Sunday, May 14, 2006

MOTHER'S DAY 'FACTOIDS'

- Estimated number of mothers of all ages in the U.S.: 80.5 million (81 percent of all women age 40-44 are mothers).

- Estimated number of Mother's Day cards given in 2005: more than 150 million. It's the third-largest card-giving occasion.

- Increase in the number of stay-at-home moms over the last decade, according to the U.S. Census: 15 percent.

- Average number of children a woman today can expect to have in her lifetime: 2. In Utah, it's 2.6, highest in the U.S.; in Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont, it's 1.7, the lowest.

- Average number of children a woman in the African nation of Niger can expect to have: 7.5. Spain and Italy are lowest with 1.3 kids per woman.


- Number of single mothers living with children under 18: 10 million, up from 3 million in 1970.

- Odds of a woman giving birth to twins: 1 in 32.

- Number of U.S. women giving birth each year: 4 million (415,000 are age 15-19; 100,000 are over 40.)

- Oldest mom ever: Arceli Keh, of Highland, Calif., who was 63 years and 9 months old when she gave birth to a daughter in 1996 via in vitro fertilization. "She changed our life for a better one," Keh told NOVA in 2001. "I just hope God will give me a much longer life, you know, to be around her."

- Number of different ways to make a baby in the IVF era: 18.
From the Chicago Tribune Magazine, May 14, 2006

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