U.S. birth rate drops to record low, but older women are having more babies : NPR

Sarah Harris was 37 years old when she gave birth to her daughter Bridget last year. She describes motherhood as equal parts joy and exhaustion. “When you have a baby in your mid-30s, what you gain in wisdom and experience you also lose in terms of energy,” Harris says with a laugh.

Harris, who lives in Vermont, was laid off from a job four months after Bridget was born. She says she’s still figuring out what her career and her life will look like with a child. Harris thinks a lot of women are like her. They’re wrestling with financial uncertainty and waiting much later to choose pregnancy.

There’s also the high cost of raising a child, which Harris said convinced her that one is enough. “I think in another era or another life or another scenario, I might have had more children,” Harris says. “I think we’re in a difficult societal moment and so that’s absolutely affecting people’s reproductive choices.”

Harris is, in fact, part of a slow revolution in what motherhood and parenting look like in the United States The latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the general fertility rate for women fell by 1% to a new record low in 2025. That continues a two-decade trend toward fewer children.

Steep drops in parenting among U.S. women in their 20s

The one-year drop for 20-somethings was even more eye-catching. “Certainly the 6% decline in the birthrate for women age 20 to 24 is noteworthy,” said Brady Hamilton, a demographer at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics who co-authored the report. He noted that women in their late teens also saw a 7% decline.

A separate study released last month by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found Gen Z women, in their late teens and twenties, “are dramatically less likely to want children” compared with U.S. women of previous generations.