Table 1.

Studies of factors affecting childbearing delayed from 2005 to 2022

Authors and Publication Years	Type of Study	Sample Size	Place of Study	Data-Gathering Tools	Results
Williamson et al., 2014[26]	Experimental	69 young childless female students	Saskatchewan	Questionnaire	Fertility knowledge in the intervention group where young women received brief fertility information was significantly higher than in the control group where they received brief information about alcohol. The women in the intervention group reported being less intent on delaying childbearing than was the control group
Willett et al.,2010[27]	Cross-Sectional	424 residents (women and men)	America	Questionnaire	Resident women, despite having more accurate knowledge of age-related fertility, were still intent on delaying childbearing; their most important reason was perceived threat and concern about extended residency training
de la Rica & Iza, 2005[28]	Cross-Sectional	130,000 adults aged 16 and over (data from 12 European countries)	Spain	Questionnaire	Fixed-term employment contracts compared to indefinite contracts causing delayed motherhood for all childless women
Bretherick et al.,2010[29]	Quantitative	360 Canadian undergraduate women	Canada	Questionnaire	While most students were aware of fertility decline with increasing age, significantly overestimated the odds of pregnancy at all ages and were unaware of the high rate of fertility decline with age.
Cooke et al., 2012[30]	Quantitative	18 Women aged 35 and over	United Kingdom	semi-structured interview	Three main themes that emerged from all participant groups were; “within or beyond control,” “the chapters of life,” and “the need to know”
Lebano & Jamieson, 2020[21]	Qualitative	35 childless women Italian and Spanish aged 30 to 35 years	Italy and Spain	Interview	Reasons for postponing childbearing included: “taking time” to achieve other goals or “stopping” to change the circumstances, optimism about the capacity to conceive, flexible norms about the “right age,” long-term dependence on one’s parents, the normative prominence of “perfect mothers” and family-unfriendly, gender-unequal workplaces.
Tough et al. 2007[31]	Mixed Methods	1,006 women and 500 men (20–45-year-old) without children	Canada	Focus groups (women), interviews (men) and questionnaire	Four main factors were determined for delaying childbearing: financial security, partner’s suitability for parental interest or desire to have children, and partner’s interest or desire to have children
Benzies et al.,2006[25]	Qualitative	45 Canadian women aged 20 to 48	Canada	Focus groups and individual telephone interviews	Women felt that the current social expectation for personal independence before childbearing realized on a late motherhood schedule was more acceptable and normal.
Kearney & White, 2016[32]	Mixed method	358 Australian women aged 18–30 years	Australia	Focus group and Questionnaire	Three psychosocial factors: attitude, pressure from others, and perceived self-confidence have a significant role as predictors of women’s intentions to delay childbearing, have strong accounting for 59% of the total variance
Behboudi-Gandevani et al., 2015[6]	Qualitative	23 women aged under 30	Iran	Semi-Structured Interviews	Three main themes and nine subthemes emerged in the study: “personal preference” (physical and mental readiness, stable relationship, and socioeconomic stability),” “perceived beliefs about the delay in childbearing” (attitudes toward childbearing, underestimation risks, gender beliefs, and concerns about the impact of childbearing on life) and “social support” (social acceptability, social facilities)
Mills et al. 2011[10]	Review	139 Articles	America	Library research	The main reasons for postponing the first child: access to effective contraceptive methods, the extended women’s education, participation in the labor market and normative and value changes (including higher acceptance of childlessness), and lower levels of gender equality, delayed and more unstable partnerships, low availability and high costs of housing, Lack of family support policies and economic uncertainty and precarious forms of employment.
Cooke et al. 2010[33]	Meta-synthesis	Twelve papers	United Kingdom	Library research	Women who have delayed childbearing are divided into three groups: those who think they have enough information but may not have realized the dangers for themselves. Women who are unaware and become aware of the danger only when they are either pregnant or going to the clinic for infertility and the third group who are fully aware but still decide to delay childbearing
Brauner Otto et al. 2018[23]	Quantitative	Young men and women from age 18 until age 28, an analytic sample of 3,545 person-year observations from 1,465 respondents	America	Observation of data, from the 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2011 waves of the Transition to Adulthood (TA) study in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)	Men and women with lower incomes, lower education, and more concerned about their future careers were unsure whether to have children. Among those who expect to have children, those with higher education and more worries expect to have children later
Adachi et al.,2020[34]	Cross-Sectional	388 couples seeking fertility treatment (219 women and 169 men)	Japan	Questionnaire	The three main reasons for delay in childbearing in women were “establishing relations,” “health problems,” and “financial security,” and in men, the reasons were “establishing relations,” “financial security,” and “lack of awareness of fertility””
Smith, 2020[35]	Qualitative	200 Married couples	Nigeria	Interview and observation	For Nigerian men, the main reason for delaying marriage and parenting is worrying about the economic burden and changing expectations. Nigerian men see having money as the basis for successful reproduction
Tavares, 2016[36]	Quantitative	5,754 women under 80	Italy	interview	From the five personality traits studied (the big five), openness is the most influential personality trait in terms of reproductive behavior, and higher levels of openness delay childbearing. The relation between openness and the time of the first childbirth is partly mediated by education
Kreyenfeld, 2010[9]	Quantitative	5,998 female respondents of childbearing age (aged 15–44)	Germany	Interview	More educated women postpone their parenthood when faced with job insecurity, but women with lower levels of education often respond by becoming mothers