A new report from Quebec’s statistics institute shows women across the province are having fewer children and delaying motherhood, with Montreal recording the lowest fertility rate at 1.11 children per woman.
In Montreal, the average maternal age reached 33.1 years in 2024, the highest in the province. McGill sociology professor Shelley Clark says education plays a major role in delaying when women start families.
“But it also is things like access to contraception,” said Clark. “One of the reasons that overall fertility rates are higher in rural areas is that there’s not as much access to contraception or abortion services, so women tend to have more unplanned or unintended pregnancies and births.”
Clark adds that changing parenting models are another factor.
“That really is shifting ideas about what it means to be a parent, and do you need a lifelong partnership with someone, or can there be other arrangements in which you can become a parent. We are definitely seeing a change in the types of families into which children are born.”
About 40 per cent of children in Quebec are born to unmarried parents, a figure influenced by high rates of cohabitation.
Shelley Clark, sociology professor at McGill University (Johanie Bouffard, CityNews)
“To become an adult just takes a lot longer now than it used to,” said Clark. “All of the major transitions to adulthood, including finding a partner and having kids, are happening later now than they used to in the past.”
Montreal mothers also highlighted the personal side of fertility decisions.
“There’s a big shift and I’m really proud because I’m raising two girls right now,” said Genevieve Léveillé, a mother of two. “I just want to say, you don’t need a man, you just need to be yourself and enjoy what you can do with your potential.”
A woman in Montreal, speaking with a friend, said she doesn’t have a clear theory for the decline in fertility. “We have all the help that we need in terms of universal childcare,” she said.
“Can you afford them? What kind of life balance could we have with the kids and working full time?” added another mother.
Northern Quebec is the only region above the population-replacement level, at 2.28.
Clark says the regional differences in fertility are striking.
“The gap between rural and urban, not just in Quebec, but across Canada, is much larger than say in the US. It’s about three times larger. And so I think that is an interesting question to figure out just why is that gap quite so big across Canada and in Quebec specifically,” she said.
