The Average Age at Conception for Men & Women Over the Past 250,000 Years

The age gap between mothers and fathers has narrowed over the course of human evolution, according to evolutionary biologists.

A generation's lifespan can reveal a lot about the biology and social structure of humans. With a new technique they devised utilizing DNA mutations, researchers at Indiana University can now ascertain the typical age at which women and men gave birth throughout the course of human evolution. The study¹, which was released in Science Advances, claims that the average age at which humans gave birth to offspring over the past 250,000 years was 26.9.

The average age difference between fathers and mothers has also decreased over the previous 5,000 years, with women' ages now averaging 26.4 years according to the study's most current estimates. Moreover, fathers have consistently been older than mothers, who are on average 23.2 years old.

Mothers bearing children at older ages appears to be the main cause of the gap closing. The researchers discovered that parental age has not increased constantly over time, and may have even decreased around 10,000 years ago due to population growth occurring at the same time as the development of civilization, with the exception of the recent increase in mother age at childbirth.

Graphs showing the average age at conception for men (blue) versus women (red) over the past 250,000 years. Images courtesy of the Hahn Lab.