Society: Educated Women, Opting for Motherhood

Today, more education is associated with lower rates of motherhood — except for women who pursue the most advanced degrees. Women with professional degrees and Ph.D.’s are slightly more likely to have had children than their counterparts with just master’s or bachelor’s degrees.

And compared to their equally educated counterparts from the early 1990s, these advanced-degree women are much more likely to have borne children. More than a third of women with professional/Ph.D. degrees in 1992-94 decided to remain childless; in 2006-8, less than a quarter of such women made the same choice.

From Educated Women, Opting for Motherhood by Catherine Rampell, June 25, 2010, at nytimes.com.