Fewer and fewer American adults say they will have children, study finds

When Jurnee McKay, 25, imagines having children, terrifying scenarios run through her mind: the “horror” of childbirth, the risks of pregnancy, an unstable potential partner, the exorbitant costs of child care.

The limitations of abortion care are also on her list of concerns. That’s why Ms. McKay, a nursing student in Orlando, decided to eliminate the possibility of an accidental pregnancy. But the first doctor she saw refused to remove her fallopian tubes, she said, saying she might change her mind after meeting her “soulmate.”

“For some reason,” she said, “society thinks women who don’t make life harder for themselves are crazy.”

Will talk to another doctor about sterilization next week.

Like Ms. McKay, a growing number of American adults say they are unlikely to raise children, according to study published on Thursday by Pew Research Center. When the survey was conducted in 2023, 47% of people under 50 without children said they were likely never to have children, an augment of 10 percentage points since 2018.

When asked why they did not have children in the future, 57 percent said they simply did not want to have them. Women were more likely to respond this way than men (64 percent compared with 50 percent). Other reasons included a desire to focus on other things, such as career or interests; concerns about the state of the world; concerns about the costs associated with raising a child; concerns about the environment, including climate change; and not finding the right partner.

The results are observable 2023 Pew study which found that only 26 percent of adults said having children was extremely or very essential to having a fulfilling life. The U.S. fertility rate has been degenerating for the past decade, falling to about 1.6 births per woman in 2023. That’s the lowest number on record, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This number is lower than what would be necessary to ensure generational replacement from generation to generation.

The decision to raise children is changing from “something that is just an necessary part of human life to one of many choices,” said Anastasia Berg, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine.

She and Rachel Wiseman, the magazine’s editor, surveyed nearly 400 people for their novel book, “What Are Children For?” and found that many newborn people without children were cautiously weighing the pros and cons, worried about how having a child would affect their identity and choices. Many were “averse to taking the risks of having children,” said Dr. Berg, a millennial mother of two.

The degenerating desire to have children in America should come as no surprise, says Jennifer Glass, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her researchpublished in 2021, found that about 70 percent of American mothers will be the primary breadwinner at some point in their first 18 years of motherhood. At the same time, it also showed spend more time on care than men.

“It’s a truly impossible burden,” Dr. Glass said. For some, she added, it may seem like “there’s no way out but to go on labor strike.”

Furthermore, studies have shown that in the United States, people who do not have parents are generally happier than those who do. Dr. Glass’s 2016 studywhich examined differences in happiness levels across 22 countries found that the disparity was greater in the United States than in any other industrialized country.

In the Pew study, a majority of those surveyed said that not having children made it easier for them to buy things they wanted, devote time to interests and save for the future.

For some, having children is simply not an option: 13 percent of people under 50 surveyed by Pew said they did not plan to have children due to infertility, and 11 percent said their partner or spouse did not want children.

The survey also included responses from adults aged 50 and older who had no children. For them, the main reason they didn’t have children was that they simply didn’t happen.

“I never made a conscious decision not to have children,” said Therese Shechter, a 62-year-old Toronto filmmaker whose latest documentary, “I Spoke to Childless Women in the United States and Canada About Reproductive Freedom and the Pressure to Have Children,” tells the BBC.My so-called selfish life.”

In her case, she had a list of things she wanted to achieve, but becoming a mother wasn’t on it. Still, she assumed it would happen one day.

“AND I just always felt like it was something hanging over my head,” she said. As she approached her tardy 30s, “I realized, no, I don’t really have to do this.”

Trey Simmons, 54, admitted that the fact that he doesn’t have children in his hometown of Augusta, Georgia, makes him a rarity.

“Most people think I’m crazy,” he said. After he divorced his wife—she didn’t want kids either—he had trouble finding someone else to date who didn’t already have kids. Eventually, he met someone online who lived in Detroit and was planning to move there.

“I just never liked kids,” he added.

Studies have shown that men, on average, have fewer qualms about parenting. Earlier this year, another Bench test found that among newborn childless adults, men — not women — were more likely to want to become parents someday.

Corinne Datchi, a William Paterson University professor of psychology and couples therapist said that in her private practice, she is seeing more and more women in their 30s who are starting to wonder whether they should have children at all, while their partners seem more open to the idea.

There is a “level of distrust,” she said, where women are skeptical that their partners would be willing to make the same sacrifices they do to aid raise their families. But there is also fear of losing self-esteem and worry about what pregnancy and childbirth will do to their bodies.

Ms McKay, who has already made the decision to have her fallopian tubes removed, said she would be relieved not to have to think about the consequences of getting pregnant and raising children.

Undergoing the procedure “will be a weight off my shoulders,” she said. “I think I’ll feel at peace.”