Anastasia de Waal, 2011

A significant fall in teenage pregnancy rates suggests that Labour's teenage pregnancy strategy has had an impact. The number of teenage conceptions has not only seen a year-on-year decline, the pregnancy rate amongst teens is currently at its lowest since the early 1980s. This is a hugely positive downward trend: teenage pregnancy is strongly linked to a web of both prior problems (from dysfunctional home-lives to educational underperformance) and detrimental outcomes for parent and child. But, there is still a long way to go. Even with a decline in teen conceptions, we continue to top the international league tables. A still large number of girls face either terminations or parenthood, at a very young age.

These latest ONS figures also indicate that right across the board the age of first pregnancy is getting later. Whilst childbearing used to start in our twenties, today women are increasingly waiting until their thirties. This postponement is largely to do with women's far greater involvement in the labour force. For middle and upper-income background women in particular, babies now frequently follow a decade of higher education and career development. Another key contributor to current childbearing trends is that many couples feel unable to cope with the cost of raising a child until they have reached a higher earning capacity.

As for the impact of older first motherhood, the most significant is the shrinking of the fertility 'window'. Increasingly smaller families in the UK today connect directly to the number of years women have in which to conceive. Notably, the number of over-35 first births is on the up. Higher risks with older pregnancy inevitably also contribute to the proportions of women who find themselves unable to have children. As such the number of single-child and childless families are set to continue rising.