龄差异的变化：见解和启示

夫妻之间的年龄差异对于伴侣之间的权力关系非常重要。当夫妇过渡到生育（另一个）孩子时，这些年龄差异变得尤为重要，因为这种事件通常会导致性别分工的重新谈判。令人惊讶的是，迄今为止，有关女性赋权和推迟生育的文献很少关注父母的年龄差异。本文利用新的数据集对 15 个高收入国家的父母生育年龄差异趋势进行了人口统计分析，涵盖了所有这些国家都经历了性别关系变化和生育推迟的时期。男性和女性平均生育年龄上升的总体趋势非常相似。然而，我们证明这些相似之处隐藏了以前未曾探索过的父母年龄差异的高度性别差异。年长母亲的平均父母年龄差异比年轻母亲小得多，而且随着时间的推移，母亲的年龄模式进一步两极分化。相比之下，年长父亲的父母年龄差异比年轻父亲更大，而父亲之间的年龄差异并没有随着时间的推移而发生太大变化。我们讨论了我们的研究结果在个人和社会层面的相关性。