First of two parts
Rubie Montejo was 24 years old and financially struggling as a call center agent when she first considered not having children.
“I was questioning a lot of my decisions and what direction to take with my career,” she said in a mix of English and Filipino. “And then, I thought to myself, I don't think I wanna involve another human being in this life when I have so many questions and confusion myself.”
She eventually told her mother about her decision and was met with unexpected support. However, things were different outside her home in the province.
Her neighbors voiced familiar warnings — cautioning Montejo that she would face regret, solitude, and lack of support from her would-have-been children in her old age.
“[Not having children] wasn't that normal before, especially if you grew up in the province as I did. Women were expected to, you know, marry at a certain age and then bear children after or before their 30s,” Montejo recalled.
But with her mother backing her choice, she gradually gained confidence. Now a 33-year-old, single, social media strategist, Montejo has fully embraced a child-free lifestyle.
“I could imagine [then] that it would be so much more difficult if a child were involved [in my life],” she said.
32-year-old Bea (not her real name) decided to have one child with her husband of three years and plans to stop there, despite relatives urging them to have one more so the child feels less lonely.
She explained that restructuring their existing savings would be a hassle if they had a second child. “It brings more happiness to be able to provide the comfortable life you can give your child,” Bea said in a mix of English and Filipino.
Although the Philippines remains within the working-age demographic range, its population has begun to resemble those of Asian neighbors such as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, which are already aging.
Compared to these countries, the Philippines remains in transition. The Commission on Population and Development (CPD) expects the country to become an aging society by 2028, when Filipinos aged 65 and above reach 7% of the population.
The World Health Organization classifies a country as an “aging society” when the proportion of older people reaches this threshold.
Jose Ramon Albert, senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute of Development Studies (PIDS), said this new pattern is gradually displacing the longstanding concern of overpopulation.
“Philippine population policy was built around one fear: that population growth would outrun the economy's capacity to feed, educate, and employ people. The [data] tells us that the era of high fertility is over,” he told Rappler.
Change in socioeconomic status
Myline Quiray, Information Management and Communications Division chief of CPD, enumerated changing marriage patterns, increasing contraceptive use, declining number of desired children, and child health and survival as some of the top reasons for the trend.
However, she pointed to women’s socioeconomic status as the main driver.
“They're employed, they're educated — so the delay in fertility is happening,” she said.
Albert noted that as women have begun to outperform men in schools and stepped into diverse workforce roles, marriage and parenthood may become lower priorities for them.
Jireh Ramos, a 29-year-old law student who has been married for five years, opted for a child-free lifestyle to focus on higher education.
“I'm very intentional with the life I'm building right now. I have a career, I have law school, I have relationships, and I have a lot of things I want to experience in my life,” she said.
Ramos also feels content with their current routine at home: she studies for hours in a separate work room from her husband’s, shoots videos as a content creator on TikTok with 61,000 followers, takes breaks, and catches up with her husband at the end of the day.
Besides the need to focus on their own economic well-being, women also face pressure from rising household living costs, said Albert.
“Can you really blame people for deciding against having children or maybe deciding just to have one child instead of, like, three — when everything is getting more expensive while [salaries] in the Philippines do not keep up with inflation?” said Montejo.
Ramos also echoed the sentiment about costs and said, “Kids, in this economy, right? It’s perfectly valid. It really is expensive [to raise a child].”
Evolving marriage patterns, social media influence
The Philippines also saw a shifting pattern in marriage — or rather, a decreasing need for it.
In the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) 2025 National Demographic and Health Survey, 42.7% of women aged 15-49 and in childbearing age have never married.
Albert noted that family formation itself has changed — couples now delay marriage, do not marry at all, or cohabit instead. “For many women, marriage is no longer an economic necessity, and childbearing is a choice weighed against other goals,” he said.
In 2020, common-law or live-in marital arrangements among households rose to 14.7% in 2020 from 9.2% in 2015.
As more opportunities open for women, Albert added that entering into marriage could also become less appealing without a “legal exit” such as divorce, so women would rather explore other forms of relationships.
Social media has also broadened exposure to alternative life paths centered on education, career, travel, or other forms of family formation through influencers.
Like Ramos, Montejo also does content on TikTok and openly discusses her childfree lifestyle. In one reel, she talked about the risk of passing down health conditions to children as a valid reason not to have kids.
On the other side of it, she pointed out that online platforms also harbor negative perspectives. She pointed to parents who "openly talk about how they wish they didn't have children."
“You see people talk about it openly like, ‘oh, this is the worst decision I've ever made in my life,’ and that's gonna influence you for sure… we didn't have that before,” she added.
Gaps remain
While the national fertility rate dropped to an all-time low, regional data still paint a different picture.
CPD’s Quiray admitted gaps in expanding education, family planning, and contraceptive use in the country’s poorer households and far-flung areas as possible explanations for the disconnect.
Minimum wage still varies per region, with Metro Manila having a nominal minimum wage of P695 while BARMM, Caraga, Bicol Region, and others are still at the P400 mark as of March 2026.
Experts noted that wage disparities make it more difficult for families in lower-income regions to afford raising children compared to reduction in highly-urbanized areas.
Albert stressed that empowering women in these areas to make informed family planning decisions requires expanding their access to healthcare, education, and jobs. “Invest early and where the children are,” Albert said.
Investing in women's capabilities
A falling fertility rate is not necessarily a bad thing, said the PIDS fellow, as it proves that the Philippines has successfully curbed overpopulation and is taking bold steps for women in society.
Instead of mitigating the decline, Quiray said the CPD is focusing on further increasing women’s capabilities.
“More than the human numbers, it's really the quality of life that matters… We cannot dictate or mandate Filipinos to have children or not to have children,” she said.
The CPD, under the current Philippine Population and Development Plan of Action, listed eight multisectoral objectives, including empowering women in the workforce, promoting healthy aging, responsible parenthood, and others.
When presented with more paths in life, Montejo and Ramos said women are freer to choose a lifestyle that suits them, whether or not with a child.
For Bea, motherhood does not dictate the limits of her potential. “Women today have so many choices regarding what they want to do, aside from being a mother.” (To be concluded) – with reports from Jake Gomez / Rappler.com
NEXT: As Asia grays, can an aging Philippines avoid its neighbors' fate?
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