Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children
#2It's hard to tell if these studies show that people want fewer children, or if people want fewer children as they age (ie their ideal number declines). It would be also really interesting to see if this is a form of goal post shifting where people who do not have children (for example procrastinate) move the goal post to tell themselves they succeeded at what they _actually_ wanted.
That would take longitudinal studies and to break people into cohorts of how many they wanted at various ages, and how many they infact had. Then see if those who had N children wanted more or less (and was it more or less than their initial predictions, and are they happy with their choices)...
The little bit of googling I've found suggests mostly want as many or more children than they have, meaning having 0 children is a dominated strategy compared to at least having some, if not more than you currently already do -- up to a point.
Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children
#3It's hard to tell if these studies show that people want fewer children, or if people want fewer children as they age (ie their ideal number declines). It would be also really interesting to see if this is a form of goal post shifting where people who do not have children (for example procrastinate) move the goal post to tell themselves they succeeded at what they _actually_ wanted. That would take longitudinal studi…
University of Michigan did a recent study that shows intentional childfree cohort at at least around 20% in Michigan [1]. Would be super interesting to expand these studies out across wider populations.
Somewhat related, about 40-50% annually of both US [2] and global [3] pregnancies are unintended. How many are unintended and unwanted would also be an interesting datapoint. This would provide signal as to folks who perhaps wanted to remain childfree but didn't because of circumstances.
[1] https://www.michiganradio.org/health/2022-07-27/1-in-5-adult...
[2] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-u...
[3] https://www.unfpa.org/press/nearly-half-all-pregnancies-are-...
Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children
#4Almost no one can buy a house, of course they want no children.
Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children
#5Almost no one can buy a house, of course they want no children.
Why is buying a house a prerequisite? Renting is perfectly reasonable. Billions of people happily have kids never being able to afford to buy a house.
Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children
#6Almost no one can buy a house, of course they want no children.
Bought a house a couple of years ago, don't want children.
Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children
#7Almost no one can buy a house, of course they want no children.
Why is buying a house a prerequisite? Renting is perfectly reasonable. Billions of people happily have kids never being able to afford to buy a house.
That was a round about way of saying people can’t afford kids so they don’t consider it a life choice
Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children
#8Priced out of having children
Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children
#9There was a significant dip in birthrates during the 1920s.
Twenty years later something terrible happened to a lot of sons.
It is plausible to me, some people lose the will to have kids, when it is most disadvantageous to have children. Something is off, we can all sense it.
Re: Declining fertility ideals? Young people more often prefer having no children
#10I would have loved to have kids. I'm 33 and will never have children. I consider it morally irresponsible to bring children into a world where they will have to deal with the worst of the changing climate. That's it, that's the only reason.
It's heartbreaking, and yes, cynical -- but it's not a risk I'm willing to take ("the world will turn itself around and band together to mitigate climate change" is not a gamble I'm willing to put on my child's life).