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.
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.
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.