About 85% of women in the United States have at least one child by the time they reach their late 40s. According to 2024 Census data, 14.9% of women ages 45 to 50 were childless, meaning the vast majority do become mothers by the end of their childbearing years. That number has actually ticked down from 16.7% in 2014, reversing a decades-long trend of rising childlessness in that age group.
How the Numbers Have Changed Over Time
Lifetime childlessness was relatively uncommon in the mid-20th century. When tracking first became available in the mid-1970s, only about 1 in 10 women ages 40 to 44 had never given birth. That figure climbed steadily over the following decades as more women pursued higher education and entered the workforce, peaking in the early 2010s before leveling off and slightly declining in recent years.
The shift hasn’t been uniform across demographics. Among women with an M.D. or Ph.D., 35% were childless at ages 40 to 44 in 1994. By 2014, that had dropped to 20%, a notable reversal suggesting that career and motherhood have become more compatible for highly educated women, or at least that more women in that group are finding ways to do both.
Motherhood Rates by Age
The percentage of women with children rises steadily through each decade of life, and the timeline has been shifting later. By their early 30s, roughly 7 in 10 women have had at least one child, but the share who are still childless at that stage has been growing. In 2006, 26.2% of women ages 30 to 34 had never given birth. By 2016, that figure had climbed to 30.8%.
Birth rates among younger women continue to fall. The teen birth rate hit another record low in 2024 at 12.7 per 1,000 women ages 15 to 19, and the rate for women ages 20 to 24 also dropped to its lowest point ever. Meanwhile, birth rates for women in their 30s and early 40s have been rising. The overall picture: women are not necessarily having fewer children, but they are having them later.
Race, Ethnicity, and Motherhood
Motherhood rates vary significantly across racial and ethnic groups. Among women ages 40 to 44, Hispanic women have the lowest childlessness rate at around 10%. About 13% of Asian women in that age range are childless, along with 15% of Black women and 17% of white women. These differences reflect a mix of cultural expectations, economic conditions, and access to healthcare.
Annual birth rates tell a similar story. In 2019, Hispanic women had a birth rate of 14.6 per 1,000, compared to 13.4 for Black women, 13.0 for Asian women, and 9.8 for white women. Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander women had the highest rate at 17.0 per 1,000.
Education and Family Size
More education correlates with fewer children per mother, though it no longer predicts whether a woman will have children at all the way it once did. Women with a bachelor’s degree who do become mothers average 1.87 children, and those with an advanced degree average 1.80. The relationship is statistically significant: the more education a woman has, the fewer births she tends to have.
That said, the gap in childlessness between highly educated women and other groups has narrowed considerably. The steep drop from 35% to 20% childlessness among women with doctoral or medical degrees over two decades suggests that the old assumption of choosing between career and children is becoming less of a binary.
Why Some Women Don’t Have Children
Not all childlessness is permanent, and not all of it is by choice. CDC data from 2011 to 2015 broke down childlessness among women ages 15 to 44 (a range that includes many who simply haven’t had kids yet). Of the 45.1% who were childless at the time of the survey, the vast majority, 35.6%, described themselves as “temporarily childless,” meaning they expected to have at least one child in the future.
Among the rest, 7.4% were voluntarily childless, meaning they didn’t plan to have children despite being physically able to. Just 2.1% were involuntarily childless, reporting that they were unable to have children. These numbers suggest that true “childfree by choice” status, while growing in visibility, still represents a relatively small slice of the population.
How the U.S. Compares Globally
The United States actually has a lower rate of permanent childlessness than many other wealthy nations. Among women born in 1975, childlessness exceeds 20% in Japan, Spain, Italy, Austria, and Germany. Several of these countries have struggled with very low birth rates for decades, driven by high living costs, limited childcare infrastructure, and cultural shifts around family formation. The U.S. rate of about 15% puts it in the middle of the pack among developed nations.
What Younger Generations Say They Want
Survey data from younger women hints at a potential shift ahead. In informal polls of college students, interest in parenthood appears to be declining. Sari Pekkala Kerr, an economist at the Wellesley Centers for Women, asks students each fall whether they see themselves getting married and having children. In a recent semester, 60% said they thought they wanted to get married, but only 25% said they would consider having children.
Whether these intentions hold remains an open question. Women in their early 20s have historically reported lower desire for children than they ultimately go on to have. But the gap between stated interest in marriage and stated interest in parenthood is striking and newer. If even a portion of that sentiment persists, childlessness rates among Gen Z could rise well above the current 15% by the time they reach their late 40s. For now, though, the data is clear: the large majority of women in the U.S. do become mothers.