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To have children or not to have them? That is the question more and more Americans are asking themselves. Only 26% say having children is extremely or very important for a fulfilling life, according to a Pew Research Center survey, whereas 71% say the same about “having a job or career they enjoy.” The U.S. fertility rate has plummeted to 1.6 lifetime births per woman, well below the “replacement rate” of around 2.1, at which point a population remains stable between generations.
Lower birthrates mean fewer young people, which means a shrinking workforce and more difficult economic growth. But there are other reasons to hope for more children, no less real for being more intangible. Mass reluctance to bring a new generation into the (admittedly troubled) world could signify growing pessimism in a society that has historically thrived on optimism. A disproportionately elderly society could be a wiser but less dynamic one, with fewer young people to take risks, contribute new ideas and — yes — provide youthful joie de vivre.
The declining birthrate is puzzling, given that being married with children correlates with self-reported happiness — among both men and women. Nearly 40% of women who are married with children say they are “very happy,” according to the 2022 General Social Survey. It’s just 25% for those married without children, and even lower for those who are unmarried either with or without children. Meanwhile, 35% of married men with children report being very happy, compared with 14% of unmarried, childless men.
Of course, correlation is not causation. These data could indicate that having children tends to make people happy, or that happy people tend to have children. Either way, for most people, getting married is the first step to having children — and marriage is becoming less frequent. Twenty-five percent of 40-year-olds have never married, according to a Pew survey. In 1980, the figure was 6%. Unmarried rates are higher among men, who are also significantly more likely than women to want children in the first place.
In their book “What Are Children For?” authors Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman show that a growing number of women say they don’t want children because of the economic costs. But the data complicate this picture. After being behind for a while, millennials have largely caught up and are even eclipsing previous generations on various income and wealth metrics. And in countries where economic supports for women are very generous, as in Norway and Finland, the fertility rate has dropped below the United States’ in recent years.
Today, having children is a choice rather than an expectation, and more women are deciding that the trade-offs are too great in light of competing life goals. If you can’t have it all, which many women feel they can’t, then a choice must be made, and having children comes to be seen increasingly as a zero-sum consideration.
