Katie Melua, 38, feared she would never have a family, two months after welcoming her son Sandro

The majority of women in England and Wales no longer have a child before the age of 30, official figures show for the first time.

An Office for National Statistics (ONS) report found that 50.1 percent of women born in 1990 did not have children before their 30th birthday.

It is the first time that there are more childless women than mothers under 30 since records began dating back to 1920.

By way of comparison, a third of women born in that decade had not had a child by the age of 30.

Women born in the 1940s were more likely to have had at least one child by that milestone (82 percent).

But since then there has been a long-term trend of people choosing to have children later in life and reduce family size, the ONS said.

The most common age to have a child now is 31, according to ONS estimates based on the most recent data, compared with 22 among those born in the late 1940s.

The ONS data also shows that the average number of children a woman has had by age 30 has been falling since 1971, when it stood at 1.89.

The proportion of women reaching 30 without children has been steadily increasing since the late 1970s, when around one fifth were childless.

That proportion increased dramatically in the decade that followed. By 1980, 24 percent of women in their 30s were childless, rising to 37 percent in 1990.

By the turn of the century, about 43 percent of women had a child before their 30th birthday. And last year it passed the 50 percent mark for the first time.

Amanda Sharfman, an ONS statistician, said: “We continue to see childbearing backlog, with women born in 1990 becoming the first cohort in which half of women do not have children before their 30th birthday.” .

Childlessness levels at age 30 have risen steadily from a low of 18 percent for women born in 1941.

“Lower fertility levels in those currently in their 20s indicate that this trend is likely to continue.”

At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of women who never have children.

The report found that 18 percent of 45-year-old women were childless by 2020.

Modern women of all ages are also choosing to have smaller families.

Mothers have, on average, 1.92 children now, which is less than 2.08 for their mothers’ generation.

Two-child families remain the most common family size (37%), however this is a decline in the proportion of those with two children compared to their mothers’ generation born in 1949 (44%).

Ms Sharfman said: “The average number of children born to a woman has been less than two for women born since the late 1950s.”

“While two-child families remain the most common, women who have recently finished having children are more likely than their mothers’ generation to have one or no children at all.”

The ONS said: “While the average family size has declined, two-child families remain the most common family size in both generations, with 37 per cent of women born in 1975 and 44 per cent of the born in 1949 with two children.

“For those born in 1975, 27 percent had three or more children and 17 percent had only one child, compared to 30 percent and 13 percent, respectively, for their mothers’ generation.”