American women today are having fewer children than their mothers and grandmothers did.
They also have more opportunities and life choices.
"I don't really feel like I got strong messages about what my life should look like beyond college graduation," said Caroline Brown, 33, of Charlotte, N.C.. "I was very much under the impression that the world was kind of my oyster."
Like a growing number of younger women, she's unsure if she wants children. And she's not unusual; the U.S. birthrate now is about half of what it was in the 1960s.
Caroline's grandmother, Barbara Briscoe, 93, says during her childbearing years, there wasn't a big question about what she was going to do with her life.
"I think it was just accepted at that time that girls were going to grow up and be mothers. I mean, careers were not even discussed, so I don't think I ever thought anything except that I would be a mother," she recalled.
There was a traditional model for what men and women did, and most people, including her, followed that script.
"I was happy with it, because it was all I knew," Barbara said.
Barbara had her children in the 1960s, a time when things were rapidly shifting for American women.
Her daughter Cynthia Briscoe Brown, 65, says she was part of a generation that grew up receiving messages about what women's lives should be, that were constantly in flux.
"In the early years, I think we were programmed to have very similar adult lives to our mothers," she said while sitting on a sofa between her mother and daughter at her home in Atlanta recently. "But as we got a little older, particularly into my teens, we began being told that we could have it all - and that we should expect to have it all."
After college Cynthia enrolled in law school, where she says roughly a fourth of her class was female.
"And so the running joke was you had to be twice as good to get in, if you were a woman," she said. "In some ways, that's the story of my adult life: of being told that I could have everything, but then having to be twice as good just to stay even."
But even with more professional opportunities than her mother had, the idea of marriage and family life still appealed to Cynthia.
"I don't know that I thought, you know, 'I'll have a girl and a boy, or or I'll have four kids.' But yes, I think I always hoped that that would happen for me," she said.
Cynthia met her husband, Jim, in college. And they did have a girl and a boy; her daughter Caroline was born just before their first anniversary.
Cynthia says being part of that "transitional generation" meant both she and her husband had to figure out how to be a team — without a clear roadmap.
"Just as I was working out the place of my place as a woman in the world, in society, men in my generation were having to do the same thing," she said. "Because the traditional model of man as breadwinner, and woman being there to hand him his slippers and his pipe and his hot meal and the kids, was what they had grown up with."
Even with Jim's support, Cynthia says balancing a demanding legal career with motherhood was difficult. She remembers trying an important case when Caroline was just a newborn.
"I was not willing to tell local counsel that I had had a baby six weeks earlier, because I was afraid that he would think less of me as an attorney," Cynthia says. "I remember thinking about that and saying, 'I can't admit that I can't do this.'"
So, she would secretly slip away to pump breastmilk during breaks in the trial. On one particular day, she frantically rushed to pick up Caroline after a long day in court.
"And I walked in the door, and you were screaming because you were hungry," Cynthia told her daughter. "I was two hours late, three hours late getting back, and I remember in that moment thinking, 'Is this really worth it?'"
For Caroline herself, having children has never felt like a high priority.
She followed her parents' footsteps and went to Davidson College in the Charlotte area, where she now lives and works as a project manager in the food service industry.
Caroline says her focus has been less on family life and more getting an education and establishing a career.
"I think as a millennial, the 'follow your passion' kind of messaging was really strong," Caroline said. "I don't know that I really thought much about having a family later on. I know some little girls dream of that, but I don't really remember thinking about it that much."
When she met the man who's now her husband, Caroline says she wasn't necessarily looking for anything serious, and she felt it was important to be clear about what she did and didn't want from a long-term relationship.
"I made it a practice that by the third date, I found a way to work into casual conversation that I did not know if I wanted kids," she said.
They were both on the same page, and they're both still uncertain.
"I think it really comes down to neither of us have ever felt a strong pull to be parents," Caroline said. "I think from our perspective, it doesn't really feel achievable to have it all like my parents did in today's world."
Caroline and her husband worry about the costs that come with raising a child, especially the cost of housing and the impact of climate change on future generations.
Her mom, Cynthia, hears Caroline's concern about the state of the world. But, she thinks life has always had its challenges — in every generation.
"We had Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis and Watergate. 911 happened for them when she was the same age that my mother was at Pearl Harbor," Cynthia said. "So I think the idea that there's an ideal time to have a child and there's a perfect world to bring a child into is a fantasy and maybe a fallacy."
So much has changed since Barbara was born, during the Great Depression. But she says when she looks at the choices her daughter and granddaughter have made, she's amazed.
"I'm very proud of both of them. And I think they both have done what they wanted to do in life," she said. "And I think that today women have so many opportunities to decide what they want to do."
Cynthia wants Caroline to make her own choices about having children, but, she added, having Caroline in her life has been one of her greatest joys.
"I would regret today not having children. My relationship with them as adults has been a completely unanticipated delight and gift," Cynthia said. "And I can't imagine living without that richness."
Caroline is still thinking it all through, and she knows it's a big decision.
"I expect that there's probably not a right or wrong answer to this question for us. I think it's just different lives. And I think in both versions there will be moments where we regret the other possibility and there'll be moments we're really glad we made the decision we did."
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