In 2024, Statistics Canada reported that Canada’s total fertility rate fell to 1.25 children per woman, putting the country in the “ultra‑low fertility” category
Nearly half of Canadian women in their prime working years don’t have children, even as many say they want them—or are certain they don’t.
Canada’s “ultra‑low fertility” reality
According to Statistics Canada, the country slipped into “ultra‑low fertility” in 2024, with a total fertility rate of 1.25 children per woman—a level similar to Japan and Italy and well below what’s needed to replace the population.
CTV News reports that this drop reflects fewer births overall and more women who “do not have children either by choice, by circumstance or because they are delaying motherhood.”
Statistics Canada says the average age at first birth has climbed for decades and hit 31.8 in 2024. At the same time, the share of women who never have children has inched up.
In 2024, StatsCan data show that just over half of women aged 20 to 49 were not yet mothers, and close to one in four women in their 40s had no children.
Why timing and intentions don’t match outcomes
Statistics Canada’s 2024 Survey on Family Transitions finds that more than half of women aged 20 to 49 without children say they want to have them eventually, while about a third say they definitely or probably do not want children, and the rest are unsure.
Among those who want kids, they’d like roughly two children on average.
The gap between what women say they want and what actually happens comes down largely to structure, not sentiment.
According to Statistics Canada, women with university degrees and women in paid work are more likely to be childless in their 30s than women with less education or those who are unemployed.
StatsCan links this to delayed family formation as women prioritise education and career, and to “constraints related to work‑life balance, as well as the cost and availability of child care.”
Women still perform more unpaid housework and caregiving than men, which magnifies the trade‑off between career progression and motherhood.
Last year’s UNFPA’s State of World Population report sees the same pattern globally.
The agency says more than half of people surveyed in 14 countries expect financial worries—especially housing, child care and job insecurity—to push them to have fewer children than they’d like.
UNFPA argues that declining fertility and slower economies share a common driver: gender inequality at home and at work.
When women are not forced to choose between a job and motherhood, they are more likely to have the families they actually want.
A real childfree cohort, not just “late deciders”
Alongside women who feel blocked from having children, there is a sizeable group of adults who simply do not want them.
Psychology Today reports on a PLOS One study from Michigan that separates “childfree” adults (no children, no plans, no wish to have them) from parents, childless adults (who wish they could have had kids) and those planning to have children.
More than one‑quarter (27 percent) of adults in that representative sample were childfree.
That’s a much higher share than older studies suggested, in part because earlier research often focused only on women, or only on married women, or grouped people who couldn’t have children with those who didn’t want them.
Pew Research Center data, as reported by Psychology Today, similarly found that among adults without children, nearly a quarter said they were unlikely to have them because they did not want kids.
Psychology Today notes that childfree adults look much like everyone else: they span all relationship statuses, men and women are both well represented, and they do not differ from parents in personality traits such as extraversion or conscientiousness.
When researchers controlled for age and education, childfree adults were just as satisfied with their lives as parents, childless adults and those planning to have children.
Stigma, pressure and the “real fertility crisis”
Even as norms shift, Psychology Today reports that parents, childless adults, and would‑be parents all rate childfree adults less warmly than childfree people rate one another.
The article argues the backlash comes not from regret or dysfunction, but from the fact that “adults are supposed to want kids.”
People who opt out of parenthood can trigger moral judgement simply by not following the script.
UNFPA warns that some policy reactions make this worse.
The agency says many governments globally have tried cash “baby bonuses” and short‑term subsidies, with limited impact.
Worse, some have rolled back reproductive rights—restricting sexuality education, limiting contraception or criminalising abortion—in an effort to push up birth rates.
Such approaches tend to increase unsafe abortions and infertility, and can actually make people less willing to have children by undermining their sense of security and control.
Instead, UNFPA argues that the “real fertility crisis” is a crisis of reproductive agency.
Its survey data show that nearly one quarter of respondents had, at some point, wanted a child but felt unable to have one, often because of money, health barriers or lack of services.
Roughly one in five said wars, pandemics, politics and climate change would likely lead them to have fewer children than they wanted.
UNFPA’s executive director, Natalia Kanem, says “vast numbers of people are unable to create the families they want,” and that the solution lies in what people themselves say they need: paid family leave, affordable fertility care and supportive partners and workplaces.
It also stresses that people who don’t want children at all make “a valid, legitimate choice that should be equally protected from stigma and pressure.”
