More women in Kenya are navigating motherhood solo as the latest data reveals a notable rise in births to single parents. While married couples still account for the vast majority of newborns, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) Economic Survey report shows that 168,158 children were born to single mothers in 2025 – a significant jump from the 148,657 recorded the previous year.
“The proportion of registered births to single mothers increased to 14.7 percent in 2025 from 13.4 percent in 2024,” the KNBS report states, with 1,144,847 births recorded last year.
The statistics highlight a shifting landscape in family dynamics. Although married women delivered 974,154 babies last year, their overall share of total births dipped slightly. This group represented 85.1 per cent of all registered births in 2025, down from 86.3 per cent in 2024. Despite maintaining their dominance in the data, the margin of children born within a marriage effectively decreased by 1.2 percent over the twelve-month period.
Other marital categories remained statistically small and stable. Divorced and widowed mothers each accounted for just 0.1 percent of the year’s registered births. Meanwhile, cases involving unknown or unstated marital status saw a minor decline, falling from 0.2 per cent in 2024 to 0.1 per cent in 2025.
Kenya’s birth rate continues to climb, with the total number of registered births rising by 3.1 percent in 2025. This growth coincides with a strong preference for clinical care, as health facilities handled 98.6 per cent of all registered deliveries last year. This trend has remained remarkably steady since 2023, underscoring the near-total reliance on professional medical settings for childbirth across the country.
Maternal age patterns show that young women in their early twenties remain the primary drivers of these figures. Mothers aged 20–24 accounted for approximately one-third of all births between 2021 and 2025, consistently representing the largest demographic.
Other age groups also saw subtle shifts in their contributions to the national total.
“Proportion of births to teen mothers aged 15–19 slightly increased from 11.1 percent in 2024 to 11.5 percent in 2025, while proportion of births to mothers aged 25–29 also rose from 25.2 percent to 26.4 percent over the same period,” the report indicates.
Kenya’s birth records continue to show a consistent tilt toward male newborns, with 588,338 boys (51.4 per cent) and 556,492 girls (48.6 per cent) arriving in 2025. The KNBS notes that this distribution mirrors the patterns seen in 2024, maintaining a steady sex ratio of 106 males for every 100 females. Interestingly, the data also captured a rise in intersex births, which nearly doubled from 9 cases in 2024 to 17 cases in 2025.
The landscape for child adoptions shifted significantly last year, reaching a total of 472 registrations. For the first time in several years, girls led the adoption figures, making up 55.1 per cent of the total. Female adoptions saw a sharp climb from 166 in 2024 to 260 in 2025, while male adoptions grew more modestly, rising from 170 to 212 over the same period.
This change in 2025 marks a notable departure from historical trends. Between 2021 and 2025, male adoptions typically dominated the records in four out of those five years. The broader review period shows that while 2023 remains the peak year for adoptions with 473 cases, 2022 saw the lowest activity with just 297 registrations.
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