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.
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.