• Women ages 40 to 44 in 1995 had an average of two children each. Hispanic women in this age group had 2.6 children each, while African-American women had 2.1 and white women 1.9. The figures for all women ages 40 to 44 and African-American and white women in this age group are not significantly different from one another.

• As of 1995, there were 1,545 births to every 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 in Idaho-among the highest rates in the nation. Women in Massachusetts were among those with the lowest rates (959 children ever born per 1,000 women of childbearing ages).

Where Births Take Place
In 1995, there were 27,000 births nationwide attended by physicians, midwives or others that did not occur in hospitals, down from 39,000 a decade earlier.

Working Moms
As of 1995, the majority (55 percent) of women ages 15 to 44 who had given birth in the prior year were in the labor force, up from 31 percent in 1976. The percentage of returnees to the labor force was even higher (77 percent) if the woman was 30 to 44 and the birth was her first.

• There were 10 million preschoolers nationwide in 1994 whose mothers were employed. About 43 percent of these children received care from relatives other than their mothers during most of the mothers' working hours. Another 29 percent went to a day-care center or nursery school, while 6 percent received care from their mothers at their workplaces or while they worked at home.

Moms Raising Children Without a Husband
In 1995, about one in five never-married women ages 15 to 44 were mothers.

• In Mississippi, 45 percent of births in 1996 were to unmarried women-the highest rate of any state. Utah, with 16 percent, had the lowest rate. The national average was 32 percent. Worldwide, among selected nations, the percentage ranged from 1 percent in Japan to 53 percent in Sweden.

• The number of single mothers in the United States-9.8 million in 1998-has remained constant since 1995 after nearly tripling over the previous quarter century. Last year, single mothers comprised about five-sixths of all single parents. Their families constituted 26 percent of all parent-child situations, up from 12 percent in 1970.

• Nearly one in five single mothers was raising three or more of their own children in 1998.

Teen Moms
As of 1995, more than 800,000 women ages 15-to-19-or about one in 10 women in this age range-were mothers. In 1996, 13 percent of all births nationwide were to teens.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau