In New Zealand it has been well documented that women of Māori ethnicity are more likely to become parents at an earlier age than non-Māori women (Dickson et al. 2000, Woodward et al. 2001, Mantell et al. 2004, Statistics New Zealand 2004, Khawaja et al. 2006). For example, rates of teen pregnancy among young Māori are approximately four times higher those that of their non-Māori peers (Dickson et al. 2000, Bean 2005, Statistics New Zealand 2005, Ministry of Social Development 2008b). Between the years 2001 and 2003 half of all Māori women who gave birth were under the age of 26, with the 20 to 24 years age group having a fertility rate 2.7 times that of non-Māori women. Furthermore, data show that the median age of childbirth in 2003 was 26.2 years for Māori women and 30.1 years for non-Māori women (Ministry of Social Development 2008a, 2008b; Statistics New Zealand 2005, 2008). In addition, while non-Māori women over the past few decades have increasingly chosen to delay reproduction, a trend seen in other industrialised nations, there has been no increase in childbearing among Māori women over the age of 30 (Bean 2005, Ministry of Social Development 2008b).