Best Age to Raise Kids? Older Parents Say 30s

Most people who have their first child after the age of 40 think the best time to have kids is five to 10 years earlier, a small new study suggests.

The study participants maintained that older parenting has more advantages than disadvantages, but when they were asked about the "optimal age for parenting," 80 percent of the women and 70 percent of the men said it was in the 30s, and many of them indicated that it was only their circumstances that kept them from becoming parents then.

The University of California, San Francisco, study was limited to 107 people, most of them white, married and with above-average incomes. The authors said future research should include a more diverse group and should follow up on the older parents once their children reach the teens.