Schiffer with her daughter

London, April 25: The ideal age for a woman to have her first baby is 34, according to controversial research.

A study by John Mirowsky, from the University of Texas, of more than 2,200 women found that waiting to start a family is not a bad idea, a conclusion which will relieve many working women who agonise about when to have a baby. Celebrity mum Claudia Schiffer had her first child when 32 and another at the age of 34.

?Those women, and I see a lot of them in the classroom, they are really concerned about when it is best to start a family. I hope this will be just one piece of information they can use in making decisions about their own lives,? he said.

While women in their early 20s are more fertile and ?biologically fit?, older mothers tend to be more mature and engage in less risky behaviour, having become more settled educationally, financially and emotionally, he said. ?At any age, a woman who had her first child at 34 is likely to be, in health terms, 14 years younger than a woman who gave birth at 18,? he said.