Letter: Maternal matter

Sir: Angela Lambert's view (10 August) that women are now going back to having babies younger belies the facts - women, as statistics show, particularly in the upper socio-economic levels, are choosing to have their children later in life. They are the real benefactors of the women's movement and it is not until their children, having been born over the past 10 years or so, have grown up and chosen their own time to bear children that we will be able see whether this is a temporary or permanent blip on the statistics chart.

It is no surprise that her generation's children are aping their role models, their own mothers, who married and had children young. But she is at least half a generation adrift when it comes to making generalisations on behalf of the rest of us.

Yours faithfully,

LYNN DAVIS

Sandwich, Kent