In , four-in-ten mothers ages 40 to 44 had four or more children. Flash forward to , and the situation has changed dramatically. The once-dominant four-child family has been replaced by the two-child family. Most of the change in family size occurred between and the mids. Family size since that time has remained quite stable. The more education a mother has, the fewer children she will have on average in her lifetime.
While fertility drops somewhat with each additional level of education, the biggest fertility gap occurs between women who lack a high school diploma and those who have completed high school. Moms ages 40 to 44 who lack a high school diploma have about 2. The likelihood of having such large families declines markedly at higher levels of education. Highly educated women are the only group in which this clear pattern emerges, with a declining share having one child and a rising share having three or more.
Among mothers who lack a high school diploma, the share having four or more has declined by 5 points, while the share having exactly three children has increased by 5 points. There has been little change in the share with fewer children. This decline is accompanied by an increase in the share having just one child. Among mothers near the end of their childbearing years, Hispanics and blacks have the largest families. On average, a Hispanic mother ages 40 to 44 has had about 2.
By comparison, black mothers have had about 2. White and Asian mothers have families that are a bit smaller, on average. Google Scholar. Francis Jeffry Pelletier. Select Format Select format. Permissions Icon Permissions. Issue Section:. You do not currently have access to this article. Download all slides.
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As the total fertility rate is effectively a projection which changes from year to year, we can also look at how many children different cohorts of women have. In other words, we can take more of a backwards look too. Trends in fertility have changed over time, not only in terms of periods of higher and lower rates, but also in terms of when women tend to have children. For example, the most common age of motherhood declined from about 25 in the post-war period, to around 22 in the early s, and now stands at about 31 years of age.
Given these changes to age-specific fertility rates, which form the basis of the total fertility rate, it might make more sense to look at final family sizes. Women born between and , who reached 45 years of age the expected end of their childbearing years between and , did indeed have, on average, approximately 2. This declined to 2. By the time they left them, it had declined further, to approximately two children.
Women turning 45 now tend to have around 1. These rates and averages include all women, including those who do not have any children. This will, of course, raise the average number of children. On that basis, the average number of children born to women who have had at least one child, stands at about 2.
In which case, 2. But there are increasing numbers of people in different family units now. As well as childfree families, we have single parent families, step families, extended families, and grandparent families. Whether people have children and how many children they have is the result of personal, biological, social, economic, cultural, political and environmental factors.
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