More women with advanced degrees are having children, a survey indicates, a possible sign that having kids and a career are no longer considered mutually exclusive for women, the researchers note.
Twenty-two percent of U.S. women aged 40 to 44 holding a master's degree or above chose to forgo having children last year, but that's a drop from 30 percent in 1994, a Pew Research Center analysis survey of recently released census data found.
In addition to more highly-educated women choosing to bear children, they are deciding on bigger families as well; around 60 percent have chosen to have two or more children, an increase from 51 percent in 1994.
The findings are part of a larger trend, as childlessness in all women in the 40 to 44 age group is at the lowest point seen in a decade, the researchers say.
The fact that more highly-educated women are choosing to have children suggests the growing numbers of women with degrees occupying career positions of leadership and management are finding it easier these days to juggle work and family, says Pew researcher Gretchen Livingston.
"Postgraduate education and motherhood are increasingly going hand-in-hand," she says.
Despite an increase in the number of children degree-holding women are choosing to have, the overall trend is settling to smaller American families, the Pew research found.
In 1976 the average U.S. woman in her early 40s had three children, while 36 percent of women of that age had four or more; by 2014, the two-child family was the norm.
Contributing to that is an increase in one-child families; in 1975, 10 percent of women had only one child by the finish of their childbearing years, a figure that has risen to 18 percent today.
The percentage of women ages 40 to 44 who have chosen to remain childless varies by ethnicity and race, the researchers found: 17 percent of white women in that age bracket are childless, while 15 percent of black women of the same age, 13 percent of Asian women and just 10 percent of Hispanic women have chosen not to have children.
Similar variations were seen in the number of women of that age group with large families. Some 20 percent of Hispanic mothers have four or more children, for black moms it's 18 percent. In contrast, just 11 percent of white mothers have families of four children or more, and just 10 percent of Asian mothers.
However, since 1988 a significant decline in the percentage of mothers having four or more children has occurred among Hispanics, blacks and whites, the researchers noted.
