Many mothers, or large families?

The total fertility rate (TFR) answers one question — average children per woman — by blending two independent ones together. This chart splits it back apart:

• Total Maternal Rate (TMR) — the share of women who become mothers at all, estimated as the country's period total fertility rate counting first births only.
• Children per Mother (CPM) — the average family size among mothers, i.e. TFR ÷ TMR.

Both are derived from the same published input — each series' first births as a share of all births of known order in one calendar year — so the identity TFR = TMR × CPM always holds exactly. Like the TFR itself, TMR and CPM are period measures: they describe one year's age-specific birth rates, not the eventual family size of any real cohort of women. A country where childbearing is being postponed — South Korea is the sharpest example in this dataset — can show a temporarily depressed TMR even if most women there will eventually have a child. Figures are the latest available per country (mostly 2023–2024) and are not perfectly harmonised: birth-order reporting conventions vary slightly by statistical office.

Within-country points use the same identity on official subgroup tables. US race and Hispanic-origin groups are NCHS 2023 categories (non-Hispanic single race, plus Hispanic of any race). They are not comparable to Denmark-style ancestry or to country-of-birth series elsewhere — only a handful of offices publish both a TFR and births by live-birth order for the same groups, which is what this scatter requires.