For a long time, a traditional family was made up of a mother, a father, and 2.5 kids. But, things are changing, especially when it comes to who is a mother.
According to a new analysis of the latest census data from the Pew Research Center, more women in their early 40s today who have never been married have children. Now, you might think that more unmarried mothers is the result of teen pregnancies, but those have actually gone down in recent years.
So what’s behind this trend? For more on that, I spoke with Dr. Megan Costa. She’s a demographer who studies fertility at ASU’s T. Denny Sandford School of Social and Family Dynamics, and, she says, this mostly has to do with broad, cultural forces that are delaying motherhood and redefining what it means to be a mother.
