Canadian Women Want More Children. What’s Stopping Them?

Canadian women are having fewer children than ever, even though surveys show women want more of them.

Canada’s total fertility rate fell to a record low of 1.25 children per woman in 2024, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Meanwhile, a 2025 survey found that women considered 2 children their ideal family size, on average. More than half of women aged 40 to 44 said they had fewer children than they wanted.

That gap has implications beyond the falling birth rate and dashed hopes—an aging population means fewer young workers entering the labour force and raises concerns about the long-term financing of public health care.

Researchers say delayed family formation, difficulty finding a suitable partner, financial pressures, and the demands of education and career help explain why many women are having fewer children than they want.

Canada’s fertility rate has been declining since 2009, when its total fertility rate—the average number of children a woman would be expected to have over her lifetime if current fertility patterns continued—stood at 1.69. The last time Canada’s rate was at replacement level was 1971, according to Statistics Canada.

Canada is now among countries with “ultra-low fertility,” defined as below 1.3, alongside South Korea, Italy, Japan, and Chile.

Korea had the lowest total fertility rate in the world in 2024, at 0.75 average births per woman, while Chad had the highest, at 6.02.

Canadians Want Children

Several surveys indicate that many Canadian women still want children, or more children than they have.

StatCan survey data released in January found that 51.5 percent of Canadian women aged 20 to 49 were without children in 2024. Of those women, 51.7 percent said they “definitely” or “probably” wanted to have children in the future. On average, these women wanted 2.2 children.

The desire for children was strongest among younger women: 66 percent of childless women in their 20s said they wanted children, compared with 44.2 percent of those in their 30s, and 13.1 percent of those in their 40s.

Separate StatCan survey data released in April found that the share of Canadian men and women who said they wanted children rose from 41 percent in 2021, to 46 percent in 2024. Among Canadians who had never married and were not in a common-law relationship, the share who wanted children or more children rose from 47 percent to 56 percent over the same period.

Research by public policy think tank Cardus has also found a gap between the number of children Canadians say they ideally want and the number they ultimately have.

In a 2023 study of nearly 3,000 Canadian women, Cardus found that 45 percent of women in their early 40s said their ideal number of children was higher than the number they actually had. Only 14 percent said they would ideally have had fewer.

A subsequent survey by Cardus of 3,000 Canadian men and women conducted in 2025 found that women considered 1.97 children their ideal family size on average, but intended to have 1.54. More than half of both men and women aged 40 to 44 said they had fewer children than they wanted.

Why the Gap?

If many Canadian women want more children than they ultimately have, what is stopping them?

A Cardus poll conducted in July 2025 asked respondents to select reasons they had fewer children than they ideally wanted, or had not yet had children despite wanting them. The most commonly cited factors were wanting to grow as a person, at 42 percent; still being in school, at 40 percent; and the ability to pay for basic needs and a desire to focus on a career, both at 34 percent.

For women under 35 who wanted more children than they had, finding a suitable partner was another significant factor. The Cardus survey data found that the share who cited not having a suitable partner rose from 23 percent in 2022, to 25 percent in 2025.

Andrea Mrozek, a senior fellow with Cardus Family, said the role of relationships is often overlooked in discussions about Canada’s falling fertility rate.

“We think the partnership piece is huge, and that’s a huge problem when it comes to having children,” Mrozek told The Epoch Times. “Women want to have children with a long-term stable partner. So if you can’t find that long-term stable partner, then it will delay your ability to have children.”

Mrozek said difficulty finding a partner can push family formation later in life, when fertility is lower.

“When you push your age of first marriage into the 30s, then you have sort of biological limitations on how many children you can have,” she said.

StatCan data show a substantial shift toward later motherhood. The average age of mothers giving birth reached 31.8 in 2024, up from 26.7 in 1976, according to Statistics Canada.

The timing of education also appears to play a role. In 2024, 48 percent of female university graduates aged 30 to 39 had no children.

Yet 48.3 percent of university-educated women in their 30s say they wanted children, or more children, compared with 37.8 percent of those without a degree, according to StatCan. The agency said the figures may reflect women delaying motherhood while pursuing higher education.

University of Alberta sociology professor Frank Trovato said there is no single explanation for Canada’s declining fertility rate. Rather, he said, it reflects decades of demographic, cultural, and economic change, including women’s increased participation in higher education, greater use of contraception, and changing social attitudes.

“For those that want a family, the rational strategy is to postpone childbearing until careers are established and they are financially secure,” he said. He added that many younger Canadians struggle to find stable employment after years in higher education, further delaying family formation.

“Not having a stable source of income is a major impediment to forming a stable relationship,” he said.

Mrozek similarly said Cardus research points to a mixture of “life timing issues” and financial pressures as major reasons for the gap between desired and actual family size.

Cardus survey respondents also cited concerns about child care, having enough support, and being able to take responsibility for others. Men were somewhat more likely to cite concerns about savings, economic conditions, and work hours.

Economic and Social Impact

Mrozek said an aging population with fewer young and middle-aged workers raises questions about labour shortages and the long-term financing of public health care.

“The population pyramid has already shifted,” she said, noting that even a sudden increase in the fertility rate would take years to translate into an increase in the working-age population.

But she said the personal consequences of having fewer children than desired are often overlooked.

“I know plenty of women for whom children will never be part of their lives, and it is a deep wound,” she said. “It’s a sadness that they carry.”

She said the effects can extend to parents who had hoped to become grandparents, as well as to people who want children but feel unable to have them.

“People who are struggling, unable to achieve the lives that they ideally wish to have, that’s a burden on that person, and it’s a sadness,” she said. “And that sadness can’t be—it cannot be easily conveyed in words what that means to people.”

Mrozek said Canada’s aging population and smaller families have also changed the character of some communities and neighbourhoods.

“I grew up and my parents still live in Toronto. The ice cream shop at the corner changed into a pot shop. I think that’s kind of like a loss for the community feel,” she said. “You don’t have the patio anymore. It’s just—it’s a shift that is bad for all of us.”

Mrozek said smaller families can also increase the caregiving burden on adult children as their parents and grandparents age.

“Your parents and your grandparents are going to need help at some point, and you will be the one person doing it, and that’s a stress and a strain on that one child,” she said.

Some jurisdictions have enacted pronatalist policies with varying degrees of success. Quebec’s Allowance for Newborn Children, in place from 1988 to 1997, paid families up to $8,000 per birth and was found to increase average family size. However, a 2002 analysis by the C.D. Howe Institute estimated that the program required more than $15,000 in government spending for each birth that likely would not otherwise have occurred.

A more recent review by the OECD found that fertility-related tax and cash benefits in most countries produced only “modest and temporary” increases in birth rates.

Mrozek said that before governments consider policies intended to increase fertility, they should recognize that Canada’s low fertility rate does not simply reflect people choosing to have fewer children, but in many cases a gap between the number of children people want and the number they ultimately have.

She said the discussion going forward should focus on the obstacles facing people who want children or more children but are not having them.

“There are half of Canadian women who wish to have more children than they do at the end of their reproductive lives,” she said.

“That’s a problem in a democratic society when you cannot achieve your ideal for your life.”