The latest statistics from the National Center for Family & Marriage Research indicate that childless married women are becoming increasingly common.

The date showed that married women ages 40 to 44 who had no biological children and no other kids in the household, such as adopted children or stepkids, reached 6% in the period from 2006 to 2010. It's a small but statistically significant jump since 1988, when only 4.5% of married women had no kids.

Of course, just because women in their early 40s don't have kids doesn't necessarily mean that they never will. And while the majority of women without children do remain unmarried, and there's no way to tell how many of the 6 percent are childfree by choice.

If anything, these figures could indicate that more Americans just feel comfortable about skipping kids altogether. As Laura S. Scott, the director of the Childless by Choice Project, explains:
"There's a resistance to parenthood being the default after marriage," and "People are questioning it in ways that they didn't perhaps 30 or 40 or 50 years ago."
[L.A. Times ]