We have absorbed a familiar story about falling birth rates: People are having fewer children.
But averages can conceal profound differences. Imagine a country where women have, on average, two children. That could describe a society where most women become mothers and have two children, or one where half of women have four children and half have none. From the perspective of population size, these societies may look identical. But from the perspective of family life, social networks, and common life experiences, they are worlds apart.
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New research by Grant Bailey and me at the Institute for Family Studies suggests a consequential change is underway. Our findings show that fewer women in the United States are becoming mothers. Aggregate birth rates had obscured this decline in the transition to motherhood, and childlessness is projected to increase. Rising levels of childlessness are new. For years, lifetime childlessness, the share of women who reached age 45 without having given birth, was relatively stable and even decreased.
This stability in childlessness occurred even as other aspects of U.S. fertility changed. Fertility rates in the U.S. for teenagers and women in their 20s have been declining. Fertility rates for women in their early 30s were rising — they are now stable — and fertility rates for women over 35 continue to increase. The average age at which women give birth is rising.
Within this context, many researchers reasonably assumed that women were delaying rather than foregoing motherhood.
But our recent research has peeled back an additional layer behind these average fertility rates. The data show that more women are delaying motherhood, and fewer women are becoming mothers at all.
We examined not only birth rates by age, but also by birth order — specifically, first births, which measure the rate at which women without children become mothers.
We found that first-birth rates have been declining for teenagers and women in their early 20s, as well as women in their late 20s and early 30s. The first-birth rate for women ages 25-29 declined by 34% between 2010 and 2024.
Moreover, while the aggregate fertility rate for women 30-34 only declined by 3% between 2010 and 2023, the first-birth rate for women 30-34 plummeted by 29% — from 113 to 81 births per 1,000 childless women. Similarly, the aggregate fertility rate for women 35-39 increased between 2010 and 2024, but the first-birth rate for women 35-39 decreased.
In other words, fewer women are becoming mothers, and more women will reach the end of their reproductive years without children.
We can’t know for sure what the share of childlessness will be for a cohort until they reach the end of their reproductive years. However, our recent research looks at current trends in the transition to motherhood and shows that the share of women who reach age 45 without having given birth is almost certain to rise.
For it not to rise, trends in first-birth rates would have to dramatically reverse course and increase substantially. This is theoretically possible, but unlikely unless drastic change occurs in the near future.
Therefore, we are likely witnessing peak motherhood today. With each cohort, the share of women who become mothers will likely fall.
This matters well beyond the total fertility rate, with implications for family networks and intergenerational support, and it matters most because there will be more people who want to become parents but never will.
Critics may point out that the share of people who intend to never have children has also increased. Any increases in childlessness are therefore from people acting out what they want. It is therefore not a problem.
HOME IS WHERE THE GRANDPARENTS ARE
We argue that increasing levels of intended childlessness signal that people are not getting what they want. Rising levels of intended childlessness are downstream of a deeper malaise that has left people pessimistic about the future and cynical about finding a partner worth having children with. It is a signal that all is not well.
There are experiences so primal that they seem woven into the fabric of being human: a good meal with friends, running with excitement, swimming in a lake, the warmth of a woodfire, a baby sleeping on your chest. Not everyone will experience each of these, nor should they be viewed as measures of the good life. But taken together, they remind us that to be human is to inhabit a body capable of these simple, fundamental acts. Having a child brings one into a relationship as old as our species, one that has shaped our stories, our moral imagination, and our understanding of sacrifice, hope, and continuity. A society in which fewer people experience having children is losing something that cannot be measured by birth rates alone.
Dr. Anne Morse Huercanos is a demographer specializing in large-scale population dynamics, with expertise in U.S. and global demographic trends.