By MIKE MAGEE
Last week, policy wonks on the left and right finally found an issue they could agree on: Kids don’t have (as many) kids anymore.
Specifically, teen pregnancies fell an additional 10% in the US in 2025. This is a acceleration of a trend which began two decades ago. Teen births peaked in the United States in 1991, with 62 births per 1,000 girls/women ages 15 to 19. In 2025, the rate was below 12 per 1,000, a drop of 80%, with the largest share (72%) occurring since the Great Recession of 2008.
Obviously, this is “good news” for these young women according to Congressional Reports. And most agree that the causes are multifactorial and include advances in health education, declines in sexual activity among young people, access to contraception and the Plan B pill, and increased economic and professional opportunities for women in society.
But in societies around the world, leaders watch with fear as birth rates in their countries have crossed the replacement line, and deaths outnumber births. This “replacement rate” is approximately 2.1 births per woman. The CDC recently reported that without immigration, the Total fertility rate in 2023 was only 1.6 births per woman (1,616 per 1,000 women over a lifetime).
Since 2007, The trend lines have pointed decidedly downward. In that year, there were 4,316,233 births in the U.S. In 2025, American women gave birth to only 3,606,400 newborns (a 23% decrease).
Demographers generally agree that the trend was initially most pronounced among college-bound girls and young women. But it’s now evident across all demographics: Concerns about employment, housing, childcare costs, political instability, and more are causing prospective parents to question whether having children is a smart and financially possible choice, segregating society into “Those who have and those who do not have fertility” according to UNC sociologist Karen Benjamín Guzzo.
Culture warriors, like Katie Miller, sent via text message on from the air-conditioned comfort of his DC office, a safe distance from his own children.““Our biological destiny is to have babies, not to be slaves behind desks pursuing careers while our civilization dies.” But she is fighting a downward trend.
About half of the country’s 30-year-old women now have no children. In the immediate post-World War II era, the total fertility rate was a remarkable 3.5. With the introduction of contraceptive pill, that figure plummeted to 1.7 in 1976 and then slowly recovered. But in 2007 it had surpassed the replacement figure of 2.1 and has been steadily declining since.
A compensatory trend is “delayed motherhood.” While birth rates among those under 30 have plummeted, women over 30 are having more children, but not enough to make up the difference. Over the past three decades, birth rates among women ages 35 to 39 increased 71% and doubled for women ages 40 to 44. But the numbers remain small and inadequate to meet needs “postponement.”
like a expert report As he noted, education is having a double impact. “The key insight: Women are not only delaying childbearing, they are having fewer children overall… American women with advanced degrees average 1.8 children, to 2.25 for women with high school diplomas and 2.7 for women without secondary education.
We have clearly entered an era where women think twice before getting pregnant. The nation as a whole, compared to others, has done little to show appreciation for the sacrifices necessary to choose parenthood. In a country with problematic health coverage and services, a housing crisis, no subsidized child care, and a job market shaken by AI, why take the risk?
He “opportunity cost of raising children” has increased dramatically with the educational and professional advances of women. Sociologists call this the success penalty. Interrupting a career derails the growth of opportunities, including promotions, raises, and advancements. And that’s without considering the direct costs associated with caring for a child, much less the pressures of debt associated with housing and student loans. It’s not surprising, Fertility rates have decreased as housing costs and student debt have risen.
Economist Martha Bailey, who directs the California Population Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, doesn’t blame women for protecting themselves. She summed up his feelings In this way, “people are having the number of children they want and can afford at the time that makes the most sense for them. What I don’t think anyone is in favor of is a maid‘tale type of political regime, in which we try to convince families to have children they do not want.”
Mike Magee MD is a medical historian and regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s medical industrial complex. (Greet/2020)
