英1/5中年女性爲事業放棄生育

Childlessness has reached record levels among a generation of women wrestling with the pressures of careers, mortgages and rocky relationships.

One in five women are now reaching middle age without having had children, new official figures showed today.

The proportion of women who go without having a family has reached historic levels last seen in the generation born just after the First World War, whose peak childbearing years coincided with times of depression, another world war, and post-war austerity.

Now, analysts said, many women have chosen to put family second to careers that would have been out of reach of their mothers and grandmothers.

Others have delayed having children for too long either because they cannot face the high costs or because they are uncertain about the commitment of live-in male partners.

The figures from the Office for National Statistics, prepared from birth registration records and large-scale household surveys covering many years, showed that one in five of the generation of women born in 1964 have not had children.

The 1964 generation have now reached the age of 46, at which they are officially counted as having completed their childbearing.

The 20 percent childlessness rate has been matched only by women born in 1920, who were teenagers during the depression of the Thirties, reached adulthood during World War Two when many men were away fighting and high numbers were killed, and who were 30 by the end of the austerity years that followed the war.

Women born later were part of the generation of baby-boomers whose birthrates reached record levels during the Fifties and Sixties. Only one in ten women born in 1945 was childless.

The ONS analysis said that 'the level of childlessness for women born in 1964 is at a 44-year high and comparable with that of women born in 1920.

On average, each woman who reached the age of 45 last year had 1.9 children, compared with 2.4 on average for their own mothers - the generation born in 1937.

Jill Kirby, director of the centre right think tank Centre for Policy Studies, said: 'There is increased pressure on women to be breadwinners and too often they have either had to postpone families or, sometimes, lose the opportunity to have children.'

這一代女性不僅要與事業、房貸和不穩定的情感關係等多重壓力做鬥爭，她們無子女的比例也達到了有史以來的最高水平。

今天新發布的官方數據顯示，五分之一英國女性現在已經人到中年，卻依然沒有孩子。

未成家女性的比例曾經在一戰後達到歷史最高點，因爲一戰後出生的那一代女性的生育高峯期正好趕上大蕭條時期、又一場世界大戰和戰後的艱苦歲月。

分析家稱，如今，許多女性優先選擇了事業，讓家庭退居二位，而且，她們所從事的職業在她們的母親和祖母所處的年代是女性無法企及的。

許多其他女性一直延後生育計劃是因爲她們無法面對高額開支，或是因爲她們不能確定同居男性伴侶的忠誠度。

來自英國國家統計局的數據表明，1964年出生的這一代女性有五分之一都沒有生育經歷。這些數據來自統計局的出生登記記錄和開展了許多年的大規模的家庭調查。

1964年出生的一代如今已經46歲了，官方認爲她們已經過了生育的年齡。

無子女的比率同樣高達20%的只有1920年出生的女性。那一代在上世紀30年代的大蕭條時期是青少年，剛成年時趕上二戰，許多男性都去參加戰鬥，有一大批人在戰爭中喪生，在戰後的艱苦時期結束時她們已經30歲了。

稍後出生的女性屬於嬰兒潮的一代，出生率在50年代和60年代達到了一個歷史高峯。1945年出生的女性只有十分之一是沒有孩子的。

國家統計局的分析報告稱“1964年出生的女性的無子女率達到了44年以來的最高水平，和1920年出生的女性的無子女率持平”。

去年每位滿45歲的女性平均生育孩子1.9個，而她們的母親——1937年出生的一代平均生育孩子2.4個。

政策研究中心的主任吉爾•柯比說：“女性賺錢養家的壓力增大了，她們經常被迫推遲生育計劃，有時甚至錯過了懷孕的機會。”政策研究中心是一箇中間偏右立場的智囊團。

Vocabulary:

wrestle with: 與……做鬥爭

rocky: difficult and not certain to continue or to be successful（困難的；難以維持的；不穩定的）

austerity: a situation when people do not have much money to spend because there are bad economic conditions （經濟的）緊縮；嚴格節制消費

live-in: a person who lives with their sexual partner but is not married to them （未婚同居者）