Parenthood

Half of Americans (48%) say two is the ideal number of children for a family to have, reflecting a decades-long preference for a smaller family over a larger one.

For women, postgraduate education and motherhood are increasingly going hand-in-hand. Not only are highly-educated women more likely to have kids, they are also having bigger families than in the past.

Today's working fathers are just as likely as working mothers to say that finding the right balance between their job and their family life is a challenge.

The latest figures show that 66% of mothers who gave birth to their first child between 2006 and 2008 worked during pregnancy, up from 44% in the early 1960s.

More than half (54%) of mothers near the end of their childbearing years with at least a master’s degree had their first child after their 20s. In fact, one-fifth didn’t become mothers until they were at least 35. Some 28% became moms in their late 20s, and 18% had children earlier in their lives.

Just 46% of U.S. kids under 18 are living in a home with two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage, a marked change from 1960.

People with consistently conservative political values are particularly likely to say it is important to teach children religious faith, while those with consistently liberal values stand out for the priority they give to teaching tolerance.

To most Americans, citizenship, like DNA, seems like something a parent passes to a child without thought or effort. And indeed, for fathers around the world, that’s almost universally true. But one-in-seven countries currently have laws or policies prohibiting or limiting the rights of women to pass citizenship to a child or non-citizen spouse.

Still another reason to send your children to college: You’ll live longer.