Why Are So Many Americans Choosing to Not Have Children?
It’s probably not selfishness, experts say. Even young adults who want children see an increasing number of obstacles.
For years, some conservatives have framed the declining fertility rate of the United States as an example of eroding family values, a moral catastrophe in slow motion.
JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, recently came under fire for saying in 2021 that the nation was run by “childless cat ladies” who “hate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous D.C. and New York status games.”
Last year, Ashley St. Clair, a Fox News commentator, described childless Americans this way: “They just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night and going to Beyoncé concerts. It’s this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace of fulfillment and having a family.”
Researchers who study trends in reproductive health see a more nuanced picture. The decision to forgo having children is most likely not a sign that Americans are becoming more hedonistic, they say. For one thing, fertility rates are declining throughout the developed world.
Rather, it indicates that larger societal factors — such as rising child care costs, increasingly expensive housing and slipping optimism about the future — have made it feel more untenable to raise children in the United States.
Well, of course it's not selfishness. Having children is a purely selfish act, because who else are you reproducing for? You can't do something for someone that doesn't exist, and bringing existence to someone who hasn't asked for it, knowing what the world looks like, doesn't strike me as a kindness. So who else is benefiting? The capitalist machine?
But the world really needs another little copy of me running around because I'm so unique and wonderful! /s
but i am 👁️👄👁️
Well, I mean SOME people have to reproduce at least…
The corporations need more worker meat for the grinder! How dare you selfishly keep that from them!
The mines are yearning for the children
What about "I just don't want one." is that not a legitimate line of thought? That was what I based my decision on. I have never understood why the default state was marriage and then have a family. I can tell you that me and my childless wife are family.
I agree. The opening line is an insult to me. Why would choosing not to have children be selfish? Forcing someone to live a whole ass life because you want a family is the selfish thing to do, not the other way around.
Agreed, I don’t know why people don’t understand that “I don’t want one” is a completely legitimate reason to not have one by itself. Add to that any level of depth you’d like to choose from financial, climate or political reasons to there just being too many people in the world already and it further legitimizes it, but “I just don’t want one” is and should be completely valid on its own.
Many people simply don't understand the idea of not wanting one. I moved to a more conservative area shortly before I got married, and after I got married I got all the usual questions about kids to which I replied “lol no”. Then I was asked why I even got married. Bro, if I wanted kids, I'd have them and I don't need to get married to do it.
The main question seems to be why is the birth rate declining. Presumably people not wanting kids have existed during all times. But even if we assume that there are more people per capita who don't want kids, the question persists, why is that the case, and how much of the decline is attributable to it.
When women were almost always home makers, children were how they'd find fulfillment. Now they can have fulfillment from working careers. At least, this is one of the main reasons I've heard about long standing trends in birth rate decline. They predict that the human population on earth will peak between 11 and 12 billion and kind of just stay there.
This causes panic because Capitalism demands that everything must continue to grow, eternally.
Considering we evolved to pass our genes, this is weird
I find that the people who spout so much about passing on their genes, or passing on their legacy or keeping the bloodline going. Are the people who you would least like to see pass on their genes. I find it to be the height of narcissism.
Good thing we are no longer mindless animals and have to submit to our base functions.
I bet if the billionaires shared just a bit more we could afford to have more kids and they wouldn’t be looking at their labor force drying up…
No.. that couldn't be it.
/s
There's the option of importing cheap workforce. It has been tried before.. /s
You forgot to add... While that imported labour is scared they will get deported so they don't complain they are underpaid or taken advantage of. Just how the corporation's want it
weird how all those tax cuts for rich people lead to them going on real estate purchasing sprees, making housing unaffordable
Meanwhile the rest of us pay more in taxes
I just downloaded the raw data from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CBRT.IN and ploted it in this graph for the countries I was interested in:
The USA is - according to the data - nothing special in this regard. It's even positioned best of all the countries with the flattest downwards curve. Just look at South Korea :D
Wow, what happened to South Korea? I heard it was bad but I never realized they were worse than Japan.
It's a combination of many factors. It's so extremely expensive to have children here because of how the society is structured and how competitive everything is. If you can't afford to pay for after school for them to go to every day to and learn additional things they need but don't get tought at public school, they have no chance to get into a reasonable University and end up with a shitty life.
Another thing is the huge divide between men and women which is getting worse by the day. Men are bitching that women don't want to date and marry them while not helping with the children or house work at all. So women don't want to deal with all this shit alone and either get married to very rich guys who can provide a easy life for them or don't at all and concentrate on their career instead.
The government has poured in unbelievable amounts of money to try to fix it, but nothing is working so far.
I remember seeing a YouTube video that said South Korea's culture combines the worst parts of East and West. The impossibly high standards of perfection of the East and the crass consumerism of the West, where you must have the most expensive things and look like a movie star or you're looked down on. I don't know how true it actually is, though.
When it comes to dating it is certainly quite true. One of the ways to get away from it is for men to find someone from a poorer Asian country and for women to also look even more west.
They’re not. Higher birth rates are not better when population levels are as high as they are.
Worldwide population is different than the population of specific areas. The country will go extinct in less than 100 years if they continue this trend.
https://xkcd.com/605/
South Korea is also an interesting one because, IIRC, it's currently in the middle of a social upheaval over the treatment of women and there is a movement to avoid dating/relationships in general amongst younger women.
I wonder how much of this is caused by microplastics in testicles?
Probably very little because most of them who want children can get help by modern medicine.
Because children are expensive, a ton of work, and the world is dying.
Pick one or all.
Bruh I can't afford to support myself let alone more mouths to feed. Children lol
Bank accounts are empty, and the air is full of smoke.
the car's on fire
and there's no driver at the wheel
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
and a dark wind blows
NGL, line 3 looking more appealing every day.
We are trapped in the belly of the beast, and the beast is starving to death.
Who are these articles for?
Because it's been the same reasons for a decade and the idiots who keep asking still aren't reading them.
Boomers who just don’t get it
Looking at some families around me, I would say it's Boomers that are estranged from their own children and hope grandchildren will somehow fix that. And they are not completely wrong, as having children is such a bad economic proposition that it basically forces people to come back and beg their parents for support, but it's all very one sided... typical Boomer mindset.
Did you just summarized the first episode of Gilmore Girl? 😉
Well, that's probably why the show is popular 🤷♂️
Capitalists who need a new generation of workers to exploit.
I see two issues here. One is how expensive shit is. Having their own kids is the least of my kids' concerns for their future. They are concentrating on being able to afford to leave the house after college, and start their own lives. When it is so hard for young people to start out, they're not going to be motivated to have kids unless it's forced upon them....
.... which brings me to my second point:
Men these days are super cringey. Half the country views Trump as the Alpha Male, a serial sexual predator. Politicians (who are predominately white and male) are all up in women's business about their fertility. Is it any wonder why so many young women identify as non-straight these days? And why the traditional gender roles hold no appeal for them? Women have been getting the short end of the stick for millenia, and it's only recently where they have had enough agency to not participate if they are not being treated well.
You want women to have more babies? Stop treating them like shit, and manage the costs of everything so that having kids isn't an economic death sentence.
Doesn't this imply they would be straight if men acted differently? I'm not sure a mass version of the "oh she's not really a lesbian, she just hasn't met the right man" thing is really the answer here
I don't think that you meant to imply this and the rest of your comment seems reasonable to me. That bit just stuck out
You're right, I'm looking for the right phrasing here.
It's not that these kids who identify as queer are temporarily embarrassed straight people who haven't found their soul mates. But if you are a young woman these days, and all the men you encounter are incel brats, it's quite easy to decide you want nothing to do with them. Women can do just fine on their own now, they don't need a man for validation. Some of them might discover that, for them, sexuality is a spectrum, and they'll be fine either way, but if all the men they encounter don't respect them then that leads them in the other direction. Does that mean they would be 100% straight if they found a man who was compatible? They may not feel that way, but very few external observers would describe a woman who is with a man as anything other than "straight".
What I'm trying to do is point out that all of these self-described "Alpha Males" who complain about the fertility rate are themselves the problem, because they are so insufferable that women would rather be with anyone else than with them.
Nope. They want to treat women like shit and still force them to have babies. Once their female children are 12/13, they also want to marry them.
I am quite sure that a Trump presidency would empower the Supreme Court to allow child marriage.
gestures broadly
Half of all Americans have less than $500
4 out of 5 Americans have less than $5000.
Cheap diapers are 50c each and you need a minimum of 5 a day, more often 10, so half of all Americans cannot afford one month of basic child care(diapers, food, checkups)
1 out of 5 Americans have enough money to pay for the bare essentials so a baby can survive for more than a couple months.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/24/how-much-money-americans-have-in-savings.html
I love how the Republicans are blaming societal causes when in reality it's because of fucked up a economy due to businesses price gouging the fuck out of everyone while also not paying employees a living wage, not giving raises to keep up with inflation, and more economic certainty. They don't realize that not everyone is rich like they are. lmao
They know. They want a desperate and exploitable peasantry.
remember when the 40hrs week made sense? gradpa could feed a family, have the life depicted in The Simpsons. that time is long gone and everybody too scared to change anything.
Why have a child so they can grow up to fight in the water wars or die of famine during ecological collapse?
I guess they dont see the the sin of knowingly condemning someone to that life. People should only have children if they are confident they can offer them stable lives.
Can't afford one. Jobs don't pay enough to afford one. They're annoying. They're shit machines. I prefer to have fun in life and do what I like more than take care of a kid.
Yeah man, Ashley wasserface was pretty much right, aside from the drinking, statistically.
The future isn't looking too good with all the rich fucks fucking the planet over. Everything is stupid expensive now, by the time you work and pay for childcare you're better off staying at home. It's really tough to get a house. It's pretty depressing what has become the norm in this country thanks to the ultra rich. It's about time to eat.
What a dumb, corporate, self-important headline. And limiting it to the United States is a particularly craven ploy to pump the political horse race.
NY Times special.
I no longer live in the US in part for reasons I wouldn't have a child there.
Because of many of those, I left. The secondary reasons for not having my own biological kids are some medical issues I have and, by the time I was stable enough, I was already coming into my 40s. I had considered adoption, but ultimately decided not to do that, either.
Because the earth is on fire and having kids is a good way to guarantee another human starves to death while having heat stroke?
$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Everything is expensive now, housing, food, etc. How can you raise children in this era?
Every time I talk to a friend with children it sounds like they’re trying to stop Woodstock ‘99, and I’m too tired for that.
Oh... Well no money and general non-response to actual nazis to start
Because some people actually care about children? Instead of pretending to care and immediately abandoning that position as soon as the child is born?
I’d suspect there’s a high correlation with better birth control options.
In the 90s, women had to be diligent to take a pill every day. Hell, I can’t even be trusted to take a pain pill when I have a headache.
I can’t tell you how many times an SO and I had a scare because she forgot to take a pill for a few days. I think this is doubly so when you’re in your late teens/early 20s and still don’t have a good understanding of risk.
Now, women can get an injection that lasts 3-6 months, or an implant that works for years.
So we’ve lowered our risk significantly and now it’s more skewed towards family planning. I think that’s a great thing - let the people who want to have kids have them, let the rest live out their lives how they envision it.
But family planning is tough and there are important factors that others have mentioned in their comments here. Money, opportunity, timing, support. I didn’t start having kids until my 40s, but if things had lined up better, I certainly would have preferred to be a Dad a little sooner.
Another aspect of the birth control part is that women can control their fertility through their teens, and then through their 20s, and then through their 30s, and so on. Many of them do so until children make sense financially (as in your case), but there's a subgroup there who will delay and delay and delay long enough to ask themselves, "Wait, do I really want children?" Very few women have had that opportunity during the history of our species, and there's a significant number of them who honestly assess it and make the decision not to. My wife is one of them. She was 100% on the "I want to be a mom" train as a teenager and college student, but as she explored the world and learned to live on her own she got the chance to deeply reflect about why she wanted to be a mom, and the reasons just didn't line up. Birth control really is a game changer because it puts the power of fertility squarely in the woman's hands for the first time really ever. Before now procreation depended entirely on the influence and whims of men.
The American attitude that children are a lifelong punishment for having sex, and no one should ever expend any effort or a cent of money on a child they didn't personally fuck into existence?
I have better things to do
People can barely afford what is considered essential these days. Jobs are hard to find, but no one wants to work. Layoffs happening in every large business to cut costs. Profit margins and infinite growth have become congressional priority. Owning your own home is a dream becoming more and more intangible. They make these articles every so often and they're often disconnected with the struggles of the lower and middle classes, asking a question with obvious answers. Most people without kids are a few paychecks away from bankruptcy and you want them to be excited about parenthood?
I wonder if Vance checks for change before he fucks the couch. Would be painful to be mid stroke a find a quarter, I imaginem
I'm not gonna argue with this.
For reference, I turned twenty in 1997. Initially it was about money. But then it became apparent, as so many of my friends were having kids, that not having kids was much more fun and liberating. Yes, I am selfish.
I would imagine that my combination of experiences (financial struggles > self-realization) isn't as unique today as it was twenty years ago.
Moreover, I think it's worth discussing the ramifications of over/under population. Until we find a magical self-sustaining power source for the planet, and maybe not even then, too many people on this globe will cause it to reject us. On the other hand, a shrinking population means pending economic disaster. These next generations are going to have to choose between a livable planet or economic security. Err, I mean our global corporate overlords are going to give us no choice but to make the planet less livable.
I've always been confused by these conversations though. Aren't people who are having kids doing so because they want to, whatever want might mean to them? Fulfilling just seems like another way to pursue fulfillment/happiness or whatever it is that individuals pursue.
When my wife and I chose to have kids, we enjoyed it. We derive fulfillment and satisfaction out of raising kids. Yeah it's frustrating at times, and you do have trade-offs, but we did it because we wanted to, to feel happy/fulfilled. We didn't start a lifelong journey to support children into adulthood out of some weird sense of patriotism or something. Anyone doing that is weird.
Sure - you do you. I respect the choices and priorities you and your wife share. I didn't say I'm making "the right" choice and others are wrong.
In the long run, I'm envious of the relationships parents build with their children. There's nothing more rewarding.
I'm the kid who ate the marshmallow when left alone. You're probably the one who waited five minutes for two.
I don't think the other commentter was disagreeeing with you or trying to compare. They said that they chose to have children for the same reasons you chose not to. (I am also a parent who chose kids for the fulfillment/happiness and not as some weird effort to build political power or something.)
You choosing not to have kids is perfectly normal and fine in my book. It is fucking strange to pressure other people into having children.
I think both the previous commenter and I are trying to back you up more than trying to argue you made a wrong choice.
Like the other replier noted, you misunderstand my point. People having kids because it's what they want isn't selfless anymore than choosing not to have kids is selfish.
Shrinking population will be the least of our problem, in fact the opposite will happen (despite globally shrinking population). Huge areas in the global south will become uninhabitable rather soon, and if we don't want to be complicit in a global genocide we will have to take some of them in. This will more than off-set any local population decline and we will rather have to scramble to provide affordable housing to all.
Right. But also... As the population shrinks (in addition to AI / robotization), we're on track for a global economic catastrophe.
When businesses can no longer grow, due to people not having enough money and there being fewer consumers, the stock markets will (slowly) crash. As that happens, corporations will scramble to keep afloat. As major employers struggle to employ workers, the unemployment rate rises. Combined: this means less tax revenue, less social services, less economic prosperity. People complain about inflation but deflation is far worse when the population is already in a decline. Governments will scramble to inject free money into the economy. Bonds could become worthless.
The global economy that's been growing for the past fifty years may crumble in the next fifty years. People may need to rebuild smaller local economies.
It's actually very interesting. As the population has grown and technology has put the entire planet in the palm of our hands, we as a civilization have grown more apart from each other - instead choosing to reside in the bubbles of our choosing. If the population declines and larger economies struggle, perhaps we'll need to go back to a time with mom and pop shops and learn to be more neighborly.
In the near term, I think the economic impact would be far greater than ecological impact. Though I think the ecological impact certainly may have a more long term role to play in humanity's story.
But, I'm not an expert in either of these things. I welcome any source materials studying the matter. I would imagine that some one / group has compiled a formula to define the perfect equilibrium for the planet - combining population growth, employment rates, productivity rates, energy consumption, depletion of natural resources, etc. I'd venture to guess we passed that point around 2010.
There is nothing selfish about not having children. Ask any parent why they wanted children, and the answer is often "I just wanted them", "otherwise, who would take care of me when I'm old?", or "I wanted a little version of myself". All selfish.
Of course, so many people have children accidentally without actively wanting them that I think a lot of reasons are made up after the child has already been birthed.
I've had similar conversations in the past. I think there's some nuance to it and everyone has their own prerogatives.
I suppose a truly selfless act is one where you don't expect anything in return. There's little guarantee you'll get anything from being a parent other than maybe pride. You're investing in a future that may not exist. You're dumping everything you have and even what you don't have (ie, second mortgage for college tuition) into something you can only hope will generate a small amount of future benefit for yourself. Mostly, it's hoping that you've done the best you possibly can to make someone else's life the best it possibly can be.
Not having children means every investment or action I take has little impact on anyone but myself. If I fuck up, if I go to jail, if I can't pay my bills, if I'm barely able to care for myself (let alone another person), it's all about me. Conversely, if I want the lottery, if I take up new hobbies and interests, if I choose to live a lavish or minimalist life is all about me. I have no one to worry about – therefore it's, by definition, a selfish life.
For my entire life, I have the choice to be selfish or selfless. I can choose to spend a year living in isolation or working for a food bank or busting my ass for my employer or traveling the world. Not having a child means I have no restrictions to making these choices at any given moment. Every benefit or detriment or opportunity or restriction that exists in my world is based on my own previous actions and choices. I have no one to consider going forward. I have no one to blame but myself.
Your second paragraph implies that parents experience no joy or other not-selfless feelings as a result of having the child. That is a reward.
And you're simply logically incorrect to say that your actions don't impact others if you don't have children. I can't even begin to imagine where you came up with that idea.
Because kids are not fun. People wanna have life.
Money.
People in central Africa must be swimming in it..
I love my niece but fuck that I'm not doing that full time.
$
The same poeple who wanted to ban having anyone else pay off kids school lunch debt, besides the parents, are the same people who get offended when we aren't popping out kids. The same poeple who want zero maternity leave and zero prenatal support act like we are the worst of the worst. Don't have children you can't afford, no state welfare for you! So when we were like okay we won't have kids they are all shocked Pikachu face.
I have a child and I'd be the first to recommend not having one. It's expensive, it wrecked me emotionally and physically, and I worry every day about what kind of world my kid will grow up into.
But all those things are worth it in the end to me because I really wanted to be a parent. My kid is an absolute treasure to me and I put up with the suffering because I do genuinely love parenting and love seeing him grow up. If I was any less enthusiastic about the process going in, I would have either run away or killed myself by now. That's how demoralizing and traumatic parenting can be. Granted I have a special needs kid but so do probably 10% of parents so do you want to roll those dice?
All that aside, the fact is that parenting these days is filled with societal obstacles. With both parents working, you're rationing sick days and constantly running out, leaving no time for vacation or personal days off. This leaves the option of either taking unpaid days off or reducing one's working hours. Since no one is home doing housework all day, working parents spend their evenings and nights doing housework. If you need to run an errand or take the kid to a doctor's appointment, that comes out of either your paid work time or your free time. Childcare is both expensive and hard to get, with wait-lists for daycares in some cities of several months. And once your kid is in public school, you have to find after school care, which is not guaranteed for every kid at every school.
And don't even get me started about summer. Three months of cobbled-together summer camps and asking/begging family members and friends to watch your kid when their busy schedules permit. If your kid has special needs or requires trained caregivers, you are out of luck.
These are fixable problems, but they require massive government-subsidized investment in childcare and parental leave structures and the government is not doing that. Childcare salaries are so low that the supply of daycare teachers is basically dried up. Same with public school teachers and afterschool caregivers. Why work as an afterschool teacher when you can be an independent nanny and make twice as much per hour? As for parental leave, there is no requirement that parental leave cover anything beyond the bare bones of the time needed to give birth, leaving most new parents to burn through their entire year's worth of sick time during their babies first month of life when there is a doctor's appointment just about every week. Then blow through it again next year when the kid gets sick twice a month in daycare. My kid is six years old and this is the first year I haven't run out of sick days before June.
Our society was designed for families with at least one full-time caregiver, and now that is basically impossible but the system has not been updated. This game is not designed for us. So why would anyone choose to play?
After just putting two through college it’s pretty simple: They’re fucking expensive !!!
NO STABILITY.. landlords can raise rent as much as they want.. And houses are out of reach of most people
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