Full Citation
Title: Women’s Prime Parenting Years, 1980 & 2020
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2022
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Abstract: The past few decades have seen major shifts in childbearing behavior. The overall share of women who have ever had a birth has declined, the mean age at first birth has increased, and the share of women with three or more children has decreased (FP-22-19, FP-20-06, FP-20-04). These changes affect the number of years, as well as the ages, women spend parenting minor children. This profile uses data from the 1980 and 2020 June Fertility Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS) to estimate changes in the share of women who are in their prime parenting years and, for 2020, we focus on educational differences in the primary parenting years. We define prime parenting years as the age group at which over 75% of women were parenting a child aged 0 to 17. We estimate the ages spent parenting based on women’s age at entry into motherhood and women’s age at which her youngest current biological, adopted or stepchild will turn 18, essentially allowing us to capture the age women started parenting and can expect to complete parenting minor children. This is then applied to singular ages to estimate the share of women at each age who were parenting a minor child. The range of parenting years depends not only on the age at which women first have a child but also on the number and spacing of children. The figures below are color coded by quartile such that the darkest color represents a share of 75% or more at that age and the lightest color represents a share below 25% at that age.
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Authors: Brown, Adrianne R.
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Publication Number: No. 20, 2022
Institution: National Center for Family & Marriage Research
Pages: 1-2
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Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Family and Marriage, Gender, Reproductive and Sexual Health
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