SANTIAGO, Chile — In a noisy market in a working class neighborhood in Santiago, Marisol Romero was selling bright balloons, little dolls and flowers to passers-by.
She's in her 50s and comes from a big family. Her mother had eight kids, which used to be common across Latin America.
But Romero said her own decisions about parenting were very different from her mother's. "I have only two children," she said.
Asked why she chose to have a smaller family, Romero laughed and said, "Because of the cost of living. I would have had more. My ideal was five. The reality was two."
Romero is part of a global trend toward much smaller families that experts say is reshaping Latin American society, in particular, at an astonishing rate.
As recently as the 1990s, women across South America and the Caribbean had between three and four children on average.
But according to the latest United Nations report, the region's fertility rate had fallen to fewer than two children per woman. That's well below the 2.1 "total fertility rate," a technical term used by researchers, which is widely considered the minimum necessary to maintain a stable population.
In Chile, meanwhile, the number has plunged even lower, barely above one child per woman, and is still falling.
According to Romero, her own family's experience is helping shape her country's transformation.
"I love my children and now my grandchildren very much, but they had only one and one," she said, referring to her children's decision to have a single child apiece.
The U.N. study found more than one in 10 nations around the world now have "very low" fertility, similar to Chile's.
"We now have a total fertility rate that is lower than most European countries, lower than Japan's," said Martina Yopo Diaz, a sociologist at Santiago's Catholic University. "I think this has huge implications, for which we're not prepared as a society."
Yopo Diaz and other experts think life in these countries will change fast as populations age and eventually begin to shrink.
"Key social systems, from the economy to the labor market to pensions, are based on the principle that there will be new generations to replace the old ones," she said. "But now we see that that principle is no longer something that we can, you know, take as given."
Chile's rapid demographic shift resembles U.S. trends
In many ways, Chile's rapid demographic shift mirrors, and possibly foreshadows, population trends and the growing debate over birthrates emerging in the U.S.
In both countries, experts say affordability is one key factor driving starkly different decisions about family size.
In the U.S., as in Chile, individual choices made by women and families are expected to reshape everything from the workforce to elder care as the population of young people shrinks and the number of seniors over age 65 surges.
One unanswered question is whether the U.S. birth rate will continue to decline sharply, as Chile's has done.
A decade ago, Chile had a relatively robust and stable total fertility rate of around 1.6, roughly the current rate in the U.S. Then Chile began plunging again to the current rate of 1.1.
"What we see as a new phenomenon are these very low fertility levels," said the U.N.'s Kantorova. "It's difficult to predict whether some of these very fast declines will be happening all over the world."
Last year, the U.S. fertility rate reached its lowest level ever recorded, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's not certain the U.S. will keep dropping, or will drop as rapidly, but Yopo Diaz thinks declines in family size are likely to continue and may accelerate in many parts of the world.
"I think this is definitely the future, a demographic transformation that's here to stay," she said. "Most countries around the world are not going to be able to turn around their fertility decline."
"I don't want kids either, not at all"
Researchers say there's another key way Chile and the U.S. are strikingly similar. A fast-growing number of women in both countries are delaying motherhood until much later in life, and in many cases, opting out of parenting altogether.
"It's not something I dream of, seeing myself as a mother; I'm just not interested," said Florencia Contreras, a 23-year-old art student. "I don't want it to sound ugly, but I feel like it's a burden."
Contreras spoke with NPR on the street in Santiago, where she was walking with friends and fellow students, Mariana Sanhueza, 21, and Macarena Lagos,19, who also voiced deep reservations about the impact motherhood might have on their lives.
"I don't want kids either, not at all," Lagos said. "Even if I were more financially stable. I don't think I'm cut out to be a mother. I also don't feel like the world is a nice place to bring someone else into. I don't like the state of the planet and the world in general."
Sanhueza was the only one of the three to voice some openness to having children, but she too said it would be "a problem" if it happened in a way that disrupted her education or career. "I think it's very much in the future to make that decision," she said.
Along with questions of affordability, many researchers believe growing freedom and autonomy for young people, particularly for young women, lies at the heart of what the U.N. report describes as an "unprecedented" shift in human behavior.
Antonio Orellana, the minister of women and gender equity in Chile's progressive government, said rapid changes playing out in Chilean society are challenging but should be viewed less as a crisis and more as the result of hard-won progress.
"We have to discuss this [demographic shift] as a government who has a commitment with the feminist ideas," Orellana told NPR. "We have now more women studying in higher education, technical [schools] and universities, than ever. And we have almost erased the teen pregnancy within the last 20 years."
These positive trends — the rise of women in education and the workplace and a rapid drop in adolescent pregnancies — also mirror what's happening in the U.S. and in many parts of the world, according to Vladimíra Kantorová, the U.N.'s chief population scientist and co-author of last month's report.
"There has been a very fast decline in adolescent childbearing in Latin America, and Chile is one example of it," Kantorová said. "I would say it's one of the major success stories in population health [worldwide] over the past three decades."
Alarm among conservatives in Chile's populist movement
But as in the U.S., many conservative leaders in Chile view these demographic changes very differently.
Chilean political parties on the right regularly portray the rapid drop in family size and the changing role of women as threats to the nation's culture and identity.
Jose Antonio Kast, a leading populist candidate in this year's presidential race, posted a campaign video celebrating what he describes as women's traditional identity as mothers.
"Mothers are essential. The mother-child bond is tremendous," he said. "A society that wants to develop well needs this emotional bond."
Hoy presentamos el #PlanRenaceChile que busca enfrentar la grave crisis de natalidad y promover el apoyo a la maternidad y la familia. Para que Chile vuelva a nacer y proyectarse hacia el futuro con más chilenos, no menos. pic.twitter.com/NlHT8ybjaW
— José Antonio Kast Rist 👍🇨🇱 (@joseantoniokast) April 22, 2025
Chile's influential Roman Catholic Church has also taken up the cause of motherhood and population. In an interview with the national TV station TVN, the Archbishop of Santiago Fernando Chomali called the country's population trends an "urgent" problem.
"The birth rate we have today is practically zero," he warned. "That needs to be addressed urgently because Chile is an aging country."
As in the U.S., conservative Chilean politicians hope to implement policies, including economic incentives, that might encourage young couples and women to have more children.
The Trump administration has introduced similar efforts in the U.S., including a savings program for babies called "Trump Accounts."
According to Yopo Diaz, these measures appear far too modest to reverse the downward trend in birthrates worldwide. She believes societies need to adapt to what appears to be a permanent change in the way women view their lives and prioritize motherhood.
"Today being a woman doesn't necessarily mean to be a mother and having a family doesn't necessarily mean to have children," she said.
Many women who spoke to NPR in Chile voiced concern about government policies that might attempt to limit their growing freedom. They also voiced doubt that government efforts to incentivize parenting would change their attitudes.
"No matter what the government does, it's still my decision, my own," said 19-year-old Macarena Lagos. "And no matter what the government does, I don't think my decision would change."
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