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.
"Several factors have been identified as contributing to this lower desire to have children, such as increased labor market opportunities and agency among women, rising financial costs, changing priorities, and [concerns about] maternal mortality," the study found.
Dr. Tanise Branche, medical director of labor and delivery at Temple Health, a health, research and training network in Philadelphia, told NPR more of her younger women patients are following a different life script.
"They're starting to focus not necessarily just on what they can bring to kids, but what's going to be best for them," she says.
Women in their 30s and 40s saw "significant" birthrate increase
Meanwhile, the latest CDC data shows a small but significant increase in older women, ages 30 to 45, who are choosing to become pregnant.
Branche says more women, including herself, are building careers and stable lives before becoming mothers.
Branche is currently pregnant with her fourth child. "I will be 43 with my last delivery and I started this reproductive journey at 37," she said. "I see the net positive being that we have a choice."
Fewer children because of choice — and affordability
As a consequence of this shift, there are fewer children now in the U.S. The population under age 18 is falling steadily, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, dropping by more than 1 million from 2010 to 2020.
Some experts also believe women would choose to have more kids if they could afford them and had proper supports that include affordable housing, daycare and health insurance.
"The fact that there are a lot of people who still say they want families, but don't feel like they're able to have them [is a concern]," says Anna Louie Sussman, author of a new book on parenting choices called Inconceivable. "Young people say, I can barely take care of myself I can't imagine taking care of someone else."
Sussman herself is part of the trend toward delayed motherhood. Because of her own concerns about affordability and her career, she froze her eggs and waited to have her child until she was in her early 40s.
"I do feel lucky that I'm a little further along professionally than I would have been in my 20s or even 30s," she said.
As women build different lives and birthrates keep falling, the U.S. is changing. The median age is rising rapidly, reaching 39.4 years old in 2025. More states, including Vermont where Sarah Harris lives, are seeing actual population decline, according to the Census Bureau.
"I think about it a lot because I live in a very small place where we're hoping to keep the doors of our elementary school open for as long as we can," she says.
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