Experiencing reproductive problems such as infertility and miscarriage becomes more common with age and can be a barrier to having children, especially if first births are delayed. This module on the first reproductive experience aims to enhance our understanding of women’s and men’s reproductive realities today. Collecting survey items on the first reproductive experience enables researchers to identify the reproductive issues women and men face, the ways in which they respond or tackle these challenges including infertility treatments, and the consequences for different aspects of their lives, including mental health, relationship stability and family size. It also allows researchers to chart the age at which people start trying to have a child and to quantify the incidence of reproductive difficulty in different settings. Finally, by asking about the age at or time between events (trying, conceiving, giving birth), it is possible to estimate success rates according to the age at which the person first tried to conceive a child, an important contribution to human reproduction research for which we currently lack data. Adding a module on the first reproductive experience to cross-sectional and panel family surveys that already contain basic information on fertility will help to integrate the studies of reproductive and demographic events and fill important gaps in knowledge about reproductive health in countries with later fertility.