Opinion | Women Are Having Fewer Babies Because They Have More Choices

It is still revolutionary to consider childbearing in the context of desire. Throughout human history, parenting was simply an assumed part of adult life.

But intentionality matters. Women who plan their pregnancies wind up happier, better educated and with less relationship conflict than women whose pregnancies are unintended, according to studies compiled by the Guttmacher Institute. The Institute for Family Studies found that women who have more children than their ideal are less likely to report feeling happy than women who had their ideal number and than women who had fewer children than they said they wanted.

Women the world over are having fewer children and having them later. And countries where women have the most opportunity to pursue higher education, live independently and work for pay also tend to have a higher average age of first birth and lower birthrates overall. Despite the broad lack of social support systems in the United States, the average American woman has her first child at 26.4, a younger age than the average woman in any other developed nation.

At the heart of declining birthrates in the world’s most prosperous countries might be the matter of meaning. Historically, men dominated the realms of paid work, politics, economics and world affairs, while motherhood was the clearest and most acceptable path to adulthood, community respect and purpose for women. As more women either find jobs that bring in a paycheck and the attendant power of independence, or maybe even a sense of satisfaction and purpose, fewer women use motherhood as a conduit to respect and adulthood. This makes parenthood better, too: Women lucky enough to have a choice see parenthood as its own distinct path, and intentionally walking down it brings unique life experience, deep meaning, expanded potential and a relationship unlike any other — and also trades some opportunities for others.

Of course these choices are not all free, or always “choices” at all. The United States remains a wildly unequal place, and that affects women’s reproductive choices. Women who want to balance career, life and their own future may be less likely to have a baby (or a second or a third) with a man who doesn’t pull his own weight. And many American women are still unable to find easy access to family planning tools, including contraception and abortion.

But there are also fewer constraints on American women today than at any point in U.S. history, and many more options. The United States is also now a place where huge numbers of women of childbearing age live in dynamic communities where those their age are staying single and delaying motherhood longer than ever. Growing numbers of young women have opportunities to travel, live independently, pursue a career and simply spend many more years of their adult lives asking themselves who they are and what they want, instead of being slotted, early, into a narrow set of gendered expectations.

To be sure, for some women choosing to wait to have children, choosing to have fewer, or not have them at all, is linked to a failure of the state. But for many others, it’s a sign of a more flexible and open society, populated by women who feel surer of themselves to pursue the unconventional.