The number alone is staggering: Over 4 million babies born in the US in 2007 — exceeding levels seen during the baby boom, more live births than ever in our recorded history. This statistic and its accompanying data, released by the US Department of Health and Human Services, seems to tell several stories. For example: More single women had babies than ever, and the same holds true for older women. Caesarean births rose by 2%, marking the 11th consecutive year that these rates have increased. Latinos had more babies than any other ethnic group, and the states with the highest birth rates are border states: California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico.
It would seem logical to infer, then, that the country is undergoing several tectonic shifts: the potential advent of a new, bigger baby boom. A dearth of husbands and fathers. More women opting for voluntary C-sections over natural childbirth. A dramatic spike in legal and illegal immigration, largely by Mexicans crossing into border states, and a country that, by 2042, will be comprised of a Latino majority.
In fact, what is most surprising about this data is that it supports none of these theories. There is much it can’t tell us — the statistics are not broken down into such specifics as education level, income earned, whether single mothers are cohabiting with a partner — but what they can tell us dispels many myths about our present and likely future.
MYTH #1: SINGLE MOTHERS ARE AN EPIDEMIC
On this, there is debate. The Health and Human Services study reports historic birth levels to unmarried women: over 1.7 million, up 4% from 2006. We don’t know if these women are cohabitating with a partner; divorced, widowed, or separated; highly-educated career women or high-school drop-outs living in poverty; surrogates, etc.
But what we do know is that the increase in much older mothers indicates deliberative thought and family planning. The number of births to women between ages 45-54 increased 5% from 2006, to 7,349. For women 40-44, it went up 1%, to 9.5 births per 1,000 women — the highest number since 1968. The rate for births among women ages 35-39 rose for the 29th straight year and was at its highest point since 1964. The number of women having their first child rose 2%, to 27.9 per 1,000 births, and though this includes women ages 15-44, teenagers account for only 23% of unmarried births (continuing a pattern of decline).
“This is no blip,” says Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, DC. “Over the last 30 years, the number of single mothers has risen. A lot of this is due to women having the possibility of economic freedom.” Experts believe that this is as much an employment story — working women who have the resources to have a child are having children, with ever-lessening stigma.
Haub posits that, for much of the 20th century, marriage was a default decision. “You were expected to get married and have a kid in the 1950s,” he says. “Why is June the trend month for weddings? Because that’s when school got out.”
No more. American women are increasingly following the European model, which has a comparably low marriage rate but highly stable nuclear families — men and women opt out of marriage, but have lengthier, sturdier relationships. Marriage itself is not treated as the goal, a trend that is nascent but emergent here.
“There are changing attitudes in the need to get married,” says Alan Auerbach, professor of economics and law director at UC Berkeley. “I guarantee there’s a whole generation that doesn’t know what a shotgun marriage is.” (Hello, Bristol Palin!)
Kelly Musick, an associate professor at Cornell University conducting research on childbearing by non-marital families, takes a more cautious approach to these stats. She counters that the preliminary data shown in the HHS report needs to be burrowed through and explored via detailed surveys. “That these are Murphy Browns — highly educated career women striking out on their own — the numbers aren’t telling us that,” she maintains.
Musick, however, agrees that marriage has become a far more complicated construct in America than it was even 20 years ago. “What people are struggling to understand is why women are putting off marriage,” she says. Musick theorizes that it’s due to opposing cultural urges: “We place a high premium on individualism, self-fulfillment and religion. So you have this strange combination of marriage being valued far more highly than cohabitating, but women not wanting to get married till you find your soulmate.” But economist Paul Menchik, like Auerbach and Haub, has a more pragmatic interpretation: “There’s an employment story here,” he says. “Women in the workforce, from 1957 to now. And the stigma of single motherhood is gone.”
This stat, by the way, is made more compelling when placed in context: Every year since 1900 has seen a steady increase in births to unmarried women.
MYTH #2: WOMEN PREFER C-SECTIONS
Delivery by Caesarean section accounted for 31.8% of all births, a 2% increase and the 11th consecutive year that number rose.
This historic high, coupled with the increase in highly educated, well-off older mothers, would seem to support the notion that more women are voluntarily opting for Caesareans over natural childbirth.
Yet “maternal request is a fraction of 1% of all Caesareans,” says Eugene Declercq, professor of maternal and child health at Boston University. (He also worked with HHS on this report.) So why the dramatic and continued spike? Declercq says many women buy into the myth that “once a C-section, always a C-section,” and that this is aided and abetted by the medical community.
“If I’m your doctor, I’ve got a lot of incentives to give you a C-section,” says Declercq. The pitch, he says, goes like this: ” ‘It’s safe. I can do it well. I can get the baby out quickly and safely. I can control my life better, and you can control yours.’ Doctors want lives too.” He also points to the level of fear and attention surrounding labor pains, and the absence of real discussion about the extent of post-surgical pain caused by Caesareans. “Some women report pain at the point of incision six months after giving birth,” he says. Recovery time for natural childbirth is much shorter. Declercq says he is most interested to see — if, as he suspects — this trend reversing. Despite the increase, he says, the rates for C-sections are slowing. “I think people are finally getting concerned,” he says. “Mothers, public health advocates, and obstetricians are all asking the same question: What’s the need for such a high rate?”
MYTH #3: IMMIGRATION IS OUT OF CONTROL
In the context of this study, there’s a disturbing subtext to this inference: Hispanics had the highest birth rate (3.1 children per woman), with more babies were born in border states than anywhere else in the US. Couple this with recent non-stop coverage of the border drug wars and the national debate over immigration reform, and one can see the makings of an unpleasant argument.
What is often not discussed: The high rates of immigration to the US has historically been an economic boon, helping to compensate for eras in which the birth rate plummeted and keeping us well ahead in the world. “Pretty much all of Europe has lower birth rates than we do,” says economist Paul Menchik. “That does not bode well for them.”
“There is a crisis in Japan and much of Europe over declining birth rates,” says Jeff Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. “They are worried about the future of their countries. In the US, we’ve had no such concerns.”
Continued growth can, for example, help to keep Social Security from going bankrupt, some experts say. Though Passel, who spent two years on an advisory panel for Social Security, thinks that the 2007 birth numbers has little to no impact on the future of this entitlement. “Social Security presents more of a technical and philosophical problem,” he says. “Even if, in 35 years, we run out of money, there are a lot of assumptions about the economy and productivity. We’d still be able to pay benefits at 75-80% of projected levels.” (He thinks Medicare is the larger looming crisis, with increased life expectancy and the need for long-term medical care taxing that entitlement.)
As for the burgeoning Latino population: “It is a myth that immigration is increasing the number of Hispanics and Latinos in the population,” says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institute. Instead, he says, it’s the birth rate. “Immigration is not as big an aspect of growth as the fertility rate is,” he says. “People typically look at these numbers and think of Mexicans running across the border.”
The high birth rate among Hispanics, Frey says, is due to the number of well-established immigrant families — who, culturally, tend to be more family-oriented and more religious than the general population. But the flip side is that this group follows the trend established by all immigrant groups: Birth rates decline with each successive generation, which tends to become exponentially better educated and better off.
It is worth noting here, too, that it is the Hispanic community that made up for the decreasing rates among non-Hispanic whites, thereby keeping the country on track: The 2.1 replacement rate (births vs. deaths) comes from the rate of 1.9 live births for whites and 3.1 for Hispanics. It is also interesting to note that among minorities, American Indian and Alaskan Native teenagers had the largest single-year increase, up 12% from 2005-2007. The only minority group that saw a decline in teen births: Hispanics.
“The immigration component is never as big as people think,” says Frey. “Newer minorities tend to be younger and contribute more to the economy.” That said, there has already been a drop-off — small, but telling — in the number of immigrants attempting to relocate to the US due to the economy.
MYTH #4: LATINOS ARE GOING TO BE THE MAJORITY IN 30 YEARS
It is projected that, by 2042, Hispanics will make up about 29% of the population. Whites will comprise less than 50% of the US (they already comprise less than 50% in the border states). But this is a broad, broad projection. It does not take into account intermarriage as well as intra-marriage — Mexicans marrying Venezuelans marrying Spaniards, etc.
And, as the Pew Hispanic Center’s Passel points out, these projections “depend on what ‘Hispanic’ ends up meaning. How will children of Hispanic parents identify, especially one parent is not Hispanic? We have a third generation — American-born, to American parents, who identify as Hispanic,” he says. He theorizes that more people may choose to identify as Hispanic because it is a minority group that is still considered “protected class.”
“We will become more nuanced in our definition of Hispanic,” says demographer Frey, especially as immigrants and their offspring integrate into American society. “When people think of comprehensive immigration reform, they tend to think about numbers,” he says. “But in addition to that, there should be federal support for education at state and local levels to help with integration.” The notion that Hispanic immigrants, especially those who live in border states, are particularly resistant to assimilation, says Frey, is another myth: “What we’re seeing now is a lot like the turn of the previous century’s attitudes to Irish and Italians.” As for what happens to the white man: “We’re talking about a country that’s more diverse in some states than others,” says demographer Frey. “In 2042, Vermont, North Dakota and West Virginia will still be extremely white.”
MYTH # 5: THIS IS A BABY BOOM
At best, this is a boomlet — but even that may be hyperbolic. The Baby Boom, from about 1946-1964, saw the birth of over 78 million Americans. Birth rates tend to spike in economically healthy and optimistic times, and to decline steeply during times of economic crisis (although the decline during the 1970s is also attributed to the increasing number of women entering the workforce and the legalization of abortion). And there are simply more people living in the US now due to immigration — which didn’t spike until 1965, with the signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
“A lot has been made about these numbers being indicative of a baby boom, but I would caution against that,” says Brady Hamilton, lead author of the government study. What is noteworthy, he says, is that between 1972-2005, the national birth rate was below replacement levels. (He attributes this to higher levels of education and employment along with increasing economic and social status for women.)
“The average birth rate is 2.1, which is where it’s been,” says Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. “But these numbers aren’t indicative of a sweeping change. It’s not about the number of women having kids — it’s about the number of kids women are having.”
What all of our experts confidently predict: The number of kids women are having is about to decline, as it historically has. “I just saw a report on CNN,” says population expert Haub. “More men are coming in for vasectomies.”