Have children earlier, reduce your breast cancer risk?

Deciding when to have children is, first and foremost, a very personal choice of course, there are no rights and wrongs! But there are advantages both to having children earlier in life, and later in life. Did you know that having children earlier in life, before 25 years of age, reduces the risk of breast cancer for mothers? A new study, published in the European Journal of Gynecology and Oncology, found that those women who had kids before they reached 25 had their odds of developing breast cancer later in life reduced by half! That's pretty neat, isn't it?

A research team from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York looked at data from 661 women who had breast cancer as well as 696 women in a control group, that did not have breast cancer. This group received biopsies to determine whether they had any benign tissue in their breasts. Some medical professionals have a theory that pregnancy matures breast tissue, and that breasts that "mature" earlier are less likely to develop cancer later on in life. I'm not sure about this, an whether the reduced risk might have more to do with breastfeeding than with pregnancy itself. I wonder if the research team looked at the breastfeeding statistics of women in both groups? That would make for some interesting information, especially because it is already known that breastfeeding does reduce breast cancer by 26 percent, according to some studies.

What do you think? Would information that having children before your 25th birthday convince you to have children earlier? If you had children later in life, does that mean that you are now more worried about developing breast cancer? Do you go for regular check-ups? Do you self-check your breasts? We'd love to hear about your experiences! You might also be interested in checking out what we wrote about early pregnancy symptoms while breastfeeding. For more about young mothers, see: UK schools to run prenatal clinics?