Female age at first pregnancy and work task: finding correlation and evolution over the past two decades in a Sicilian province

Abstract

Background: the entrance of women in the workforce, due to a their growing cultural and, accordingly, social commitment, changed many aspects of their lives; the research or the maintenance of a job, especially during periods of severe economic crisis, leads to a delay of many physiological stage, maternity at first. The aim of this study is to verify and, if it really happened, to quantify an increasing age of first-time mothers in a sample of mothers in the province of Agrigento in the last 20 years, correlating any positive response to the work task performed. Material and Methods: we have enrolled all primiparous women who gave birth in a hospital in the province of Agrigento, from January 1993 to December 2012; through retrospective analysis of medical records, prepared during hospitalization, we have assessed the following parameters: a history (family, physiological, pathological remote and proximate, pharmacological and work), nationality, age at first birth, the task being performed, mode of delivery, days of hospitalization and possible fetal pathologies occuring in newborns. Then we have processed statistically data calculating mean, median, range and standard deviation. To assess statistical significance of the difference in the average age of the first pregnancy by professional category and decade, it was used the two-way anova test. Results: the results show an overall increase in age of first-time mothers, especially in women workers with high profile professional tasks. Discussion: the increase in the age at first pregnancy can’t be considered a positive event, because of the increasing risk of complications and maternal-fetal pathologies that is directly proportional to aging.