Eurostat · 37 countries · 2024
Europe agrees about this more than about anything else measured here.
29.9mother's age at first child · European Union · 2024
From 26.4 in Moldova to 31.9 in Italy: the whole continent fits inside 5.5 years. Every other figure on this site spreads wider.
This is the mother's age. Eurostat publishes no figure for fathers here, so the page says mothers where it means mothers rather than writing "parents" over a gap in the data.
The map
Where first children come earliest
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Your turn
How old were you?
Enter your age when your first child was born.
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The figure is where the middle of a cohort sits, not a schedule. It also moves with who has children at all: a country where fewer people become parents can show an older average without anyone changing their plans.
Every country
All 39 countries, youngest to oldest
Sort by any column. This dataset covers mothers only, so the sex columns are empty.
| Trend 1960–2024, with breaks | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ukraine 2019 | 25.6 | — | — | — | Trend 2006 to 2019. |
| Montenegro 2009 | 26.3 | — | — | — | Trend 2005 to 2009. |
| Moldova | 26.4 | — | — | — | Trend 2006 to 2024. |
| Bulgaria | 26.9 | — | — | — | Trend 1995 to 2024. |
| Georgia | 26.9 | — | — | — | Trend 2006 to 2024. |
| Romania | 27.2 | — | — | — | Trend 1995 to 2024. |
| Türkiye | 27.3 | — | — | — | Trend 2018 to 2024. |
| Slovakia | 27.4 | — | — | — | Trend 1999 to 2024. |
| Albania | 27.5 | — | — | — | Trend 2013 to 2024. |
| North Macedonia | 27.8 | — | — | — | Trend 1997 to 2024. Series breaks in 2021, 2022. |
| Latvia | 28.1 | — | — | — | Trend 2000 to 2024. |
| Serbia | 28.5 | — | — | — | Trend 2000 to 2024. Series breaks in 2011, 2022, 2023. |
| Lithuania | 28.7 | — | — | — | Trend 1994 to 2024. |
| Poland | 28.7 | — | — | — | Trend 1995 to 2024. Series breaks in 2000, 2010, 2022. |
| Estonia | 28.9 | — | — | — | Trend 1989 to 2024. Series breaks in 2015. |
| Iceland | 28.9 | — | — | — | Trend 1992 to 2024. |
| Czechia | 29.0 | — | — | — | Trend 1995 to 2024. Series breaks in 2020. |
| Hungary | 29.0 | — | — | — | Trend 1994 to 2024. Series breaks in 2012. |
| Slovenia | 29.1 | — | — | — | Trend 1995 to 2024. |
| France | 29.3 | — | — | — | Trend 1998 to 2024. Series breaks in 2014. |
| Croatia | 29.5 | — | — | — | Trend 2001 to 2024. |
| Belgium | 29.6 | — | — | — | Trend 1989 to 2024. Series breaks in 2011. |
| Germany | 29.9 | — | — | — | Trend 2009 to 2024. Series breaks in 2011, 2023. |
| Malta | 29.9 | — | — | — | Trend 2007 to 2024. |
| Austria | 30.0 | — | — | — | Trend 1984 to 2024. |
| Finland | 30.0 | — | — | — | Trend 1990 to 2024. |
| Cyprus | 30.1 | — | — | — | Trend 1998 to 2024. |
| Sweden | 30.2 | — | — | — | Trend 1990 to 2024. |
| Norway | 30.2 | — | — | — | Trend 1991 to 2024. |
| Denmark | 30.3 | — | — | — | Trend 1968 to 2024. |
| Portugal | 30.3 | — | — | — | Trend 1990 to 2024. |
| Netherlands | 30.5 | — | — | — | Trend 1992 to 2024. |
| Ireland | 31.2 | — | — | — | Trend 1991 to 2024. |
| Greece | 31.2 | — | — | — | Trend 1992 to 2024. Series breaks in 2021. |
| Liechtenstein | 31.3 | — | — | — | Trend 2022 to 2024. |
| Switzerland | 31.3 | — | — | — | Trend 2006 to 2024. Series breaks in 2011. |
| Spain | 31.5 | — | — | — | Trend 1985 to 2024. |
| Luxembourg | 31.6 | — | — | — | Trend 2006 to 2024. Series breaks in 2012, 2017. |
| Italy | 31.9 | — | — | — | Trend 2003 to 2024. Series breaks in 2018, 2019. |
The gap is men minus women, so a positive number means women reach the midpoint earlier. A year next to a country means Eurostat has no 2024 figure for it, and the row shows that year instead. Trend lines are not drawn across series breaks (the small notches): in 2023 the EU Labour Force Survey was reorganized, and 2 of 39 countries carry a break there.
What the numbers say
The tightest spread on the site
separates the youngest country from the oldest — Moldova at 26.4 and Italy at 31.9. For comparison, the age at which half of young people have left home spreads more than twice as wide.
Mothers only
Eurostat publishes no equivalent figure for fathers in this dataset, so there is no comparison to make and none is shown.
The large economies land close together at Poland 28.7, France 29.3, Germany 29.9, Netherlands 30.5, Spain 31.5, Italy 31.9, and the youngest countries sit in the east and south-east. A continent that disagrees by ten years about leaving home disagrees by about five about this.
Method
How this is measured
Published by Eurostat. Nothing here is estimated on top of what they publish.
- What the figure is
- The mean age of the mother at the birth of her first child, from Eurostat's fertility indicators, derived from national birth registers.
- What it is not
- It is not the age of fathers, not the age at any birth, and not a distribution. One number per country means no percentile.
- Coverage
- 37 countries have a figure for 2024. Ukraine (2019), Montenegro (2009) stopped reporting earlier and are shown at their most recent year, hatched on the map and labelled in the table. The United States, Canada and Australia are not in this dataset.
- Series breaks
- Eurostat flags a break in 2023, in or just before the latest year, so no comparison with the past is shown on this page. A figure that looks like a trend across a break is worse than no trend at all.
- Dataset Eurostat
demo_find, Fertility indicators - Series 1960 to 2024
- Last updated by Eurostat 2026-09-30
- Retrieved 2026-10-24
- DOI10.2908/DEMO_FIND
- Eurostat metadataexplanatory texts
Licence: Eurostat data may be reused, including commercially, with attribution. How we handle data is on the method page.