How Many Mothers

75 million
Estimated number of mothers of all ages. (From unpublished data.)

67
Percentage of women in Kentucky, ages 15 to 44, who are mothers. This is among the highest rates in the nation. The national average is 57 percent.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01-170.html>

81
Percentage of women 40 to 44 years old who are mothers. In 1980, 90 percent of women in that age group were mothers. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01-170.html>

How Many Children

Only about 11 percent of women end their childbearing years with four or more children, compared with 36 percent in 1976. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/cb02-22.html>

2
Average number of children that women today can expect to have in their lifetime. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51_02.pdf>

3
Average number of children that women in Utah can expect to have in their lifetime, tops in the nation. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51_02.pdf>

Flowers

23,870
Number of florists nationwide. Their 125,116 employees will be especially busy selling bouquets for Mother's Day. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-58.html>

The flowers you buy mom probably were grown in California or Colombia. Among states, California was the leading provider of cut flowers in 2001, alone accounting for more than two-thirds of the nation's total domestic production ($292 million out of $424 million). Meanwhile, the value of U.S. imports of cut flowers from Colombia, the leading foreign supplier to the United States, during 2002 was $289 million. <http://www.usda.gov/nass/> <http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/>

New Moms

4.0 million
Number of women who have babies each year. Of this number, about 450,000 are teens, and almost 100,000 are age 40 or over. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51_02.pdf>

24.8
Median age of women when they give birth for the first time - meaning one-half are above this age and one-half are below. The median age has risen nearly three years since 1970. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51_02.pdf>

40
Percentage of births taking place annually that are the mothers' first. Another 33 percent are the second; 17 percent, the third; and 11 percent, the fourth or more. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51_02.pdf>

36,000
Number of births each year attended by physicians, midwives or others that did not occur in hospitals. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51_02.pdf>

1-in-33
The odds of a woman delivering twins. Her odds of having triplets or other multiple births was approximately 1-in-539. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51_02.pdf>

August
The most popular month in which to have a baby, with more than 360,000 births taking place that month in 2001. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51_02.pdf>

Tuesday
The most popular day of the week in which to have a baby, with an average of more than 12,000 births taking place on Tuesdays during 2001. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr51/nvsr51_02.pdf>

Working Moms

55
Percentage of mothers in the labor force with infant children, down from a record 59 percent in 1998. This marks the first significant decline in this rate since the Census Bureau began collecting the data in 1976. In that year, 31 percent of these mothers were in the labor force.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01-170.html>

Among mothers between 15 and 44 who do not have infants, 74 percent are in the labor force. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01-170.html>

To help juggle motherhood and careers, many mothers turn to one of the more than 67,000 day-care centers across the country. Among more than 10 million preschoolers, about 2 million were primarily cared for in such a facility during the bulk of the mothers' working hours.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-58.html>
<http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/child/ppl-168.html>

Single Moms

10 million
The number of single mothers living with children under 18, up from 3 million in 1970. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01-113.html>