GT Writing Task 2 / Essay Sample # 181
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Write about the following topic:
More and more women now prefer to have children later in life. What are the causes that prompt couples to delay parenthood? What are the implications of this trend?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Model Answer:
The trend of parenthood at a later stage has become increasingly popular today. This essay will delve deep in to find out the real causes of this phenomenon and then delineate the consequence of the vogue.
There are several factors behind this trend. For a start, education is one of the root causes that persuades women to delay motherhood. Knowledge, both soft and hard skills, and other experiences obtained from education can significantly boost a women’s level of employability. As a result, it becomes a general trend that the more women get the education and enter the professional world, the more they marry and commence having children later in life. Aside from education, the availability of reliable contraception offers women the means to delay giving childbirth. Birth control pill, for example, is used to delay having children.
However, delayed motherhood confers positive impacts on individuals, families and societies as a whole. For a woman, delaying giving childbirth allows women to establish firmly herself in her career, and therefore can earn significantly higher salaries than their counterparts. Having more money, in turn, raises the family’s socio-economic status. Besides ensuring a family’s upward social mobility, women who delay starting having babies can transform the culture of work in general. Securing an advanced position of authority at work, they have the power to set policies such as allowing flexible work schedules or providing paid maternity and paternity leave.
On the other hand, there are downsides of it also. It proves difficult to upbringing children for an older mother that she often cannot communicate with her child owing to a generation gap despite having stable socioeconomic status or knowledge and huge experience. Apart from this, older women pose higher risks of miscarriages and other complications to pregnancy. In consequence, the birth rate will decline and thereby shrinking the future workforce.
To conclude, the growing popular vogue of giving childbirth at a later age in life stems from various factors. The trend, however, has myriad advantages to weigh against the potential risks and therefore reshaping our society in a more positive way.