It’s not new but it’s truer than ever — more and more young American couples are waiting later and later to start a family and have their first baby.

Fifty-two percent of college graduate first-time mothers are now thirty or older — not just out of high school, not just out of college, but well into life and jobs and relationships and expectations.

Then come the kids. Like an earthquake — of course.

So what does it mean for budgets and dreams and lives and marriages to launch so late?

This hour, On Point: starting families after thirty — and what postponed parenthood means for American marriage.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia.

Pamela Jordan, a professor in the department of Family and Child Nursing at the University of Washington, she is creator of the Becoming Parents Program.

Amelia Tyagi, co-author, with Elizabeth Warren, of “All Your Worth: The Life-Time Money Plan” and “The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke.”

Julie Diop, On Point producer.