FOI reference: FOI-2025-2909
You asked
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information:
- Of the total number of live births recorded in the UK (or separately for England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland if UK-wide data is not centrally held) for each of the past five years,
a. how many were to first-time mothers (i.e., women who had not previously had a live birth)?
b. how many were to first-time parents (if this data is available for both mothers and fathers/partners)?
If possible, I would appreciate a breakdown of this data by year and region.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for the production of births statistics for England and Wales; this is driven by information collected from the birth certificate at registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively
We have published the annual number of births for England and Wales split by number of previous live births within tables 4 and 7 of the Births in England and Wales: birth registrations. These tables are in a new format for 2024 and 2023 data, but the data are available in table 5 of the Births by parents' characteristics for the years 2020 to 2022. We are still in the data collection process for births registered in 2025.
These tables do not provide a regional breakdown, so may not fully meet your needs. However, we are able to create a custom output. Information on live births by parity by region and year, along with other special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order, subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs in line with our charging policy.
If you are interested in making a bespoke request, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk for further information.
As the information requested is reasonably accessible via another route, the exempt found under Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies.
Unfortunately, we do not hold any data on the number of first-time fathers or partners as this is information not collected.