It’s conventional wisdom that smart people (or smart women) are having fewer kids. But according to this report (h/t Kevin Stolarick), that may be old news. Here are some key findings:
- Highly educated women (those with a graduate or professional degree) had the highest level of “current fertility” - that is, babies born in the last year.
- More than half of recent mothers (57 percent) are working.
- About one in five women age 40-44 were childless (nearly twice as high as the level 30 years earlier).
- Among recent mothers, more than a third (36 percent) were separated, widowed, divorced, or never married.
Read the press release.
Tags: fertility, mothers, women, working mothers
August 20th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Motherhood may exist in many different incarnations these days, but part of me believes that people still want the fairy tale. Maybe women are waiting to have kids because they want to find the right mate - and when they don’t, they have a child on their own. Are they happy? Maybe. I hope so. But are women making these choices because it’s exactly what they want or just because it’s where they are in life at that moment and they have to weigh their future and their odds for fertility?